September 2011 Archives

Here's an idea you're going to enjoy. Premium wine by the glass, at your favorite restaurant, that costs a lot less because it comes from (wait for it) a keg.

Cheap wine's been sold like this for decades. Premium wine, a different story altogether. (Nor is this supermarket box wine, another category that's also trying to shed its image as bottom-of-the-barrel dregs). It's wine that would retail in the high $20s, but, says Darin Williams, you won't find it on the shelf in a wine store. "It's not about the bottle."

Williams is the founder of Small Lot Co-Op, a wine sales and marketing enterprise in Woodinville that gives his 20 or so clients, all smaller-scale wineries, access to the same services (financial, administrative, merchandising, client service) as bigger outfits when it comes to their prime target: Seattle-area restaurants.

In January, Williams and Jordan Robinow (Small Lot's operations and account manager) hatched the business plan for Proletariat Wines (they'd already licensed and bonded the name). Then they called on Sean Boyd, the owner of the tiny (1,000-case) Rotie Cellars in Walla Walla, to come up with proprietary wines for their keg program. (It's not just surplus juice, like Trader Joe's Two Buck Chuck.) The result, Proletariat--a wine for the people, right?--aims for that sweet spot: a premium by-the-glass pour.

Are you a traditionalist who Insists on seeing the bottle before you order a glass? No problem. Proletariat provides restaurants with etched carafes. But that almost misses the point. With the wine in a five-gallon keg (a standard 1/6th barrel size), there's no spoilage, no waste, no barrier between the wine and the cutsomer's glass.

Expect a generous, six-ounce pour of white to cost $10, a glass of red to run $14 or $15.

Proletariat has nine wines at this point, starting with a superb sauvignon blanc from the Wahluke Slope. There's also an excellent pinot noir from Oregon's Archery Summit Vineyard, and a Bordeaux blend from four vineyards in the Walla Walla region. Daniel's Broiler liked the cabernet sauvignon so much they bought the whole lot.

Interesting times to be producing keg wines, with the economy in the tank (as it were). GQ, as it happens, recommends keg wines in this article (New Rules; it's #24).

A month or so ago, an earnest PR woman who works for Crier Communications in Los Angeles offered to send me samples of "Dr. McDougall's Right Foods Ready-to-Serve Vegan Soups," which she described as "a perfect BPA free alternative to canned soups." Manufacgtured and distributed by an outfit that promotes "natural" foods, Dr. McDougall's soups come in eight flavors of easy-open boxes and "are ideal for making tasty, nutritious lunches at work or quick, healthy family meals at home."

How could I turn down a pitch like that?

I've now eaten them all, and tasty they were. (Except the low-sodium versions, which I found rather sour; so I added salt.) Then again, after I read the ingredients, I wasn't so sure.

Filtered water, vegetables (tomatoes, onion, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, celery, bavvage, peas, green beans garlic), red kidney beans, barley, pasta (durum wheat semolina flour) natural flavors (non animal source), potato starch, yeast extract, spices, basil, organic evaporated cane juice, sea salt, marjoram.

Each box (suggested retail price $3.19) is supposed to contain two 8-ounce servings, so I guess I doubled up, or doubled down, whatever. An even 200 calories per box, almost 1,000 mg sodium, 8 grams of dietary fiber, 6 grams of protein. It's the yeast extract that gets me every time, though. It's common in processed foods as a flavor enhancer, along with every other variation of glutamate.

My very favorite soup: the vegan lentil. To which I added half a sliced kielbasa. Mmmm, sweet!

Two strands to this story. One is current, Rossella Rago's "Cooking With Nonna" website and TV show. The other is historic, involving Sicily and Garibaldi.

Garibaldi is a hero in Italy, the military commander who, in 1861, "unified" the 20 regions of Italy and helped create the modern state. He's especially beloved in Sicily, for it was a single victory at the western port city of Marsala that made his reputation.

