Wine & Distilled Spirits at the Oregon Spring Beer & Wine Fest

Besides tasting cider at the 16^th Annual Spring Beer & Wine Fest last weekend at the Oregon Convention Center, I had a little bit of wine, some of my husband’s beer, some distilled spirits, cheese, and chocolate.

For distilled spirits, I finally got to try out Spokane, WA’s Dry Fly Distillery’s Vodka, which I had been reading about on Facebook. My favorite of theirs was actually their gin. They said they used things like lavender, coriander, and Fuji apples. It made it a mellower gin, one which I think could be drank easily on the rocks, which you don’t do with most gins, or with a splash of juice.

From Portland, New Deal Vodka was there with a few of their spirits, including their Hot Monkey, which was a vodka infused with peppers. I’ve infused tequila with peppers before, but this vodka was way too overpowering, even though they served it to me with 3 parts pineapple juice to one part Hot Monkey. I couldn’t taste anything for a little while. I also had some of their Loft Organic Liqiours, and I loved the ginger cello.

I also had some vodka from Bend Distillery. They also had an infused pepper vodka, but it was much mellower, easier to drink, and doesn’t linger. They used a combination of peppers, and the first pepper you can taste is sweet bell peppers before it moves into the hotter peppers and then cools down. They also had a coffee and hazelnut infused vodka, but it didn’t taste like coffee liquor. It was very good.

I was a bit tickled that one of the vendors among the distillers at the festival was Treetop Home Distillation Systems. As I have mentioned before, distilling without a permit is illegal in the United States and other countries, but if I ever get my cider house/winery up and running, I would attempt to get a distilling license and uses one of their small stove top distillers instead of attempting to build one.

For something unique, I had some Vinn MiJiu Ice, a kind of rice wine/liquor, which was sweet as promised with the honey-pear taste and aroma. I was expecting saké, but this was different.

The only other wines I had was from Gougér Cellars and Nehalem Bay Winery, even though there were many more wineries there. Gougér Cellars made the cut because it is one of the few wineries in Clark County where I live, and the only one represented there. I had their reisling and ended the day with their muscat. While Tualatin Estate Vineyards has a better muscat, it takes some effort for me to obtain it. This muscat will be easier for me to get.

Nehalem Bay Winery makes fruit wines, and I unfortunately didn’t discover at the event until towards the end. I had their cranberry wine, which was good, but I prefer Shallon Winery’s. I’m curious about the rest of their products, so I will have to take a trip out to the coast to try more of their wine sometime.

And speaking of the coast and visiting Shallon Winery, we discovered a new Astoria, OR brew pub at the festival called Astoria Brewing Company at the Wet Dog Café. We will have to check them out and see how they compare to the Blue Scorcer Bakery & Café and Fort George Brewery. Will the Wet Dog Café be able to woo us away?

Lots of local one day road trips for us!

I will talk about the cheese vendors another time.

Cider at the Oregon Spring Beer & Wine Fest

Cider had a decent representation at the 16^th Annual Spring Beer & Wine Fest last weekend at the Oregon Convention Center. Wandering Aengus Ciderworks from Salem, OR was there with their new Anthem cider on tap along with pear and cherry. The Anthem, made only with Newtown Pippin and Winesap apples, is probably my new favorite of theirs, though I would probably have to taste them all to make sure. Last time I saw them at their facility, they had been experimenting with cherries and decided it was best to add to fermented apple cider without fermenting the cherries. The result was something semi-dry with a hint of cherry, but something that didn’t wow me, and I love cherries. It could have been because I had been drinking their pear flavored cider previously. Made the same way the cherry cider was, this drink was sweet and more like something I would expect considering the process.

Part of the problem with the cherry cider also could have been that I drank Milton-Freewater, OR Blue Mountain Cider’s version. I would need to compare the these two side by side. These two cider companies are the largest ones in Oregon, with a few others up and coming.

Six pack ciders were also represented with Crispin Cider and Woodchuck Cider. Crispin Cider likes to have a presence in Oregon, and in fact has its own Twitter account @CrispinOregon. They were there with their Natural Cider along with their newly acquired Fox Barrel Pear Cider. In fact, Concordia Ale House is having a Cider Night tonight, but looking at the ciders they are going to use, they are all Crispin or Fox Barrel. Crispin and Fox Barrel is also having a tasting of their limited release Bonnie & Clyde ciders later this month on Thursday, April 29th from 5-8pm at the Belmont Station in Portland, OR.

