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Pacific Blue Marlin Paired With 2009 The Four Graces Pinot Blanc Dundee Hills is Brian’s Featured Pairing of the Week!

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

Weekly Wine Notes From Brian Kemmerle

Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes.  Here is Brian’s recommended food and wine pairing for this week!

This week’s featured pairing takes advantage of a recent seafood acquisition. The chef purchased some Pacific Blue Marlin and is serving it with green chili polenta, corn relish and sautéed organic rainbow chard.

For the pairing I wanted a white wine with some richness and riper fruit to match up with the sweetness of the corn and the mild heat of the green chili. I picked the newly released 2009 The Four Graces Pinot Blanc Dundee Hills.

The wine has nice Asian pear and floral aromas with a full body and a lingering tropical fruit and macadamia nut finish. Cheers!

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How to Make Your Salad More “Wine Friendly”- Wine and Food Pairing Tips From Brian Kemmerle

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Weekly Wine Notes From Brian Kemmerle

Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes.  Here is Brian’s recommended food and wine pairing for this week!

This week’s featured pairing comes from a rare place on the dinner menu, the  Salad Course. Salads are notoriously hard to pair with wine due to the fact that the dressings can overpower or often combine to create “odd” flavors in wine.

There are two things you can do to make your salads more “wine friendly”:

First, you can use a citrus fruit, instead of vinegar for your acid. Secondly, add some cheese. Most cheeses, a grating of Parmesan, a quenelle of fresh goat or a wedge of Gruyere will do nicely to cut some of the sharpness off a salad dressing that can create those “odd” flavors in your wine.

All that being said, this week’s salad is Baby Spinach, Oranges, Dried Cranberries and Feta Cheese tossed with a Lemon Dressing. I’ve paired it with the 2008 Willamette Valley Vineyards Riesling. The wine is semi-sweet with apricot, tangerine, pineapple fruits, a touch of a stone/slate mineral quality and a healthy dose of acidity to balance the sweetness. Off-dry or semi-sweet wines like this one are my top choices for pairing with “wine friendly” salads. Cheers!

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Featured Food & Wine Pairing of the Week: Lamb with 2007 Dusted Valley Vintners“Boomtown” Syrah

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

Weekly Wine Notes From Brian Kemmerle

Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes.  Here is Brian’s recommended food and wine pairing for this week!


This week’s featured food and wine pairing involves locally raised Oregon lamb. The tenderloin is marinated in harissa, a North African chili paste, grilled and served with Israeli couscous, the larger wheat-based variety, ratatouille and a mint pesto.

This is a tough dish to pair due to the harissa. Red chili flavored dishes need something to cool and refresh the palate, which is why many people drink a sweet, milky-like mixture with this style of dish or wash it down with a malty beer. However, I like a challenge, so I’ve selected the 2007 Dusted Valley Vintners“Boomtown” Syrah for the pairing.

The wine has enough ripe black fruits, soft tannins and a lingering sweet oak-y finish to compliment the flavors of the dish. This is not a wimpy wine! Warning, the heat will continue to build on the palate, but you probably enjoy that kind of thing. Cheers!

Posted in Wine and Food

Featured Pairing of the Week: Black Angus Strip Loin Steak & Seven Hills Winery 2007 Columbia Valley Merlot

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

Weekly Wine Notes From Brian Kemmerle

Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes.  Here is Brian’s recommended food and wine pairing for this week!

This week’s featured food and wine pairing is a testament to the long standing idea that red wines go with red meat. The dish, a Black Angus strip loin steak cooked over an open fire grill finished with a ragout of forest mushrooms and served with roasted garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. The wine is the Seven Hills Winery 2007 Columbia Valley Merlot. The wine is sold out at the winery, but our local distributor still has a bit left of the previous vintage. The wine has nice plum and black cherry fruits with some darkly roasted coffee and grilled bread aromas. What makes this wine such a good food wine is the lack of excessive alcohol and the freshness of the acidity. The first should allow the wine to marry with the dish and not compete against it. The latter should cut through the richness of the dish and refresh your palate for the next bite. Cheers!

Photo Credit: Seven Hills Winery

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Featured Food & Wine Pairing of the Week: King Salmon and 2008 Pudding River Barrel Fermented Chardonnay

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Weekly Wine Notes From Brian Kemmerle

Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes.  Here is Brian’s recommended food and wine pairing for this week!

This week’s featured pairing involves our very own Columbia River: King Salmon. The chefs roast it on a cedar plank and baste it with a sauce of Dijon mustard, honey and tarragon. The salmon is then served with a Yukon Gold potato salad finished with prosciutto and fennel.

Usually I like to pair a red wine with Salmon, especially an Oregon Pinot Noir, however the sauce the fish is paired with lends itself more to a white wine. If we were in Alsace, France I would match this up with a Grand Cru Gewürztraminer or Riesling, a local version would work just fine BTW, but since we are in Oregon I thought a barrel fermented Chardonnay would match nicely.

The wine is the 2008 Pudding River Barrel Fermented Chardonnay. Made here in Salem, Oregon with the early ripening Dijon clone of Chardonnay, this wine displays plenty of richness without excessive weight or low acidity. The wine has aromas of pineapple and tangerine with a touch of macadamia nut on the finish. The oak is very well integrated in this wine you barely notice it but you would miss it if it was gone. Cheers!

