William Pollard Jr | aka: Wild 4 Washington Wine

Taste Washington Appellation Seminar Columbia Gorge AVA There are always opportunities to educate yourself. This year I have expanded my knowledge about the Columbia Gorge AVA. During the weekend of Taste Washington I attended a seminar featuring wines made from grapes grown in the Columbia Gorge. While I was familiar with some of the wines and wineries in this AVA, at this seminar I was introduced to new winemakers, wineries and vineyards. The focus was on wines made from higher elevation vineyard sources in the Columbia Gorge AVA. "A world of wine in 40 miles." The Columbia Gorge was carved out by the epic Missoula glacial floods  around 15,000 years ago. The area where I live in eastern Washington was once covered by the flood waters of the short lived Lake Lewis, before breaking free and creating the Columbia Gorge. Glacial erratics , large boulders carried by glacial ice, were deposited hundreds of miles from their origins as far as the Willamette Valley in Or...

Serve on the rocks with an orange slice. Marvelous. I  was advised by Fox Run Vineyards to serve the Hedonia over ice, in a rocks glass, with a slice of orange. A wine cocktail if you will. Loved it. My first exposure to this fortified Traminette based Hedonia made by Fox Run Vineyards was during a Finger Lakes wine tasting last year, " Finger Lakes Sparkling, Dessert and Ice Wines ", I was impressed. You may not have noticed my comments about the Hedonia last year, at least I've worried that you missed out, so this year I wanted to showcase the Hedonia by itself. For me, this is a favorite cocktail. In my top five and presently my cocktail of choice. Note : Traminette is a cross of the French American hybrid Joannes Seyve 23.416 and the German Vitis vinifera cultivar Gewürztraminer made by Herb C. Barrett ca. 1965 at the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign. Traminette was found to have excellent wine quality, combined with good productivity, pa...

A Delicious, Vegan, Hudson Valley Wine.  This month on #winestudio we are discussing and tasting the Hudson Valley wine region of New York. Each Tuesday evening we are tasting a different wine. Last Tuesday we sampled the Whitecliff Vineyard 2013 White Rose . The 2013 White Rose is a Traminette dominant vegan wine, vegan because Winemaker Michael Migliore prefers it that way and it doesn't impact quality. No gelatin was used in fining this wine, instead flotation was used. Nitrogen was used to float the particles to the surface for clarification. All reds and the 2014 vintage will be almost 100% vegan. I wonder if more wineries will adopt this interesting technology? What is Traminette?  Admittedly, I am relatively new to Traminette, my first exposure was in November last year . Traminette is a hybrid varietal based on a cross of Gewurztraminer and the French-American varietal Johannes Seyve 23-416 . This cross was made in 1965 at the University of I...

Successfully paired with Vin du Lac 2010 “LEHM” Gewurztraminer. A blast of cold last week brought snow, hail and some very dangerous road conditions. For a day. The snow and ice left, but the cold wind remained. The return of winter weather primed my appetite for something hot and filling. Which explains why I impulsively bought a bag of oxtail. Oxtail? Oxtail is, well, it is the tail of a cattle cut into short pieces. Oxtail is a bony, gelatin-rich meat, usually slow-cooked as a stew. I have warm, fuzzy memories of my mother making oxtail stew when I was a little boy. But I had never made oxtail stew. I had no treasured family recipe, and I was not sure of the ingredients I would need. Beef stock obviously. But what else? And how long would it take to make? These are questions I would answer for myself last weekend. Oxtail stew day two - in one of my wheel thrown bowls. I'll save you some work by providing the recipe I found, used and modified. There is a proper process f...