The strands came together Sunday afternoon, when Enza Sorrentino, a native of Marsala, took the stage at the annual Festa Italiana at Seattle Center and prepared red, white and green gnocchi, the colors of the Italian flag.

Her restaurant on Queen Anne, Enza Cucina Siciliana, had come to the attention of Rossella, whose real mother and grandmother had helped her win an episode of the Food Network's "24 Hour Restaurant Battle" earlier this year. So Rossella made Enza, who has five grandchildren of her own, her honorary nonna of the day.

So there we have it: potato gnocchi rolled out, flavored and cooked in the space of half an hour.

The most remarkable thing may be that Rossella is only 23. She has poise and wit, charm and an unflappable stage presence, and, even more appealing, a profound respect for the wisdom of grandmothers everywhere. We're going to see a lot more of her.

Enza Cucina Siciliana, 2128 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle  

UPDATE: from the NYTimes, a piece suggesting Garibaldi was offered command of the Union Army in the American Civil War.

Lots of new cocktails out there, lots of new cocktail-related concoctions. It's a huge new business, catering to fussy drinkers, bored drinkers, adventurous drinkers. We've got a series of posts about this in the pipeline (as it were). Here's the first, about the most traditional American spirit of all, bourbon.

Metropolitan Grill's head bartender Rob Nokes

Didn't we just do this? (Memory plays tricks on us professional drinkers, ya know.) But yes, we did, last July.

Now a fresh crop of contenders, and a new, custom-blended bourbon from Woodford Reserve. This year's version is a little less spicy, a bit lighter-bodied, yet still oaky in the nose. The GM of downtown Seattle's prime steakhouse, Josh Anderson, exec chef Eric Hellner, and the Met's sommelier, Thomas Price, headed to Versailles, Kentucky, earlier this season and made the pick at the Woodford distillery.

"Running out of glassware!" calls the creator of Manhattan #1, a 13-year veteran behind the bar named Steve Alexander. His concoction includes Fernet Branca, Peychaud bitters, a splash of Maraschino and an orange zest, kinda like a Negroni with bourbon instead of gin. "The most Manhattan-y," says a nearby discerning journalist. "The least bourbon-y," thinks another blogger.

There's another contender among the traditionalists: head barman Rob Nokes, using the robust Woodford Reserve, Lucid absinthe, Italian vermouth and Fee Brothers Cranberry Bitters. "It's a Sazerac-style drink," says Nokes, who's been taking care of bourbon connoisseurs at The Met for two decades.

And in the end, wouldn't you know, it was the most traditional concoction that won. Bravo, Mr. Nokes! And thanks, Met Grill!

Two final observations before we stumble off into the night. First, three of the five contestants were professional bartenders, and their entries were along classic lines. Two were by Met Grill servers, and they veered severely toward the sweet side. Does this mean that servers think customers want sugary drinks? To be followed up.

Second, there are now 4.7 million bourbon barrels in the state of Kentucky, several hundred thousand more than there are actual residents in the state. The president of the Kentucky Distillers Association says there's "an explosion" of small-batch and single-barrel products. Good to know.

"Bourbon is a great value," says Met Grill GM Anderson. A premium bourbon costs less than half as much as a single-malt Scotch. The winning Manhattan No. 5 goes on sale this weekend for $14, down a buck from last year.

Metropolitan Grill, 820 2nd Avenue, Seattle, 206-624-3287

It's on Friday! The first-ever French National Festival of Gastronomy!

You'd be forgiven if you were to think, given that UNESCO has declared the French National Meal as worthy of inclusion on the roster (roaster?) of World Cultural Heritage, that someone, somewhere, might make some noise. Send out a flurry of news releases, at least.

But no, that's not the French way. First Cornichon heard about it was Tuesday, via Atout France, the French Tourist Promotion Agency's website. (And we hear about every sneeze, believe me.) At that, it was only for Burgundy. To be sure, Burgundy's an important gastronomic region, but, hey, one of many.

