Annual Celebration Dinner
Sunday Dec. 2nd



For over 10 years we have offered our 'Celebration Dinner' for our Wine Club Family and Friends. This gives us an opportunity to toast our favorite people with some extremely special wines and a multi course menu.

We always begin the evening reception with a tasting of the newly bottled Pinot's, in this case 2017 which was bottled in August. Having not tasted these wines and they will not release for at least one year, this is a great opportunity to taste the future.

From my Restaurant days, I love the menu, table setting, candle lit atmosphere. Plus help from a professional server, Thank you Ellen!

 

The reception is in our side room we called 'The Dining Room' which is emptied out other than 2 wine barrels, a redwood plank and the wines.

 

 

                  Mushroom soup shooters to warm everyone up from our first really cold Fall evening.

Local cheeses to cleanse the palate. Lamp Chopper from Cypress Grove and Hwy 1 Fontina from Valley Ford. Both these cheeses do well with Pinot Noir.

 

The line up of wines for the evening, mostly magnum's and one Jerobaum all from our library

 

 

Starting with local Tomales Bay Oyster Rockerfeller with our 2014 Brut Rose'. Let's get this party started.

                     2011 Chardonnay magnum with our great local Goat Cheese croquette.

The crab season just started and we can't miss the opportunity to show case our best local ingredients, Dungeness Crab Cakes. We opened the 3 Litre 2013 vintage Bohemian Vineyard. Orange and vanilla essence sauce high lights both the crab and the wine.

Sonoma County Lamb, creamy polenta and two Pinot Noir's from the same vintage, 2011 TNT Vineyard and Ruxton Vineyard. Magnums age slower so they were very lively Pinot's. The TNT was preferred with the lamb. Ruxton Pinot is typically our 'lamb wine' although the preparation was very rich and the TNT's acidity balanced everything.

 

 This experiment by Mat with Viognier as late harvest orange wine turned out pretty sweet in more than one way. We had to show case it for dessert, our first dessert wine trial. Only a couple cases of 375 bottles produced, no label = huge success. A beautiful not too sweet finish.

 

Paired with Torta Caprese, flourless chocolate and almond cake with candied orange rind garnish.

6 magnums, 4 sparkling, 1 x 3 Litre, 5 vintages of 2017 Pinot's and a few bottles of dessert wine, Yes, This was a Celebration!!!! The last of 2018 events for our Tasting Room.

Thank you to Chef Jeff who spent three days shopping and prepping and being so organized that the evening was painless and a pleasure!

Next up 2019

Harvest Lunch at Bohemian Vineyard                                                 October 21, 2018


Mat & I have talked about doing a 'lunch in the Vineyard' for a few years. When Tom and Sue Cleary who own Bohemian Vineyard offered us their property for an event, we scheduled it immediately.

We've also talked about having Matt Masera, incredibly talented chef that is part of our Ruxton Vineyard Family, do an event with us. After a few texts and phone calls, the date worked for his busy schedule and thus the Event was born.

Winding down the harvest is pleasant. Knowing that the hard work of crush is mostly over, we start celebrating. A perfect celebration is a lunch in the vineyard three days after it was picked. Great food, beautiful three vintage vertical of wine and a sold out crowd. And of course perfect Fall weather!

                                               
The view from the deck is such a perfect perspective of the property. We decided to welcome our guests with 2017 Gewurz, Gougeres hot out of the oven and this view.

One of my favorite bites ever - gougeres, topped with pear butter, dried prosciutto and shaved Vella Dry Jack cheese. What a yummy treat.

                                           
We tasted the 3 vintages of Bohemian on the deck before any additional food influences. And then continued to taste all three Pinot Noir's with lunch.
2013, 2014 and 2015 Bohemian Vineyard Pinot Noir, none currently available to taste at the Tasting Room.


                                                           
A really great intro from Tom about his family purchasing land in Freestone in 1943 and his property in 1983. I joke that they own half of Freestone. This is not a fact but Freestone is small and the Family have a really nice amount of acres.


Next we head out to sit in the vineyard. Feet from the home is this....

 

 

 

 

                        Chef Matt busy prepping with his beautiful wife Dana assisting him.

 Keeping it simple. Off site events are a lot of work so using recycle bamboo plates and paper napkins helps with the load in and out.

 

~ Salad  is served

 Farro, Apple, arugula, burrata, radish, celery, pecans

 

                 Carrots the color of the leaves turning.

And then the same carrots dressed with fresh chevre, pistachio and shaved purple carrot

 

 

 Slow roasted brick chicken, harissa cous cous and herbs. Photos do not do this justice!

We couldn't have had a more perfect day to be enjoying and celebrating harvest. We finished with an Apple dessert - Apple cider cake with confit Apple, whipped creme fraiche, chervil.

                  The chef explaining the menu and telling his story.

