EUGENE, Ore. — Like most everyone else, I always looked at winery visits as a way to discover new wines, not to discover new foods. Everyone knows the drill. You get a map off the Internet and do a circuit of about four wineries, trying not to open your wallet for every new bottle you fall in love with.
You also hold tastings to a few sips and don’t do what my tipsy lady friend did after we visited three wineries in New Zealand. She forgot Kiwis drive on the left side, tried passing a car on the right as he turned right and T-boned the guy — who just happened to be the bartender at our last winery.
The way we could’ve avoided me going to a nearby farmhouse and calling the police — and her sweating out a negative sobriety test — was sticking around for a winery meal.
You never think a place specializing in wine would specialize in food. Maintaining a winery is like keeping a 1,000-acre train of dominoes upright. One slight misstep, and everything collapses.
How can a winery do two things that well?
Yet I’ve never been disappointed eating at a winery. Maybe it’s because sipping wine in beautiful surroundings makes any food taste better. One time after drinking a nice Cotes de Provence at a winery near Saint-Tropez, I had a weird craving for Carl’s Jr.
In reality, people who know wine know food. The art of wine and food pairings is as big a science as growing vines itself. Last year at Mayo Family Winery in Sonoma County, the vintner paired seven small dishes with the perfect corresponding wine.
It’s why antipasti became as tied to wine as wooden corks. In Verona, Italy, site of the world’s largest public wine fair, VinItaly, the Austrian booth served Eiswein with just the right slices of salami.
Being served by a stunning blond in traditional Austrian garb didn’t hurt the atmosphere, either.
Royal hometown
There are no Heidis in Oregon, but the King Estate winery in my hometown of Eugene could pass for any palace in France. My home state has been a major target for wine buffs since pinot noir made it famous in the ’80s.
Then the 2004 movie “Sideways” made pinot noir famous (“It can only grow in these really specific, little, tucked- away corners of the world.” — Miles Raymond.) and Oregon wine went nuclear.
I’ve been to wineries all over my state, but King Estate, located on the rural southwest rim of Eugene, is Oregon’s largest wine producer. To reach it, I drove up a hill on a long narrow road lined by vineyards, flower gardens, plum trees and blueberry bushes. On top stood a massive building modeled after a European chateau.
King Estate produces 245,000 cases a year, about 3.8 million fewer than Kendall Jackson in California. Translated that means King Estate doesn’t put out the mass-produced swill Kendall Jackson serves as the house wine for every dive bar in America.
Pinot noir may be the star of Oregon wine, but at King Estate the king grape is the Pinot Gris. I took a glass of its best, a 2008 Domaine, and took it out on a terrace down a concrete walking path from the tasting room.
It was the best pinot gris of my life. Or maybe it was just sitting outside on a sunny, crisp Oregon spring day, looking out over 470 acres of organic vineyards, a forest of Douglas firs and the snowcapped Cascade Range beyond. In that setting, maybe even Kendall Jackson would taste good.
It didn’t just make me feel melancholy about my childhood home. It made me ravenous. Instead of driving back into town, I took the advice from the bartender, salivating while describing the winery menu.
Opened in 1991 by Ed King III, a transplanted Kansan who got his MBA at the University of Oregon, King Estate not only has 470 acres of organic vineyards but 30 acres of fruits, vegetables and flowers. Nearly everything on the menu, not including seafood, is from within a grape toss of the intimate dining rooms.
The menu is something out of a Pacific Northwest Michelin restaurant guide: smoked Willamette Valley veal chop with roasted asparagus, confit oyster mushrooms, pearl onions and mustard veal jus; slow-cooked Northwest salmon with red wine, pancetta and roasted beet risotto; barbecued quail.
No wonder. The chef isn’t the owner’s wife. He’s a 1988 graduate of the famous Culinary Institute of America. Michael Landsberg came to King Estate after working at four Michelin-rated restaurants in Europe, including the three-star Au Crocodile in Strasbourg, France.
I had the Oregon Dungeness crab cakes for $12, served with cucumber, celeriac, grapefruit, pickled mustard seeds and lemon-basil coulis. I followed that with the Knee Deep Ranch Filet of Beef for $32. From beef raised at Knee Deep Cattle Ranch 2 miles down the road, it’s served with mushroom soffrito and potato mousseline, a small, whipped potato that looks like a biscuit.
Oh, yes. The bottle of Domaine Pinot Gris was good, too.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
IF YOU GO:
King Estate, 80854 Territorial Road, Eugene, OR 97405; 800-884-4441;
