Around Truth Central, we love to pull back a bit and observe food and beverage trend lines. Remember, back in the day (hey, where did THAT phrase come from?), when you went out to eat and you ordered and your food came to you from … the kitchen?
Not … any … more.
Today, it’s all “farm to table.” As if (ahem) the kitchen didn’t even exist.
But (there’s always the “but”), if you put the kitchen on the farm, and the tables, too, it’s problem solved.
Boy, has Naked Winery got its Club Naked members (and special guest) covered with our own authentic slightly rebranded Farm to Fork feast — Get Fresh! on Saturday, July 25, at the Ingenuity Innovation Center in St. Helens, down along the gorgeous lower Columbia River.
With wine, of course.
According to Club Naked manager Lara Friesen, the greens for the event will come from the aquaponic green houses at the Innovation Center. Pair that up with fresh fish and tri-tip from the grill, and it’s game on.
Diners will be eating outside, listening to “fun and funky jazz” by Julie Amici Trio.
When diners aren’t noshing or sipping Naked’s finest, they can get social (and recreational) herding cows, pitching forks and competitively eating corn on the cob.
The fun starts at 4:30 p.m., and a seat at the table (and farm) is $50 per person.
Get your Club Naked membership and reserve your seats (and forks) by e-mail: lara@nakedwinery.com
Now, go to our facebook page and tell us your favorite variation on the “farm to table” concept. How about “field to flatware” or … ?
Rough design of the launch vehicle and wing assembly for the Flying Outdoor Winos entry in Flugtag 2015, Aug. 1, in Portland.
When pigs — and narwhals, beer cans, pterodactyls, pugs and God-knows-whats — decide to fly, the boys and girls of Outdoor Wino will be there to join them.
Mark your calendars for Aug. 1, 2015, when four pushers from the Flying Outdoor Winos launch pilot Alaina Waller into the air above the Willamette River — and hope she and her aero-foil don’t drop like a stone.
Thousands of spectators are sure to be on hand for the 2015 edition of Red Bull’s Flugtag event. It all goes up — and down — at Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland, near the Riverplace development.
“We’re going for flight distance over creativity,” says Waller, Naked’s assistant winemaker.
Waller got Naked Winery — and its Outdoor Wino brand — interested in entering when she learned last year that Flugtag was returning to Portland after previous visits in 2004 and 2008.
She posed the idea of an Outdoor Wino entry, and as befits the Naked ethos, a team of fun-loving, adventurous, outdoorsy thrill-seekers quickly coalesced.
Club Naked colleagues Lara Friesen and Chris Garvey recruited warehouse hero Cale Rice and winery friend Asit Rathod to make the dream come true.
Garvey, who manages club activities out of our McMinnville store, has been leading construction efforts.
“It’s being built all over, in Portland, McMinnville, we work on it where we can,” Garvey says.
He offered a high-five to Jason Reed, who works next to the McMinnville tasting room at Oregon Stationers, for letting Outdoor Wino’s team share tools and a cooperative woodworking space.
Each of the 45 Flugtag teams — selected from over 500 entries — strives for a mix of creativity, flight distance and showmanship. Judges select winners based on all three factors.
Waller is hoping to go the distance. Four costumed team members push a cart bearing the glider and pilot off the lip of a platform 28 feet above the water. The goal is for the glider to glide. The best effort ever, by the Chicken Whisperers in 2013, landed 258 feet from launch.
“We can always shoot for 259,” Waller says. “I just don’t want to nose dive.”
She’ll only get one chance to find out. Because these are craft designed to land on the forgiving surface of water, practice flights aren’t logical or advisable.
Take a look at the blooper reel, and you can see why. More than a few entrants collapse at the base of the launch platform.
Because of the inherent risks, the event and its organizers put a premium on safety.
“There’s so much risk management,” Waller says. “They inspect all the designs, and if you nose dive, the pilot has to be able to push themselves away.”
Garvey is confident that the Outdoor Wino entry will prevail. He’s done his homework.
“It’s an air foil patterned after a design that is supposed to give low speed and high loft,” Garvey says. “I read everything I could on designing wings, and watched untold hours of video. No shit, I read so much I feel like I could build an airplane right now.”
He and Rathod consulted people who have actual aeronautical engineering talent.
“Everybody we have talked to has offered small tweaks,” Garvey says.
