Wine Country: Pre-IPNC Dinner At Sokol Blosser Winery

Friday, 23 July 2010 12:13 | Written by Byron

Russ Rosner and Susan Sokol Blosser at Sokol Blosser Winery

PINOT NIGHTS: The weather? Perfect. The setting? Magic. The company? The best you could ever hope for.

Last night my partner, Juan, and I joined the likes of Bruce Carey, Joe Rogers, Lisa Shara Hall, Emily Powell, and others on the deck of the absolutely gorgeous Sokol Blosser Winery just outside of Dundee, Ore. The event was a pre-event for the 24th International Pinot Noir Celebration Dinner (that annual event attracts the best and the brightest to the Willamette Valley each summer to celebrate our god-given grape) and our hosts included members of the extended Sokol Blosser family including Susan Sokol Blosser, her children Alex and Alison, as well as Russ Rosner, Michael Kelly Brown and Jeff Knapp.

As it said on the back of our seating placards, Pinot Noir "contains warm summer sun, cool breeze, mist, French oak, love and care." And they were all represented on this truly exceptional night (well, perhaps except the mist) on the deck of the Sokol Blosser tasting room, in the middle of a vineyard, where we dined on the perfectly-paired Alpine-inspired cuisine of Christopher Israel and his glorious Gruner Restaurant including pork belly and sauerkraut and pancetta-wrapped quail. Of course, the meal wasn't complete without wines from Sokol Blosser and a wonderful winery out of Central Otago, New Zealand called Kawarau Estate. Wow. What a night.