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Featured Food & Wine Pairing: Chicken, Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni with 2008 Tre Nova Sangiovese

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Weekly Wine Notes From Brian Kemmerle

Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes.  Here is Brian’s recommended food and wine pairing for this week!

This week’s favorite pairing comes again from the Small Plates portion of our menu specials. The dish; two cannelloni filled with chicken, spinach and ricotta, topped with house made marinara sauce and fontina cheese and baked in our pizza oven at 550 degrees. The pairing; despite the chicken, spinach, ricotta and fontina, all white wine oriented, it is the marinara sauce that carries this dish so that is what we will be matching.

Tomato sauces like red wines with fairly high acids, good fruit flavors and subtle tannins. I decided to go vaguely regional with the pairing. The 2008 Tre Nova Sangiovese. Sangiovese is the main grape found in the regional Chianti wines of Italy however these grapes were grown on the Washington side of the Columbia Valley. The grapes were then trucked to Carlton, Oregon and made into wine by the one and only Gino Cuneo, formerly of Cuneo Wine Cellars. Gino has a passion for Italian grapes and this wine is a rare and successful homage to its home country. Cheers!

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Tempura Shrimp Paired with SakeOne is Brian’s Recommendation of the Week

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Weekly Wine Notes From Brian Kemmerle

photo © Jen McCabe SakeOne.

Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes.  This week, Brian recommends trying something new: Sake!

This week’s featured pairing is for the Tempura Shrimp on the Small Plates section of our menu. Gulf shrimp are coated with a wasabi infused tempura batter and then fried. Cucumber salad, sweet plum sauce and hot mustard accompany the shrimp. You could of course pair this with an off-dry to fairly sweet white wine but what would be the fun in that.

How about sake? How about a local sake? You bet! We are very lucky to have a sake brewery right here in Oregon, SakeOne. They have hand crafted a line of Junmai Ginjo sake in the Japanese tradition and named them Momokawa. We offer four sake in the line for pairing with this dish, the Silver the driest, the Diamond which is off-dry, the Ruby which is slightly sweet and the Pearl which is unfiltered, so it is cloudy and very sweet. Each is served chilled, in our special 4 ounce sake cup. Cheers! -Brian Kemmerle

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Willamette Valley Wine Walk – June 11th

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Come downtown for this Friday’s Willamette Valley Wine Walk and you may become a star!

That’s right, on this month’s wine walk, they will be shooting a segment for Explore the Northwest, a locally-produced syndicated television show with hostess Dawn Holmstrom. This will be their first Salem show!

After attending all of the other fun events downtown come by Bentley’s Grill at 10:00 for  complimentary wine  tastings and delicious appetizer specials.

Posted in Events, Monthly Events, Wine and Food

Sea Scallop Entrée with Chehalem 2007 Stoller Vineyard Pinot Blanc is Brian’s Pairing of the Week

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Weekly Wine Notes From Our Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle

Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes…….

This week’s featured pairing is with a new Sea Scallop entrée on the “Specials” menu. Six “dry” scallops are pan seared, drizzled with basil oil and served with black olive tapenade, herbed risotto and grilled asparagus. We have some delicately flavored and tender scallops with a herbal note, which would require a delicate white wine. Salty and strongly flavored tapenade, so we need something to refresh your palate. We would need a wine to cut through rich and full flavored starch like the risotto and a vegetable with a strong green flavor and some char,  which requires a wine with low or no tannins and no additional green flavors. My pick is the Chehalem 2007 Stoller Vineyard Pinot Blanc. This wine shows aromas of white flowers, mostly jasmine and barely ripe nectarine. On the palate with wine shows some richness and flavors of lemon zest, licorice and white pepper with some refreshing acidity.

Posted in Events, Wine and Food

Bentley’s Grill Pizzetta Paired with 2008 Firesteed Dry Rose is Brian’s Recommendation This Week

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Weekly Wine Notes From Our Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle

Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerle regularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes. Visit our site to see the most current Food and Wine Menus….


The most exciting pairing on the menu this week is for the Pizzetta. Our pizza dough, made fresh daily, is topped with our house made marinara sauce, ricotta salata, country olive mix and fresh spinach. I wanted a wine to mesh nicely with the acidity of the tomatoes, refresh your palate from the saltiness of the olives and the ricotta salata and not get overtly astringent with the green flavors of the spinach. The result … the 2008 Firesteed Dry Rose. Cheers!

This week’s “Featured Pinot Noir” is the Westrey 2008 Dundee Hills Oracle Vineyard. An estate vineyard planted with a combinations of 31 year old Pommard clone and some newer 9 year old plantings of Pinot Noir on predominantly Jory soil with a streak of Nekia. This week, some most agreeable tasting notes from the winery:

“The nose invites one to taste through aromas of raspberry fruit, red currents, violets and mineral-earth notes. The entry shows bursting berry fruit, with good weight and a balanced acid structure.”

The earth notes come across as pine needles and the fruit description is spot on. Cheers!

Brian

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