And sponsors? Half a dozen cabinet-level agencies (Agriculture, Tourism, Economy, Youth, etc.). Big effort, in other words. Even "Communications," which seems to have dropped its share of the ball.

Were you thinking about signing up? Too late! Registration closed two days ago.

 

We know that there's more to sandwiches than ham on rye, more than even the fanciest, shmanciest burger. (In case we forgot, the Wall Street Journal this morning had a terrific reminder of great sandwiches around the country.) The street food of Sicily, or Vietnam, even a  New Orleans po'boy: that's where the flavor is.

The sandwich in the picture? From a vendor in the Vucceria market of Palermo, Sicily. It's spleen. Like all organ meats, full of goodness.

Johsel Namkung with his 1981 photograph, "Lake Julius, North Cascades"

The current exhibit at the Gordon Woodside / John Braseth Gallery in South Lake Union, titled "Masters Behind the Lens," features works by Ansel Adams and Johsel Namkung.

Adams is represented by a framed group of six familiar black and white prints, offered at $200,000. Far more interesting are the dozen or so vivid color prints by the 92-year-old photographer Johsel Namkung, selling for $5,500 apiece. It's as good a show as one can find outside a museum; in fact, the last time these photographs were exhibited was in 2006 at the Seattle Art Museum.

Namkung is a remarkable polymath. Born in Korea to a Chinese family that converted to Christianity, he studied music in Japan. In 1940, as an apiring opera singer, he took first prize in the All-Japan Music Contest. After the war, he and his wife, Mineko, moved to Seattle, where Johsel earned a master's degree in music at the University of Washington. Because he spoke several Asian languages fluently, he was then hired by Northwest Orient Airlines, but he soon discovered photography and embarked on a series of apprenticeships with the likes of George Tsutakawa, Paul Horiuchi, Mark Tobey and Ansel Adams himself. At one point in the 1950s, during the simmering conflict between North and South Korea, the Namkungs were declared enemy aliens and slated for deportation. Mineko, for a time, worked as a kimono-clad waitress at Canlis to help pay the family's legal bills.

To support his burgeoning career as an artist, Namkuing took a position as a scientific photographer with the UW School of Medicine. A friend gave him $500 to buy a Sinar 4 x 5-inch view camera and several lenses, which he used for his nature photography for the next three decades. In his book, "Ode to the Earth" (pbulished by Cosgrove Editions in 2006) Namkung describes "the loneliness and exultation" of reaching the top of the mountain, "standing all by yourself with your camera."

The actual printmaking is done by Namkung's longtime collaborator Dick Busher, who first scans the negative into a digital file. Namkung orchestrates the balance of colors (tone, hue and density), then Busher makes a proof using a highly calibrated Epson color printer fed by a 44-inch-wide roll of cotton-based, archival paper. The process uses eight inks and takes over two hours for each print.

The results are astonishingly textured, almost painterly images, from closeups of an icicle to a telephoto frame of heather on a mountainside. They make you gasp with wonder.

The exhibit runs through October 15th and is free. Woodside/Braseth, 2101 9th Ave., 206-622-7243, www.woodsidebrasethgallery.com. Open 11 am-6 pm Tuesday-Saturday.

An informal group of Seattle restaurants was again promoting wild Alaska salmon from Bristol Bay earlier this month, with the argument that eating salmon is the best way to protect the endangered salmon runs. Similarly, eating local shellfish in the Mediterranean provides a reliable demand for the shellfish growers.

VENICE--The Mediterranean Sea -- under a million square miles, barely a mile deep -- is tiny compared to the world's great oceans. (The mighty Pacific is 65 times as vast, three times as deep.) It's as placid as a big lake, teeming with aquatic life -- 250 species of shellfish alone.

