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!
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!
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!
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’sdishes. 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!
Bentley’s Grill now offers three Happy Hour events each week. Here are the top 7 reasons why you should swing by and wind down after a busy day during the week:
2.Lounge Lizard Monday. What’s in it for you? Two weekly drink specials made with our featured liquor (announced each week); Chef Derek’s famous appetizer specials (just $4); and free promotional merchandise (while supplies last). Each Monday 4-6pm in the lounge.
3. Tuesday Tini’s…. Why Go? Soraida Cross, our resident cocktail expert and her team create four delicious martini’s each week to compliment Chef Derek’s happy hour appetizer specials. Each Tuesday from 4pm-close.
4. Bonus for Foursquare Users! Check in to Bentley’s Grill on Foursquare every time you drop by. The “Mayor” of Bentley’s Grill will be rewarded with a complimentary Martini from our list of specials during ”Tuesday Tini’s” (4pm- close each Tuesday). This offer is only available on Tuesdays after 4pm; must be 21 with valid ID, must show proof you are the current Foursquare mayor.
5. ”Ladies Night” each Wednesday….need we say more? Four cocktail specials, 2 wine selections, 1 beer special and delicious appetizers.
6. Bonus for Bentley’s Grill Facebook Fans! Each week, we will post a special “Ladies Night Facebook Phrase” on our Facebook Page. The first 25 customers who repeat the “Ladies Night Facebook Phrase” during Ladies Night (4pm-close each Wednesday) will receive a gift! Check the page each week and invite your friends to take advantage of this fun offer!
7. Great Location. We are conveniently located inside of the elegant Grand Hotel in Salem (formerly The Phoenix Grand Hotel) next to The Salem Conference Center in the heart of down town. Our customers always enjoy relaxing in our warm open atmosphere.
Bentley’s Wine Steward, Brian Kemmerleregularly offers his insight and experience to help select the perfect wine to accompany Chef Derek Ridgway’s dishes.
Wine Notes from Brian
The most exciting wine pairing this week is the Alaskan Halibut matched with the 2008 Di Stefano Sauvignon Blanc. This wine is full bodied for a Sauvignon Blanc and it will match nicely with the meaty texture of the fish. It has enough ripeness of fruit to balance the Harissa spiced zucchini. It has enough acidity to cut through the richness of the fried artichokes; and it has complimentary flavors to the Meyer lemon and fennel emulsion. Highly Recommended.
Until next Thursday the Featured Pinot Noir is the 2007 St. Innocent Winery Momtazi Vineyard
A bit atypical for this bio-dynamically farmed vineyard, however more accurately reflecting the vintage. This wine is showing more red raspberry flavors than in years past as well as the typical wild strawberry, black cherry and green tea aromas. The usual structure is more modest and has been replaced by brighter acidity. A classic Oregon Pinot Noir executed by this winery. Pair this wine with our Filet Mignon.
Living in the heart of Oregon wine country gives Wine Steward Brian Kemmerle a unique perspective on some of the world’s best wines. His knowledge and passion for wine that began in culinary school have inspired and pleased our guests on numerous occasions. He has a talent of choosing the perfect wine (usually local) to match any of our Chef’s dishes. He regularly shares his insights with guests and hopes you will enjoy his new “by the glass” menu:
December Wine Notes From Bentley’s Grill Wine Steward:
With forty wines to choose from and a combination of vintage changes, out of stocks and seasonal preferences the “by-the-glass” menu starts to look a little tired about five or six times a year. This revision features some subtle and drastic changes to the selection.
First, what’s gone and why:
Lemelson’s 2008 “Tikka’s Run” Pinot Gris – already sold out. One of Oregon’s best Pinot Gris each year and becoming harder to get because of it.
Moet “White Star” is now Moet “Brut Imperial”. Moet has finally depleted the special American cuvee “White Star” and will now be shipping to us what they ship to the rest of the world the “Brut Imperial”. Merci!
In the “so many good wines and not enough time” category the Adelsheim Pinot Blanc and the L’Ecole Semillon have been exchanged for two new exciting wines.
The Erath Oregon Pinot Noir and the Witness Tree “Chainsaw Vineyard” Pinot Noir have been “dueling” for a couple of months now and the winner, by a substantial margin” is still on the list.
As good as the Boedecker 2006 “Athena” Pinot Noir was, it did not command enough commercial success on the menu as it did as the “Featured Pinot Noir”. It will remain on the bottle list and may return at a later date as the “FPN”.
Fortunately some of you got to try the Waterbrook 2006 Reserve Cabernet. It made a nationally publicized wine magazines “Top 100 wines of the year” list and promptly sold out. The replacement is not too shabby either.
At 188 cases of total production it was no surprise to me that the Three Angels Avery Vineyard Zinfandel had sold out. We had already seen the 188 cases of the Les Collines Vineyard come and go away. The last couple of bottles will be available on the main wine list.
Onto the new!
The ultra-rich Four Graces Pinot Blanc replaces the crisp and lively Adelsheim. The winery writes: White peach, honey and butterscotch combine on the nose with lightly toasted hazelnuts. An invitingly fresh zest of lime flavor is followed by Asian pear, jicama and grapefruit. This is a full bodied wine with a long finish.
Also new to the list is a newcomer to the local wine scene J. Scott Cellars, a boutique winery, out of Eugene, Oregon. The 2008 Viognier was made from purchased Rogue Valley fruit and has lovely floral aromatics and a touch of residual sugar to balance out the nice acidity. I’ll look to match this wine with the Chefs many forays into Asian cuisine.
To prove that good wine doesn’t have to cost a lot of money I have added the 2008 Jovino Pinot Gris to the menu. At $6.00 a glass it delivers plenty of Oregon Pinot Gris goodness for very little cash. This wine should be very popular with the “Happy Hour” crowd.
Cherry Hill winery has finally released their 2006 “Estate” Pinot Noir. It met with rousing success as the “Featured Pinot Noir” and hopefully that success with continue now that you can have it anytime you want. This wine, in combination with St. Innocent, Witness Tree, Willamette Valley Vineyards, Mystic and Bethel Heights means that you can now support six local, Salem area, wineries with your wine buying dollars.
Usually when a wine changes vintage I remove it from the menu however in this case the Seven Hills 2007 Merlot is just as good as the 2006. So it stays. Enjoy.
The replacement for the Waterbrook ended up being the 2006 Kestrel Cabernet Sauvignon. Kestrel Vintners have a vast and somewhat confusing selection of wines and they are usually a couple of nickels more expensive that their nearest competition however this wine stood out during my weekly tastings. Pretty black fruits, floral notes and a bit of structure to this wine will appeal to classic Cabernet drinkers and match well with our various steaks.
Apparently I was on a bit of a Northwest Italian varietal kick lately. I re-tasted a new vintage of Nebbiolo. Scored a Sangiovese blend at a unbelievable price and added two Barbera to the menu. To pour by the glass I picked the 2006 Waving Tree Barbera out of Washington has striking dried black cherry notes and a lift of acidity to match nicely with the chefs new Pork Tenderloin special and mushroom ravioli dish with braised boar ragout.
The last item on the menu is a returning special. The 2006 Andrew Rich Coup d’Etat is a Rhone-style blend with Grenache, Mourvedre, Syrah and usually a touch of Counoise. I poured the 2005 until it ran out and when I tasted this 2006 it was a bit rough around the edges. Well, today is has softened up nicely and should pair nicely with Lamb dishes and other richly flavored red meat entrees, especially ones cooked on the grill with a bit of char on them.
Weekly Wine Notes From Brian Kemmerle
Living in the heart of Oregon wine country gives 
