Feed Me Portland!

When the folks at Travel Lane County

Join us for a special pre-Valentine’s Day tasting of Port and chocolate. This Friday, February 10, 2012, we’ll be featuring the remarkable estate-bottled Port wines of Quinta do Infantado along with Portland’s new bean-to-bar chocolate,

Been busy and not able to write as often, but please don't think that means I've been starving and not drinking anything interesting. Oh no, my friends, I've been a very lucky Brooklynguy lately, in large part due to the generosity of friends. Here are some tidbits, things from the past few weeks that are worth mentioning:

<updated 2/6 > This is it! The biggest roundup of Portland restaurant Valentine’

Lots of people participate in this, so I thought it was big enough news for the front page.

I saw ‘bone luging’ on Tasting Table earlier this month, and thought it was so stupid, I didn’t bother to post. Think of the strange Google hits I’d get from people looking for

A wine chiller doubles as a hibernation den for more than 200 slithering snakes. Chicago Tribune Two East Coast mayors make a friendly football wager. CBS Pittsburgh California’s ubiquitous...

Zagat recently released their list of “

The newest batch of Full Sail’s very limited bourbon barrel-aged beer is set for release on February 1st. Top Sail Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Porter has been aging in oak bourbon barrels deep in the brewery’s cellar for an entire year. During those long months the bourbon barrels and time have been working their ma

Meteorite-aged wine? One Chilean vintner gives it a go. Time Build a better home bar with tips from the Columbia Room’s head bartender, Katie Nelson. Refinery 29 Mourning the sad passing of a...

Yup, you heard it right. Ian Hutcheon, a British astronomer, has introduced a red wine that contains… a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite. The meteorite from an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is introduced into the wine just after a 25 day maloactic fermentation, and then blended with Cabernet.

Scottish Beer Week at the Barrel House-we’ll be serving up a variety of Scottish beers all week long! Join us for Mc Shagger Strong Scotch, a seasonal offering from the brewers with hints of chocolate and smoked peat, dark malts and hints of molasses and chocolate on the palate which lead to a creamy finish

Much has been written and many debates take place about how to rate wine. It seems now that the 100 point scale is seen as "old guard," that it has not been effective at communicating a wine's quality. There are of course other rating systems, and their effectiveness is also debatable. I don't want to spend time here summar

This Friday, January 27, from 4:30 to 6:30, winemaker Jim Prosser of J.K. Carriere Wines will be here to share. While most of our tastings feature range and variety, this one will focus on Prosser’s three very different – and we think masterful -- expressions of pin

In our January/February issue, writer Katherine Cole delves into the realm of biodynamic winemaking—a holistic approach to viticulture that goes beyond natural and organic farming and into a world of...

Craving better beer? Grow your own ingredients. Fox News A NYC server is allegedly caught stealing more than $6k worth of wine from a restaurant’s private stash. Gothamist A simple guide to...

Still cleaning out bookmarks and whatnot. Here are some interesting stories from around the net. In Good Taste – the popular cooking school in the Pearl Di

Wendy's Foie Gras Burger

Meet the Beer Valley Brewer 01/19/12 Green Dragon 928 SE 9th Ave Portland 5pm Brewer/owner Pete Ricks from Ontario, Oregon will be bringing Leafer Madness Imperial Pale Ale, 9% ABV, 100+ IBU hop monster, Highway to Ale Barleywine, Delta 9 IPA and Judas Yeast Winter Ale.

Righ

Hey, it’s the first French Fridays with Dorie of 2012 (for me, anyway)! And this week….M. Jacques Armagnac Chicken. This is a pretty easy a

On new year's eve a good friend took pity on me, alone in the house with my very young and very wonderful daughters, and he decided to come over to hang out and have dinner. We of course opened some special wines on that night, one of which was a bottle I brought back from Jerez in October, Emilio Hidalgo Especial Amontill

Just when I start thinking we 21st Century types are soooooo smart, someon

Three for today: A Detailed Man, David Swinson's crime novel about a DC detective with a half-frozen face and a few too many people he knows dying brutally.