Along the Mediterranean coast of France, boats set out nightly to catch rockfish and eels for the local bouillabaisse, while oysters grow on the rocky reefs west of Marseille. Along the coast of Sicily, they go for prize swordfish, bluefin tuna, grouper, anglerfish, mullet, and sardines. Octopus and cuttlefish are everywhere. And in the northern Adriatic, where the Mediterranean dead-ends between the east coast of Italy and the west coast of Slovenia and Croatia, there's a thriving business cultivating shellfish (mussels, clams, oysters, scallops), especially in the shallow lagoons between Venice and Trieste.

With a PhD in marine biology, Trieste-based Aurelio Zentilin runs the marketing arm of a thriving shellfish cooperative and writes an entertaining blog about mollusks. Fluent in Italian and French, he also hosts a YouTube series titled "Mollusk TV" that provides down-to-earth advice on selecting and cooking shellfish. Restaurant professionals regularly invite him to their gatherings, where he willingly shares his expertise and his recipes.

So let's start, as does Zentilin, at the retail fish markets of the Adriatic. The most active is in Venice: The Pescharia (officially known as il Mercato del Pesce al Minuto) on the Grand Canal, which has sheltered dozens of fishmongers in a red brick hangar alongside the Rialto bridge for centuries. If you find tourists here, they're snapping pictures of Venetians buying dinner. Caught in the surrounding waters: Squid, sardines, sea snails, and those shrimp-like creatures called canoce that Cornichon wrote about earlier in the year.

Where to go for the freshest shellfish? We told you about one spot, the Antiche Carampane, this summer. Here's another: the Osteria ai 40 Ladroni (40 Thieves), on a quiet canal of the Cannaregio. To get there, you first cross the Campo del Ghetto. That would be the original Ghetto, or slag-heap, considered the least desirable spot to live in Venice, all bright and shiny these days with a Jewish museum. Keep going. The spot you're headed for, on the Fondamenta della Sensa, is sought-after by locals because it's well outside the San Marco-Rialto-Academmia tourist triangle and serves dazzlingly fresh seafood.

Pay no heed to the tourist comments on TripAdvisor and similar sites. They'll never be happy unless it's cheap and deep-fried; the worthwhile comments are in Italian ("A chi piace il pesce e la cucina casalinga questo è un posto assolutamente da provare, noi non vediamo l'ora di ritornare!" which translates to, "If you like home cooking this is a spot you must try; we can't wait to return.") Shrimp with polenta, a perfect scallop in its shell, calamari, a sublime cod fritter, the sweetest razor clams imaginable. Not a tourist trap, for sure.

And one more spot, Zentilin's own favorite spot, Terra e Laguna. It's in Aquileia, a Roman crossroads that was once the second most important port in Italy. (Pope Benedict XVI stopped by to celebrate Mass in Aquileia's historic basilica six months ago.) Local white wines -- Riesling, Pinot Grigio -- are served slightly frizzante (tingling), as is customary. The clams and scallops are served raw; even the branzino from local waters comes out sashimi-style, dressed only with strawberries. Risotto with mussels and black rice is served cold.

The Adriatic, by the way, is the same temperature as Puget Sound, and a single mature mussel, Zentilin reminds me, filters 21 liters of 14-degree water a day -- over five gallons. Farmed shellfish, he's convinced, are the key to healthy waters, since they eat the same thing as shellfish in the wild. Compare that to farmed fin-fish, whose feed has to be imported, and whose waste has to be disposed of. And Zentilin's shellfish cooperative has the full support of the local government.

"There's a mutually beneficial relationship here between our shellfish industry and tourism," he says. Not American tourists, necessarily, but Germans above all. It's just a 300-mile hop across the Alps from Munich to the warm-water playground of the Adriatic, and Germans love mollusks.