The rules limit flying rigs to 28 feet wide, 20 feet long, 10 feet high and no more than 400 pounds with the pilot included.
Waller is going to wear a wine bottle costume, and the Outdoor Wino pushers will wear grape cluster costumes prepared by Club Naked member Melissa Dye.
Waller says each team gets 30 seconds to perform a skit — against the backdrop of Rhymefest singing “Build Me Up Buttercup” — then 30 seconds to launch its aircraft.
“I can’t be nervous,” Waller says. “I think they’ll have enough energy drink on hand to keep me from being nervous.”
Really? Event managers allow no drinking by competitors before launch, but when it comes to blunting nerves, a can of Red Bull is the last thing we reach for, and Outdoor Vino the first.
* * *
If you want to follow the progress of the Outdoor Wino entry, check out the photo trail on its Facebook page.
Blaine Franger captured a batch of awesome lightning photos during the huge storm that hit Hood River in the early morning of June 29.
Hood River photographer Blaine Franger got busy with his camera a week ago, when a thunderous lightning storm settled over the central Columbia River Gorge.
Many of the area’s residents slept through the rumble and the tumble, but Blaine got after it. Thanks, Blaine, for permission to share this image with readers of The Naked Truth. What a marvelous shot, lightning as a mirror image.
Lindsey Ewald is in her first year of taking visitors to the Hood River tasting room on tours of wines from Naked Winery.
Lindsey Ewald’s roots run deep in the Hood River Valley, so it figures that she — for now, at least — would find her way home after rambles that took her briefly to the farthest corner of the Pacific Ocean.
Now in her first year behind the bar of Naked Winery’s Hood River tasting room, Lindsey is glad to be juggling wine-pouring duties with time helping her fourth-generation fruit-growing family and running a business making party cakes of all sizes.
After Ewald earned her college degree in communications from Arizona State — where she was a member of the waterski team — she and a friend took a break to teach English in the Kingdom of Tonga in the southern Pacific Ocean.
Distance makes the heart grow lonely.
“It was good for the time that I was there, but I wanted to get back,” she says.
Her time away from the valley included a brief stint at Oregon State University, where she met James Nygren, a pitcher with the Beavers’ stellar baseball squad.
Now, while Lindsey plucks pears, pours pinot noir and bakes cup and wedding cakes, Nygren toils with the pitching corps for the New Orleans Zephyrs triple-A ball club.
For the last three years, she has operated Frosted, making cupcakes and larger treats for weddings, birthday parties and baby showers.
She says it’s difficult with her boyfriend living so far away, but plans a trip south this summer to watch the Zephyrs play. She brings a much different appreciation to the game than she once did.
“I was never much of a baseball fan,” she says.
“But now I know more about pitching than I ever thought I would.”
As consumers turn to hand-made products from fields and people who live next door, growing numbers of retailers are embracing that “local” ethic.
Michael Conner, store manager for Haggen’s NW Fresh at 1800 N.E. Third St. in Bend, recently wrapped his arms around a mountain of love from Naked Winery, for the people who have come to know what they like, and like what they know, and like to get Naked.
Check the end-cap above — Climax Red Blend, Foreplay Chardonnay, Naked Cabernet, Tease Riesling, Vixen Syrah, plus Outdoor Vino Picnic Table Pink, Rambling Red and Wanderlust White — and you might think that Conner appreciates synergy.
At Naked Winery, we appreciate his appreciation. With a tasting room at the Old Mill District in Bend, we introduce wine lovers daily to the world of wine — Naked Winery, yes, but more than that, the variety and range of tastes to be explored and appreciated in the world of wine.
Conner gets that.
“I had tried some wines from Naked Winery,” he says. “The big tipping point for us bringing it in was that you guys are a local company. I know you have a good following and a fun marketing tactic.
“And with the spot at the Old Mill District, it’s important to help people find your wine.”
He said Haggen is consciously trying to pursue a local purchasing and stocking ethic, as it expands its brand to take over for Albertson’s in the wake of Safeway’s acquisition.
“We’re trying to make sure we get local distributors in here,” he says. “We have plenty of breweries and local bread. We’re just trying to get a strong local emphasis.”
More to the fun of things, Conner said he told Melissa DosPassos, our Central Oregon outside sales rep, how excited he was to get Naked.
