M AT C H M A K E R S
••• Alderbrook Resort & Spa alderbrookresort.com. 10 E. Alderbrook Drive, Union, WA 98592 360-898-2200
tasty exploration. One of the closest trips, to Mosquito Fleet in Belfair, is just 15 minutes by car. “We have a real appreciation for what Alderbrook is doing for our area with its food and its wine,” said Mosquito Fleet winemaker Brian Petersen. “They’ve been a real big promoter and supporter of ours from the beginning.” There’s been no shortage of culinary talent at Alderbrook since the Raikes took over, and the list includes Chris Schwarz, now corporate executive chef at Tom Douglas Restaurants, and former El Gaucho chef Tristan Holst. Sautter learned from both of them at Alderbrook after arriving from Olympia’s Basilico Ristorante in 2005. “I started cooking in Colorado, where I was born and raised,” Sautter said. “I was a dishwasher at the time, and I saw the chefs with their chef hats and I told the chef, ‘I want one of those hats.’ So he taught me how to cook and it became a passion. It was the one thing in my life that I was good at.” His resume of “everything from Olive Garden to Wendy’s” includes formal training at Le Cordon Bleu in Scottsdale, Ariz. He spent several years at Thaifoon and The Tack Room in Tucson before Crystal, whom he met in culinary school, lured him to the Olympic Peninsula. “Chef Sautter does a great job focusing on Northwest fair and local wine pairings, and the staff is extremely accommodating and gracious,” Johnson said. “Simply said, it is one of our favorite getaways in the Pacific Northwest.” For the Match Maker assignment, Sautter first played upon the regional theme for pairing his Crab Trio Pappardelle with the Walter Dacon Wines 2011 Skookum White. “When I tasted the Skookum White, I tasted a lot of sweetness and a nice citrus aspect to it, so I knew it needed to W I N E P R E S S N W. C O M
be with some seafood and it would need some spice,” Sautter said. “There’s a little bit of butter and richness to balance the sweetness. It’s a favorite of a lot of people that come to the restaurant.” Mosquito Fleet’s Syrah-based 2010 Sophia made an ideal foil for Sautter’s Veal Chop with Sauteed Sugar Peas, Sunchoke Farro Hash and Porcini Ragout. “That was a pretty bold wine with a lot of strong flavors up front, so I didn’t want to do anything real heavy like lamb or a regular steak,” Sautter said. “I figured our 14-ounce veal chop from Willamette Valley Farms would be perfect.” Despite the spot-on food pairings one would expect in a four-star, metropolitan restaurant, there’s a unique feel to this dining room surrounded by a yearround resort. “People come down in the pajamas; they come down in their bathrobes because of the spa,” Messmer said with a smile. “And people come down dressed to the nine ready to start their business meeting. We cater to everybody.” It’s also explains why Messmer and his team don’t bother with ties or vests on the floor. “We’ve left it a little more casual than what you would expect at a restaurant that has our wine list and our menu because we don’t want the people who are dressing down to feel uncomfortable,” he said. That suits Alderbrook’s stated goal of “family, food and fun in an unpretentious, high style heavily influenced by nature and its bounty.” And before leaving, stroll to the shoreline and drop one of those Hood Canal skipping stones in your pocket for either a memento or the promise to toss it return it to the water someday. ! E R I C D E G E R M A N is co-owner of Great Northwest Wine,
a news and information website. For more information, go to www.greatnorthwestwine.com. C H A R I T Y LY N N E is a photographer based out of Seattle, Wash. You can find her online at charitylynne.com.
WINE Walter Dacon Wines, $19 2011 Skookum White, Columbia Valley — 500 cases, 13.2% alcohol Hood Canal might not seem to be a natural setting for a winery in Washington state, but Skookum Inlet has turned into a port of call for Syrah devotees — thanks to Lloyd and Ann Anderson of Walter Dacon Wines. This year marked the 10th anniversary of Walter Dacon, named as a tribute to Lloyd’s grandfather. The tasting room south of Shelton opened in 2005 with wines from the 2003 vintage, and Anderson quickly made his mark with red Rhône grape, producing three cuvées that achieved international acclaim. All totaled, Walter Dacon bottles five Syrahs and a Syrah-based red blend to account for the lion’s share of its annual 2,000 case production. “We carry three of their magnificent Syrahs,” said Max Messmer, director of food and beverage at Alderbrook Resort & Spa. However, there’s more behind Walter Dacon than Syrah and the Andersons’ antique tasting bar, a circa World War I circulation desk from the Fremont Library in Seattle. In the past, the Andersons bottled Roussanne and Viognier — two white Rhône varieties. The problematic vintage of 2011 forced them to take a different tack, so Pinot Gris became Walter Dacon’s only white production. They sell it as Skookum White, borrowing the Chinook tribe’s ubiquitous reference for excellence. “We had a lot of support for our Viognier, which we made just a bit off-dry, but we stopped making it after 2010 when our source back then couldn’t get it to ripen in 2011,” Lloyd said. “So we went in a different direction with Pinot Grigio and have had a lot of support for that, too.” They produce it in a slightly off-dry fashion, leaving 1 percent residual sugar, which makes for a “skookum” pairing with delicacies from the Salish Sea. Walter Dacon recently sold through the 2011 and did not produce a 2012 Skookum White, but its 2013 vintage from Two Gun Vineyard in the Ancient Lakes of Columbia Valley will be released in early 2014. That site is at the core of several award-winning whites from Jones of Washington — Wine Press Northwest’s 2013 Washington Winery of the Year. * Walter Dacon Wines, 50 S.E. Skookum Inlet Road, Shelton, WA 98584, 360-4265913, WalterDaconWines.com
WINTER 2013 / 2014 • WINE PRESS NORTHWEST
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