Osteria Ai 40 Ladroni, Cannaregio 3253 (Fondamenta della Sensa), Venice, Italy (39) 041 715736
Terra e Laguna, via Minut 1, Aquileia, Italy (39) 0431 919444

Allegrini's Palazzo della Torre outside Verona

As it happens, we saw this "passito" technique used in Emilia Romagna when we visited Italy's Colli Piacentini in the fall of 2008. Here's what the grapes looked like, on the right.

You could think of the Allegrini wine, which retails for about $20 in Washington, as a "Baby Amarone." But it's a serious bottle on its own, as the winery's Marilisa Allegrini demonstrated at a culinary event this week. It was called "Cookoff for a Cause," and featured three chefs competing for their favorite charity.

• Sabrina Tinsley of La Spiga (where the event was held) prepared a duck breast stuffed with prosciutto and Parmigianno-Reggiano.


• Emran Chowdhury of Cantinetta wowed the guests (well, me, especially) with his braised oxtail and ethereal ricotta gnudi (dumplings).


• Mauirizio Milazzo of Barolo won the top prize ($5,000, for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) with a rabbit meatball braised in red wine.

Chowdhury, Allegrini, Milaszzo, Tinsley

More pictures, including the dishes, in the album. Thanks to Joe Kennedy for the camera!

Above, the view from Salty's. Below, Chef Alvin Binuya of Ponti, Bibbi Gignilliat, "Blend" blending session, tomatoes.

Back to school, back to work, back to the kitchen, yes indeed. But who said it had to be your own kitchen?

First up, on Tuesday, Sept. 13th, is "Cooking With Class," an annual fund-raising event for senior and community services. Some 20 top local chefs (among them, Eric Banh, Alvin Binuya, John & Brian of Skillet Diner, Jim Drohman, Wayne Johnson, Phlippe Thomelin) set themselves up at mini-kitchen stations in the lower level banquet room of Salty's on Alki, with a plendid view of the Seattle skyline. Each chef does a cooking demo for the guests at his table (they're all guys this year). Eat, shuffle to another table, repeat. And again. Three demos, three plates, virtually unlimited wine tasting from a score of participating wineries, $120. To register, click this link or call Connie Adams at 206-283-9067.

"Parties that Cook" is the name Bibbi Gignilliat came up with, in 1999, for her hands-on, team-building activities, in private homes and professional kitchens. Her company now runs events up and down the Pacific Coast. No kitchen? No problem, Gignilliat's teams will bring one into your space. The next event is "Sizzle & Swirl," a cooking class and wine tasting at the Wine Outlet in Lower Queen Anne (946 Elliott Ave. W.) on Saturday, Sept. 17th at 6 PM. Tickets are $95. For menu details and registration, click this link.\

Also on Saturday, from 1 to 5, at Cedarbrook Lodge near SeaTac (18525 36th Avenue S.), there's a celebration of Eastern Washington heirloom tomatoes,called TomatoFare West, featuring cuisine from local chefs, sips from local wineries and breweries, and live musical entertainment. Details and tickets (a modest $25 in advance, $35 at the door) by following this link.

Finally, from 4 to 7 PM on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 18th, at the Bell Harbor Conference Center (Pier 66, 2211 Alaskan Way), an event called "Blend." (It's dedicated to Washington's most popular wines, blends.) Selections from more than 40 producers, paired with gourmet cuisine from the kitchens of Columbia Hospitality Company's various properties around the region, including the Inn at Langley and Tendrils at the Cave B resort. Tickets cost $59 and benefit the Washington Wine Industry Foundation. For reservations, follow this link.

KELOWNA, B.C.--It needs to be said, from time to time: It isn't heat that ripens grapes, it's light. The engine that powers plants isn't hot air, but photosynthesis.

And so it is that the best wine-growing country in North America could well turn out to be the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, where long hours of the most intense sunlight in North America (during the growing season) provide ripening power for classic grape varieties. At 50 degrees N, it's at the same latitude as the heart of Germany's Rheingau, and even further north than Champagne -- a freakish accident in the crumpled geology of the Cascades that created a unique string of protected valleys from Vernon (at the northern end of Lake Okanagan) 100 miles south to Osoyoos on the US border.