Then he caught himself.
“No no no,” he said he told her. “I meant how excited I was to get wines from Naked Winery in Haggen.”
Not as excited as DosPassos, who recently stocked Bend’s other Haggen store at 61155 S. Highway 97 with three cases each of Outdoor Vino Wanderlust White, Outdoor Vino Rambling Red, Outdoor Vino Picnic Table Pink, Fling Riesling, Naked Cabernet, Merlot and Pinot Gris.
The excitement is apparently spreading. Naked Winery sales manager Carrie Coffin reports that the Haggen Northwest store in Eugene just stocked four cases each of Naked Foreplay, Naked Pinot Gris and Naked Pinot Noir.
We love the support because, for you wine-loving fans of Naked Winery, it means our wines are never far from your glass.
Aspen Braniff appreciates the chemistry of wine, but likes the taste more.
Tasting room escorts are trained to understand and accurately represent all the wines produced by Naked Winery.
If, however, you stroll up to the bar at the Hood River tasting room and ask for a personal testimonial, you’re likely to get a different answer every time.
As with every other server, Aspen Braniff has her favorites.
“I prefer reds, and my favorite is the Oh! Tempranillo,” says returning host.
“But when I’m not feeling like spending more than maybe I can afford at the moment, I like the Climax (red blend).”
Braniff, born and reared in Hood River, has one more year to secure her chemistry major from the University of Oregon.
Although an understanding of chemistry is critical to the wine-making craft, Aspen says her knowledge doesn’t factor much into helping guests appreciate the difference between a Vixen Syrah or a Sure ThingSymphony.
“It may help if someone wants to know about acidity,” she says.
As she did in while working at the tasting room in 2014, she is bunking with her parents and two sisters while she greets guests with a desire to get Naked.
Beyond that? Who knows.
She admits the local economy doesn’t have a huge appetite for chemistry majors, so she imagines she will tip the test tubes somewhere else.
That place better have water. She says she likes hiking, and swimming — a lot.
“I prefer to be in the water 24/7,” she says.
People who know Hood River’s reputation as a wind sports capitol might infer that Aspen is a windsurfer or kiter. Nope.
Not yet, anyway. Depends on which way the wind blows her after graduation.
Until classes resume in September, it’s all about turning her love of water into wine.
Sun setting over the LesCollines vineyard near Walla Walla, source of half the juice in our 2013 Naked Penetration Cabernet Sauvignon.
We don’t know about you, but when summer heat hits, our tastebuds tilt toward chilled wines. Heat, as we all know, turns even the best red wine into a flabby vehicle for a cloud of alcohol. Not good.
Which is why some of our in-house tasters pause, look around to see who’s listening, then whisper the heresy that “I like my reds on the chilly side.”
Hey, whatever floats your cork. At Naked this muggy month of July, we’re turning the spotlight on two pours that will marry well with preferred summer fare.
Featuring a medley of wineyard contributions, the Naked Cab gets 50 percent of its flavor from the Les Collines vineyard in Walla Walla, 30 percent from Dan Gunkel’s vines in the Maryhill area on the Washington side of the Columbia River, and the final 20 percent from the vines of Scott Elder in The Dalles.
In the glass, you’ll find cherry and black currant notes contrasted with light tannins and soft oak from 16 months in new American and French barrels.
While we’re on the subject, let us suggest one way to give your BBQ guests a little psychic whiplash. Get some ballpark style franks — no brats from Whole Foods, puh-leeze — and scorch some grill marks on those pups, slather them in mustard and relish, and eat ’em up in some bad-bread buns.
Fresh from the smoker of one of Naked Winery’s estimable BBQ network.
While sipping Naked cab from a Mason jar. How’s that for haute dawg meets vino primo?
Built on fruit from the Bridgeview vineyard of southern Oregon, our 2013 Tease Riesling is the perfect hot-weather pairing for grilled halibut, asparagus and carrots.
With melon and peach notes balanced by Riesling ‘s classic citrus acidity, our Tease will take your breath away and leave you grasping for another taste.
Don’t let our love of riesling distress your desire to undress. If you like hot (spicy) food on a hot day, to break the sweat out of lock-up, you may want to lean a bit toward the sweeter end of the spectrum, with our Outdoor Vino Sundress Sweet or Outdoor Vino Wanderlust White.