 

The afternoon ended with words of 'perfection ', 'what a treat' , 'please do this again'. Which means... yes, we will do this again. We will try to offer a June "pre harvest lunch" at Ruxton Ranch and a repeat of Bohemian Vineyard in the Fall.

cheers

 

 

                     
                      HARVEST 2018

     
       Leading into harvest is exciting, exhilarating and scary with so many questions unanswered. How will the weather
       patterns this far affect the fruit and will it maintain cool? hot? Foggy?

       The 2018 harvest has been a great one! Mat ranks it 8 out of 10.
       Exceptional quality, low but not scary low yields and OMG this will a great vintage to remember and purchase.

       We started purchasing Gewurztraminer in 2014, Mat's love of the grape drove this decision. This vintage was picked
       on Sept. 4th, our first fruit of the season. And so it begins....

 

                   Ruxton vineyard picked on Friday Sept. 7th. This vineyard location is our highest elevation and often above
                       the fog as seen in this photo. The longest hours of sun exposure lends to it's earlier ripening,
        

 
                Tiny clusters are perfect for producing high quality pinot as seen is this picture from the Ruxton pick.

 

                   TNT Vineyard picked in the wee hours of the morning on Friday Sept. 14th, coming in to the crush pad 
                    by 9 a.m.

 

           Great news that we found some Pinot Noir for Rose', which was picked Sept. 19th. 

           Two of the last four harvests we were unable to produce a Rose'. Mat saw an opportunity to purchase some Pinot 
            from a vineyard on Laguna Road. We bought just enough to produce about 150 cases. Look for it earlier Spring  
            2019!! 

Our first Grenache grapes picked Sept. 25th from the same vineyard we purchase our viognier from.

 

We have been purchasing Cab Franc from Bill and Betsy at Acorn Winery since 2012. This year the fruit picked Sept. 26th

 

 

Rains came Monday October 1st, with two vineyards with fruit remaining on the vine. We received 2 inches over night.

 

Viognier was picked Monday October 8th and our final pick, Pinot at the Bohemian Vineyard in Freestone was picked Thursday October 18th, 1.3 tons arrived of these beautiful clusters

 

Now it is time to clean up the cellar, party, say good bye to the interns and get back to the Tasting Room!Come see us in Graton for more harvest 2018 details.

 

August 25th

                                                Charles Phan Fans


We both love the Slanted Door in San Francisco and Mat loves to cook. This was 100% his pick for our newest Foodie Dinner in the Dining Room in Graton. Two cookbooks, 14 guests, 4 recipes and Paul Mathew wines.

A really great opportunity for our guests to see how versatile our wines are and discover food and wine pairings that might be unexpected.
We poured 4 wines for the evening, starting with the newly released *Brut Rose', 100% Pinot Noir, Methode Champenoise and really quite perfect to start with as well as taste with every course. * 2017 Gewurztraminer, *2014 RRV Pinot and *2016 Cab Franc.

 

Vietnamese Beef Jerky and Brut Rose' to welcome our guests.

 

 

A line up of 4 glasses and a menu greet our guests to the Dining Room.

 

 

 

 

 

We started with the Tuna Tartare, everyone loved this version and the winning wine was the Gewurz.
I did expect this outcome for the pairing. We have served our Gewurz with a different recipe of Tuna Ceviche to a very regular standing ovation. Wins every time.
The Brut Rose' was the second favorite wine pairing.

Mat's third Gewurz produced, he started purchasing the fruit in 2014.
So often in the tasting room customers do NOT want to taste the Gewurz, they think it will be sweet. Our rendition is bone dry, stainless steel fermented and wonderful with so many foods especially Asian flavors.



The second course, jicama and grapefruit salad, one of my favorite dishes at The Slanted Door.
This dish also won the Gewurz as best pairing. This salad has candied pecans and a really wonderful soy based dressing, it really depends on which combination of flavors in each bite to determine the best wine. Of course grapefruit is quite difficult. The Brut Rose' once again came in second place.

Bahn mi sandwich, WOW. I had never had one and we did a sample run a few nights before to see how the bread stood up. Amazing flavors. This one was made with Mama's Meatballs which are incredible on their own. But in the sandwich with pickled carrots, jalepeno's, cilantro and cucumber.
This was the favorite dish of the evening!!!

The Bahn mi favorite wine was hands down the new release 2016 Cab Franc. This wine is so fun to pair with food, it does really well in a lot of difficult food combos. Pinot Noir and Brut Rose' tied for 2nd place.

Bo Luc Lac: Shaking beef up next. A very beefy dish surprised me that the Pinot was the best pairing picked by the majority of the guests.

 

 We finished this enjoyable evening with Coconut Ice cream from 'Scoop of Sonoma' in Forestville.
A lot of great conversation and a little bit more wine. Plus a beautiful serenade from our dear friend Tim Portwood. Once again, full bellies and happy memories were the main results.

 

 Next up?? Still in the works. Hoping for a couple of Harvest lunches in the Vineyard. Stay tuned.