I first traveled to the Okanagan 30 years ago, when there were barely a dozen wineries, most making wine from cultivars and hybrids, to research my Northwest Wine Country series of guidebooks. At the time I came to the reluctant conclusion that the quality of the wines did not merit their inclusion in the book. But after the transition to vinifera grapes 20 years ago, the situation has changed markedly, and this year I accepted the offer of the Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association and the Okanagan Wine Festivals Society to return.

What I found was not unlike Oregon and Washington's wine country in the 1980s: Great enthusiasm on the part of the winemakers, and pride in the potential of a growing industry. On the American side of the border, wine enthusiasts of the '80s would bemoan the lack of facilities (hotels, resorts, restaurants) dedicated to tourism ("The Yakima Valley is maybe 25 years behind Napa," they would say.) But here in the Okanagan, the tourism infrastructure is already in place; if anything, vineyards must compete with vacation homes for the most desirable bench lands. And the wines -- bright Rieslings, elegant Pinot Noirs, rich Syrahs -- show high levels of technical accomplishment.

In Vancouver, Brian Storen, Canada's 2005 sommelier of the year (and poet laureate of the Kingdom of Bacchus), waxes lyrical about Okanagan wines. He is probably the only person to use the terms "sweaty bovine," "post-coital," and "necrotic" in the same sentence to discuss a wine, and he does it with the ease of arpeggios falling from Mozart's fingers. (That was in reference to a Malbec from Kettle Valley Vineyards). Talking about BC wines in general, Storen riffs in another dimension -- a whirlwind of free-association, Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Blake, and Jack Kerouac all at once: "earth, bramble and spice olfactory escalator's ascendance into gossamer strands of first crushed carnations then blackberry and melted purple crayon sylphs riding bareback through a heaving pack of saddle-mounted black currant." (Take that, Robert Parker!)

The word Okanagan means "meeting place" in the local Salish dialect. Halfway along the eastern shore of Okanagan Lake sits the region's biggest city Kelowna (pop. 100,000) with a spiffy international airport that's midway between Calgary and Vancouver. What used to be a sleepy valley dotted with motor courts that happened to grow juicy apricots is now all lakefront condos and glitzy resorts, vying with 10,000 acres of vineyards and dozens of "destination" wineries featuring gourmet dining.

It's a transformation that has taken place virtually overnight. The provincial tourism ministry has pounced on the phenomenal growth of tourism, pouring money into promotion of the Okanagan. The wine tourism industry itself has mounted the Okanagan Wine Festivals Society, which now involves over 100 wineries in four seasonal promotions that will produce 160 individual events this fall alone. Examples include "Pop Goes the Cork," "Battle of the Benches," and "All You Need is Cheese (and Wine)," in addition to bicycle races and mixology contests. To counter what might be termed tourism malaise, the Festivals Society has created sponsorship and partnership opportunities with local hotels, restaurants, banks, and transportation companies.

Still, if not for NAFTA, Okanagan would still be a minor player in the world of wine. After the trade act was passed in 1988, Canada could no longer put up trade barriers to protect its domestic products -- including wine. The modest-to-inferior wines produced from hybrid grapes were no match for California's Chardonnays and Merlots. Canadian winemakers needed a change. But how fast could the Okanagan come up with vinifera grapes and how good would the wines be?

Enter Howard Soon. Soon, a Vancouver native, trained as a biochemist and worked for the Labatt Brewing Company for five years before moving to the Okanagan in 1980 and switching to wine. Working closely with the vineyard owners and managers, he played a leading role in the changeover to vinifera grapes, and, for the past 15 years, has been the master winemaker for a prestigious group that includes Sandhill -- Canada's 2009 winery of the year -- and Andrew Peller Ltd.