Meet the HUB Brewer 01/12/12 Green Dragon 928 SE 9th Ave Portland, OR 97214 503.517.0660 www.pdxgreendragon.com 5pm Meet Hopworks Urban Brewery brewmaster Christian Ettinger with 4 beers on tap, Helles, Secession CDA, Cask DOA, Noggin Floggin Barley wine 2011

Black Dawn III Coffee Stout Release 01/13/12 The New Old Lompoc 1616 NW 23rd Ave Portland, OR 97210-2502 4pm Black Dawn III is a rich, full-bodied stout with a dominating coffee presence, courtesy of more than three lbs of coffee per barrel from Ristretto Roasters Beaumont Blend, El Sa

Will a mild winter hurt this year’s ice wine crop? Weather.com The barrel-aged cocktail craze continues its popularity climb. The Daily Meal Plans to license an LSU beer seem to have fizzled...

Here’s one for you. NPR’s All Things Considered has a story on a new concept for Walgreens. It seems the newest

Last night, we had our all-staff-and-friends Ristretto holiday party. Usually, we do this at a dive bar, keep an open t

Seven friends and I pool our money every year to buy about 8 bottles of Burgundy wine, wine that we wouldn't buy individually because of the high cost and the risk of bad bottles. Every year at around this time we get together over dinner and share the wines. This year the theme of our dinner was the great vineyards and pro

I collect all the interesting links I find around the web and Google news, with the best intentions. They get dragged to my desktop, but I get busy, or am not feeling well enough to deal, and it seems like they collect, until a day like this comes along and I run out of space. Fasten your seat-belts and click away. News

On Friday the 13th, it’s only appropriate to celebrate Italy’s favorite grape, Sangiovese – which translates as ‘the Blood of Jove’. Come by the shop on Friday, January 13th, between 4:30 and 6:30 to taste five bloody good expressions of wine from Chianti and Tuscany. Joe Moura from Casa Bruno Wines will be her

By Charley Michaels God, I love and hate eating out in Portland. Would hate to run a restaurant even more. A Yelp review (names withheld): Upon entering the ambience was warm welcoming, and lively, but once we were seated it was evident that the noise level was too loud for comfort.

I was trying to delete some blog spam the other night and I got distracted (I know, so rare!) by looking through my iphoto annals. It got me to thinking, “hey! I should go through all my pictures from 2011 and pick my f

I was given an amazing birthday gift in November, an old bottle of wine by Produttori del Barbaresco, the 1959 Riserva. This is very exciting - how often does one get to drink a bottle that old? In my case, not very often. I've had a few old wines, but with the exception of a few cases, I haven't opened them myself. A more

When Nancy Hunt and Randy Goodman opened Bar A

his came to me as an e-mail, and has not been Snopesed, but it comes from the website Ghost Grey and was written by Gaetan Marie, a Brit aviation illustrator... and it just seems appropriate in the new beer year to remember that good beer has always been important to good morale... During the war, the Heneger and C

I’d like to begin this post by admitting that I am turkey-challenged. It’s the one thing that I can’t seem to have come out right, ever…until now. Yes, I devoted a whole

The Commons Brewery Taproom 1810 SE 10th Ave, Unit E Portland The tasting room entrance is on SE Stephens between SE 10/11th. Map

Think northern Italy only produces Pinot Grigio? Think again. Washington Post Sales of wines at auction are expected to drop next year, meaning 2012 might be a good time to restock the cellar....

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, if that is the holiday you celebrate this time of year. If not, happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice, Festivus, what have you. Maybe you just like to sit around in December eating a lot

Well, of the last few months anyway. There have been a few truly memorable drinks and eats in the past months that I never found a way to write about here. So I'll compile them in a best-of-the-unposted list from the last part of 2011.

12/30 – latest restaurant updates added. Once again, the definitive guide to New Year’s eve in Portland! 45 Restaurants with special events. At the bottom, five that are open New Year’s Day. Happy New

Last held in Portland in 2009, the US Barista Championships will return to Portland with a much bigger venue than before: the Oregon Convention Center. Taking place April 19-22nd, the USBC is a roundup of winners from

Grüner 527 SW 12th Avenue Portland, Oregon As much as we are trying to go to new restaurants, I am trying to post about them. We went to Grüner last month (see,

Some recipes and techniques I like to keep to myself. I have to have something to impress you with if you come over for dinner, right? But some are so simple and so great that it becomes my civic duty to share. Here is one, a new one for me - a technique for cooking babyback ribs without a smoker or a grill. Honestly, it's

12/22 Case Sale 12/22/11 Hopworks Urban Brewery 2944 SE Powell Blvd Portland 503-232-4677 Purchase a case of IPA, DOA and Stout for $36 as well as special discounts on seasonals Bike Beer Kolsch, Noggin Floggin Barleywine and Abominable Winter Ale.