Wine-ing and Dining at The Grape Winemaker Dinner
Mike Richmond and Eric Swindle (left); Bouchaine Estate Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Bouche d'Or Late Harvest (right)
Mike Richmond, an Oak Cliff native, speaks romantically about wine. He’s the general manager of Bouchaine Vineyards, a winery tucked into the hills of southern Napa Valley near San Francisco. While the sun set over Greenville Avenue on Tuesday evening, Mike was kind enough to share his love for wine at The Grape, where Brian Luscher’s cuisine and Bouchaine Vineyard’s wines sang harmoniously together for the Winemaker Dinner I was invited to.
Jump for some mouth-watering courses.
Amuse bouche (blue cheese, parmesan shortbread, and grapes)
“Winemaking is a combination of happenstance, luck, and religion,” said Richmond. It’s funny, but the story of how he became the general manager of Bouchaine Vineyards also happened along those same lines. It started when Richmond, in his younger years, took two years off to go on a bicycle tour of the United States. During that time, he picked grapes and soaked in the magic of winemaking. That path has led him to work on a family-owned winery dedicated to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and to this day, Richmond is still head-over-heels in love with these elixirs.
“My goal is to make a compelling wine – where it’s like a novel that you just got to read the next page – and a wine that is interesting.”
Littleneck clams & chef's chorizo with green garlic, caramelized lemon, and Italian parsley
Richmond told me that Chef Brian Luscher of The Grape has one of the finest palates he’s ever had the pleasure of working with. Luscher expertly uses wine to bridge the gap between different elements in his dishes; for instance, he paired the Bouchaine Estate Chardonnay (2009) with the littleneck clams and chorizo on Tuesday. The buzzy feel of the Chardonnay worked well with the lemon and parsley in Luscher’s first course, bringing out the a level of acidity that you wouldn’t have tasted with just a plain glass of water.
Crispy duck confit with pepper sausage, TX shiitake, favas, fiddle heads, and German butterball potatoes
According to Richmond, “The richness of duck and Pinot is legend.” It’s too bad that I ignored most of the duck while I savored the crispy fiddle heads and drank deeply from my glass of Bouchaine Pinot Noir (2008). Something about the creamy sauce at the bottom (combined with the favas, shiitake mushrooms, and butterball potatoes) made my patio dining a leisurely experience.
Roasted pear tartlette with sweet onion jam and cave aged blue cheese, toasted hazelnuts, and buttermilk sorbet
I stuck around much longer than I anticipated at this media dinner, even after I finished off the pear tartlette and buttermilk sorbet dessert course. Usually, I am off and running after one of these things, eager to sprint home. But, I tell you, I fell in love with the the Bouchaine Bouche d’Or Late Harvest (2010). It was totally unexpected, too; I’m not as crazy about wine as Hayley and Andrew. Richmond told me that the grapes in this wine were picked late, so they were ripened well enough to create a concentrated amount of sugar. Writing about this wine reminds me: I must email Eric Swindle, the North Texas Sales Manager, so I can get my hands on a bottle of the Bouche d’Or Late Harvest.
If you are hankering to get over to The Grape, they have a Come-As-You-Are Wine Dinner every month. It’s three courses paired with three wines for $48 per person. The brunch there is also worth checking out; they did, after all, win one of our Best Brunches award this year.
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