After growers pulled out their hybrids and labruscas in a government-subsidized renovation program in the late 1980s, the industry was down to 800 acres. "It was a steep learning curve," says Soon. "What works in France, Italy, California, and New Zealand doesn't necessarily work here." Fortunately, there was already a well-equipped agricultural research station on hand, at Summerland, funded by a $10 per ton assessment on BC grapes. Within 20 years, vineyard acreage had grown to 11,000 acres.

Soon makes some of his best wine from grapes grown on the spectacular 43-acre King Family Vineyard on the Naramata Bench. Brothers Don and Rod King use a remarkable trellis system developed in southern Oregon by Scott Henry -- an aeronautical engineer who 40 years ago turned his family's bottom land on the Umpqua River into a pioneering vineyard. Henry's trellising system, which increases light exposure on the leaves and fruit, and literally doubles yields per vine without sacrificing quality, is known worldwide as the Double Scott Henry.

"You can't do this on lighter soils," says Don King, "but we plant 680 vines per acre here instead of 1,400 and get yields of 8 to 9 tons per acre instead of 4 tons." The downside of the system is that it's labor-intensive, requiring eight passes by vineyard crews in the course of a growing season.

Like any "emerging" region, the Okanagan has its pioneers, and since it's a young industry, the pioneers are still around, still active.

The most influential figure in British Columbia's ascendance is Harry McWatters who, 30 years ago this summer, founded Sumac Ridge in Summerland, on an east-facing bluff overlooking Lake Okanagan. He'd been director of marketing for Casabello, an outfit known in Canada as a "Commercial Winery," and when the Province created a new category -- "Estate Winery" -- McWatters and his business partner Lloyd Schmidt snagged the first license. The principal requirements: At least 20 acres of vineyards and wine made from your own grapes. McWatters wasn't the wine maker, he was the business man who led Sumac Ridge through a number of firsts -- among them the first bottle-fermented sparkling wine in Canada (Stellar's Jay Brut, in 1987).

Still, McWatters is even better known as the instigator of the Vintners Quality Alliance. Simultaneously an industry group and a standard of quality, the VQA began as a voluntary declaration of quality. Now it's an official designation on a bottle of wine certifying that the grapes are from British Columbia and that the wine has passed a blind taste test, like the AOC wines of France.

The closest thing British Columbia has to a wine superstar is Anthony von Mandl. Born in Canada to European parents, von Mandl attended schools in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. Armed with an economics degree from the University of British Columbia, he apprenticed in the wine trade and, at age 22, launched his own wine import company -- Marc Antony. Resoundingly successful as a merchant, von Mandl proceeded to purchase Mission Hill. In the midst of the 1992 harvest, he hired New Zealander John Simes, as wine maker. One of the first wine Simes produced, labelled Mission Hill Grand Reserve Chardonnay, won the Avery Trophy for the Best Chardonnay at the International Wine & Spirit Competition.

"Until we won the Avery Trophy, no one believed in the Okanagan," von Mandl told me one sunny afternoon last month on the terrace of his winery's award-winning restaurant. The lack of respect, the surprise that such wine could come from an unknown region, "It was like Australia, the same thing as California before 1976."

Today, Mission Hill owns about 1,000 acres and makes two and a half million bottles of wine a year.

Von Mandl remains an imaginative businessman; he is, among other things, the founder of Mike's Hard Lemonade, which moved its offices from Colorado to Pioneer Square in 2005. He was also named the first Canadian to chair the International Wine & Spirit Competition.

On Mission Hill's board of directors we find Allen Shoup, longtime CEO of Chateau Ste. Michelle and champion of the Columbia Valley, now a pioneer in international collaboration. Shoup says the Okanagan has exciting potential but a big problem:"It will be a very limited region as there is very little available vineyard land and the best sites also have huge residential demand."