As far as Woodchuck Draft Cider goes, it was a bit interesting. In the craft cider world, it is a six pack trash. In the beer making world, people want the recipe and hold this up as what cider should be like. It makes the craft cider makers shutter, trying to explain it is the Budweizer of cider. I had their granny smith cider, which is the first time I ever drank it. I get it now – it is sweet yet has some apple flavor, indicating the presence of apple juice added after fermentation. I can see why so many people like it.

While I was talking to Wandering Aengus Ciderworks, he introduced me to Allen Gould of Carlton Cyderworks, who was there tasting like me. I got to talk to them a bit about attending cider classes and how they are currently selling only out of their tasting room. I hope to get down there someday and try their product out.

Oregon Spring Beer & Wine Fest

Last Friday, I took the day off of work and my husband, his brother, and I took a bus to the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, OR to attend the 16^th Annual Spring Beer & Wine Fest with the Tour de Cheese. We got there a little bit before noon due to free admission before 2pm, and we had past experience with the Holiday Ale Festival that being one of the first ones in the door means less lines for trying drinks and food.

For being the 16^th Annual Fest, things were not as organized as one would have thought it to be. With most beer festivals, you have to buy a cup. This year, they had a plastic cup, and a glass beer mug and a glass stemless wine glass. We were told that we needed to purchase at least a plastic mug for serving beer, but that the wine vendors would have small Dixie style cups for serving wine if we did not purchase the wine glass. The first wine producer I went to did not have any glasses and didn’t know that they should have. I had to sweet talk them into pouring to me anyway. Eventually, I did find a wine producer who did, and I kept that glass for a bit. If we bought the wine glass, the beer people would not have served to us. How crazy is all that?

The event had a little bit of everything for everyone: beer, wine, cider, distilled sprits, cheese, chocolate, dipping sauces, olive oil, and even some other miscellaneous vendors like purses, windows, pans, and a chiropractor. Most beverage and cheese samples were $1, with the size dependant on the style of product.

One thing I had learned from previous festivals is to pack some food. Food at the festivals is sometimes scarse, and what is there is usually high quality and expensive. I packed a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which doesn’t not risk food poisoning from not being refrigerated, yet doesn’t require heating. I also packed an apple and an orange. At one festival, we saw a man who had little pretzels on a string tied around his neck. Great idea to keep some food in your system when drinking, and also eat between drinks to help clear the pallet, making it easier to taste the new drink.

I will give a review of the tastings in future posts.

Blood Into Wine

Blood Into Wine is a documentary film recently released about how rockstar Maynard James Keenan of Tool decided to move to Arizona and start a vineyard and making wine. It is an independent film with very limited release. I attended last Thursday the first of the only two showings in Portland, OR at Cinema 21.

Cinema 21 had a rough start for the night. They opened the doors at 8:25 when they said the showing began at 8:30. We waited until 9:00 for it to begin, and the crowd was getting anxious when Eric Glomski, Keenan’s business partner, appeared in front of us and introduced the film. That helped the mood of the theater, but when they started the film, the sound was turned off, causing the crowd to call for a restart of the film. Oye, rough start.

The film is more like something the Arizona Wine Commission, if there is one, would put out, advertising that Arizona can make wine and using a celebrity to draw attention to it. But it was an entertaining film, as they did try to use humor to keep the documentary entertaining, though sometimes they tried too hard.

The film also dealt with the double life of Keenan. Keenan is a rockstar, and a lot of people in the theater were there to see him and could care less about the wine. Yet, that is a good thing, as those people would be exposed to wine when they normally wouldn’t.

At the end of the film, Glomski did a question and answer session for a good amount of time while we sampled some of the wine in the film. One man admitted that he didn’t like wine and was there to see Keenan, but he liked their wine being served.

I don’t know if Glomski said it in the film or afterwards, but the biggest message I got from it for my own personal use is that it is good if he can get you to buy one bottle of his wine, but it is better if he can get you to buy a second bottle. This idea is that people are willing to experiment and try things, but you know you have a good product if they want to buy it again after having one.

All in all, I think I wouldn’t mind owning the film when it comes out on DVD in May. I would watch it again with a notepad to jot down things about the wine industry business and see how I could apply it to my own dreams of opening a cider house.

Cider in America Today

Between a shift in rural to urban populations, natural causes destroying apple trees, shady cider making practices, and Prohibition, cider lost its popularity in the United States. Brian Palmer for Slate describes the impact it had, “Most Americans now consider cider—if they consider it at all—to be in the same category as wine coolers or those enigmatic clear malt beverages: chemically suspect, effeminate alternatives to beer. And who can blame them? America's mass-market ciders are comically weak and inexplicably fizzy. Many are made not from cider apples but from the concentrated juice of eating apples, which is a bit like making wine from seedless table grapes.” Admittedly, it is a little sad, as some of the homebrew forums discussions center around how to reproduce these products, as it is the only thing our culture knows instead of how to make quality craft cider.

This time, I’m going to look at where the industry is now, and where it could go from here.

• In 1990, cider consumption was at 271,000 gallons. In 1996, cider consumption had risen to 5.3 million gallons. In 2004, cider consumption was over 10.3 million gallons. This shows that cider is gaining popularity again. Production in England is growing again, and new markets like China show promise for a cider market.
• However, in 1999, cider accounted for only 0.2% of the total United States beer market. With the increase in demand, one would hope that there will be an increase in the market availability.
• Small orchards are beginning to replant cider apples again, and cider houses are popping up. In Washington State alone, three new cideries opened in 2009.
• Brian Palmer believes that quality ciders are beginning to develop, and that the English and French artisanal ciders are spreading to America, which are light yet complex, unlike beer. He goes on to say, “Cider makers haven't yet been infected with whatever fever has propelled vintners toward unreasonable alcohol levels and garishly imbalanced flavor profiles. Unlike mead, that other resurgent libation of antiquity, cider pairs beautifully with food. And, because cider is an agricultural product, it can lay claim to the currently fashionable quality of ‘somewhereness.’”
• Ben Watson is optimistic, stating, “Over the past few years, it has become easier and easier for cider lovers to find high-quality beverages made by region cider mills and wineries. And in the twenty-first century, blessed and encumbered as we are with our Information Age technologies, it’s nice to know that something as old and traditional as the art of cidermaking is not only alive and well, but flourishing” (page 28).

My sources include:

• Palmer, Brian. “Slate: What Would John Adams Drink?” http://www.slate.com/id/2231001/ September 30, 2009
• Watson, Ben. Cider, Hard and Sweet, 2^nd Edition. 2009. Page 28
• Old Time Cider: “Tieton Cider Works ~ Tieton, Washington.” http://oldtimecider.com/2010/01/09/tieton-cider-works-tieton-washington/ January 9, 2010

Also see:

• Morgan, Joan and Richards, Alison. The New Book of Apples: The Definitive Guide to Apples, Including Over 2,000 Varieties. 2002
  
• Juniper, Barrie B and Mabberley, David J. The Story of the Apple. 2006

Book Review: 101 Recipes for Making Wild Wines At Home

101 Recipes for Making Wild Wines At Home: A Step by Step Guide to Using Herbs, Fruits, and Flowers by John Peragine is a little difficult for me to review the “How To” section because I use Terry Geary’s book instead. This book is new out on the market, published in 2010, and is organized a bit like a “For Dummies” book with boxes. I like it because it has case studies of real people making wine.

Compared to Making Wild Wines & Meads, it is a bit clunky finding recipes. Each recipe has a cute little name. It brings a smile to your face, but you don’t really know what the wine is made from or the finished style. Maybe Making Wild Wines & Meads lacked creativity, but it is much easier to look up a carrot wine in that book than having to figure out that a carrot wine in this book is called “What’s Up Doc?” Plus, the recipes are just thrown in the book with no order and no groupings of plants. The index, too, is strange. For instance, Cherry can be found on pages “273-274, 120-124, 237, 241, 249, 257, 260.” Why are they not put in order in which they appear in the book?

The back of the book does have some good things in it. The last chapter, for instance, is “Ten Common Winemaking Problems.”Appendix A is a table on wine yeasts, which I have not seen in another fruit wine making book, and Appendix B contains some more personal narrations by various home wine makers.

Admittedly, I have not yet bought this book, but instead just checked it out from the library. I’m not completely sure that I will buy it, either, and just read the interesting stories.

Belmont Station

On Tuesday, I said that By the Bottle was voted best beer store by the Northwest Brewing News Readers Choice Awards in the state of Washington for 2009. So who took the award for Oregon? That distinction goes to Belmont Station in Portland.

Belmont Station is a little bit bigger than By the Bottle, though it doesn’t seem to have quite the beer selection. It does, however, give the option of buying the beer as a six pack rather than individual bottles. Also, they give a slight discount when using cash for purchases.

For the non-beer drinker, they have a large selection of six pack ciders such as Wyder, Ace, Woodchuck, and Newton’s Folly. Both of Oregon’s cider makers area also represented, but none of the craft ciders from Washington. They do seem to have a larger selection of mead that I have seen other places, though most still seem to be coming up out of California.