Indeed the road to Mission Hill, mixes new, upscale housing developments and vineyards to a startling degree. The campus itself (designed by Seattle architect Tom Kundig) is a showpiece, like an Italian village square or cloister, with a 12-story campanile (bell tower), colonnaded loggia overlooking the lake, terrace restaurant (more columns), amphitheater, and a church-like space that houses a tapestry by Matisse. The winery's barrels are housed underground. The restaurant, with stunning lake and vineyard views, was named one of the world's six top "winery restaurants" by Travel & Leisure.

Rhys Pender, an Australian Master of Wine with a consulting business among the Okanagan's wineries, advises his clients, "Don't aim for the middle. Aim high."

Comparing Okanagan wines today to Washington makes the same (misguided) assumptions that governed the Washington-to-California comparisons two decades ago, or California-to-France two decades before that. The vineyards are still young, the vines immature, the growers and winemakers inexperienced.

If there's one thing we've learned, it's that vineyards, vines, and winemakers continue to grow and mature. "Wine quality in the Okanagan will continue to improve with increased knowledge, clone selection, and age of vines," says Allen Shoup, who led Chateau Ste. Michelle through its period of adolescence to maturity. "What they have in the Okanagan is unique. And Anthony von Mandl's vision and aesthetic tastes have all but assured the region a charmed future."

If you go: The harvest-season Okanagan Wine Festival takes place September 29th through October 9th. For more information, visit www.thewinefestivals.com. It's a six-hour, 300-mile drive from Seattle to the Okanagan wine country. Horizon Air has two non-stop flights a day from Seattle to Kelowna.

A century ago, the yellow house at the corner of 17th and Galer, a block from the northeast corner of Capitol Hill's Volunteer Park, housed a small general store, the sort of corner shop relied upon in cities around the world for last-minute staples. Ericka Burke and her business partner Heather Earnhardt took over the space almost five years ago from a restaurant known as Cafe Europa and continued to run it as a cafe, selling pastries and such alongside a few prepared fodostuffs, and expanded into a full-service restaurant called the Volunteer Park Cafe with the motto "Always Fresh Goodness." A popular restaurant, not surprisingly, given Burke's talents as a chef, but its very success gave rise to a classic Seattle phenomenon, Not In My Back Yard. Literally.

VPC had a small back yard of its own, and last year put in a brick patio to provide a bit of outdoor seating and a couple of chicken coops. Not so fast, said neighbor Paul Jones. He complained to the Seattle Department of Planning & Development that using the garden around the corner from his house as a restaurant hadn't been authorized. Not only that, he pointed out, the property's original, 1904 license was limited to operations as a grocery store. DPD agreed and slapped the restaurant with a violation.

There followed a year of wrangling and fingerpointing, of claims that the patio would "double" VPC's business (denied by Burke, who said the kitchen was already running at capacity), create unbearable traffic problems, that cooking odors would permeate the neighborhood, that garbage would pile up. The offended neighbors launched a blog (of course!) featuring a photo of a dead rat said to be found in VPC's back yard. While the unhappy neighbors claimed they had started as friends and supporters of VPC, they were "offended" by the fact that the business wasn't operating legally, wasn't covered by so much as a conditional use permit.

The determination, released last week by DPD hearing examiner Scott Kemp, allows VPC to stay in business by meeting a number of conditions which have the effect of reducing VPC's use as an outdoor cafe.

Burke and Earnhardt have retreated from plans to prepare Sunday suppers on a backyard barbecue, agreed to put signs on their garden that specify "no restaurant use," and to build out an expensive new venting system for the kitchen. What the angry neighbors called "illegal" expansion has thus been halted, though the business owners would probably prefer to call it a proposed expansion pending a permit.

The chicken coop? Funny thing, that's a perfectly legal use in a single-family residential zone. No problem in Seattle back yards, says the DPD.

Volunteer Park Cafe, 1501 17th Ave. E., Seattle, 206-328-3155