Bottom line? However you like your summer served, Naked Winery has you made in the shade.
C. Patrick Neagle strides resolutely toward his “Top Gun” Experience.
We encouraged people to get into the spirit of the “Top Gun” movie, if they planned to attend one of our wine pickup parties this month.
Boy, did C. Patrick Neagle embrace the full range of potential attire.
Neagle, a writer and adjunct college instructor, calls Trout Lake home these days.
For his “Top Gun” experience, he could’ve gone bonkers and concocted some sort of Naval aviation costume.
But no, that would’ve been too easy.
C. Patrick Neagle and his wingwoman Angela Bliss at the Naked Winery “Top Gun” Experience
Instead, he embraced, as he puts it, “the way of the towel.”
Sartorially deconstructed and spinning out of control toward minimalism, he showed up June 13 at the Hood River tasting room wearing a white terrycloth towel.
Nothing else. Just a towel.
He says he got the idea from another Club Naked member, chatting during a previous visit.
“He mentioned that he would come in a towel, and I thought that was a brilliant idea,”
Neagle says. “I hoped he would be there and I could say: Maverick, it’s not your flying, it’s your attitude. The enemy’s dangerous, but right now you’re worse. Dangerous and foolish.’ ”
Foolish, wearing a towel to a wine pickup party? For Neagle, that was just the start of a day in high concept.
“In the entire movie, everyone is always sweaty, to the point where I wanted for the costume to be really authentic, I wanted to take a mister,” he says.
But he forgot. He was busy getting … wrapped. He says the towel — a regular bath towel, from Ikea — was held on by nothing but a tuck.
“I got dressed up here, if you can call a towel getting dressed,” he says. “I drove down with me wearing the towel. I spent three to four hours in the towel. This is a really good towel, so I didn’t once have to adjust it.”
To ensure its security — because, as should be the case, he wasn’t wearing anything beneath the towel — he tested it.
“To demonstrate the towel, I jumped up and down several times,” he says. “It never gave or loosened.”
Good thing, because his girlfriend, artist Angela Bliss, wasn’t so sure about the jumping up and down idea.
Neagle’s real life isn’t that far from the fictive world of Navy pilots on Navy ships in “Top Gun.” A native of Missouri, Neagle employed his master’s degree in English to secure a gig teaching on board U.S. Navy ships. He works through Central Texas College in Killeen, and its Navy College Program for Afloat College Education.
“They call me up, and tell me such and such ship is available, for such and such classes, and do I want to take it?” Neagle says.
“They fly me to the ship wherever it is. I get on board, and I’m there for usually one or two terms. One term is 7-8 weeks, so I can be on board four months.”
Shipboard life, for those who haven’t lived it themselves, is noisy, full of mechanical odors, and crowded. He shares a dorm-like space with four or five other teachers. They teach two to three times a day, three days a week.
The rest of the time, Neagle writes. He says he can draft a novel during a teaching cruise.
Because of that work flexibility, he says, he and Bliss can live anywhere — and have. Before moving to Trout Lake in 2013 — and joining Club Naked in 2014 — Neagle and Bliss lived in Mexico, Sardinia, Alaska and New Orleans.
Trout Lake works for now, in part because it’s close to the Hood River tasting room of Naked Winery.
And Ikea, in case he ever needs a new towel.
A sign of the times for towel-trained C. Patrick Neagle.
Regular summer visitors to Hood River may have crossed paths with the annual Wind Fest event. Organized by the Columbia Gorge Windsurfing Association, Wind Fest enlisted wind surfing and kiteboarding gear makers and sellers to let wind sports addicts try out new gear, down at the Hood River waterfront.
My, how the child has grown. This year, it’s called Beach Bash. Instead of two days, this year it covers four. Here’s the what and where of it all:
Thursday, June 25 — Pray for Wind Party, 6-10 p.m., Stonehedge Gardens restaurant. $20 covers a catered dinner ($10 for kids); cash bar, raffle, band and auction.
Friday, June 26 — High Wind Demo, sponsored by Windance, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Rowena (East. Mayer State Park, 15 miles east of Hood River off I-84).
Later that same day (Friday, June 26) — Outdoor Concert, 6-10 p.m., Waterfront Park Amphitheater, presented by 10 Barrel Brewing and supported by Naked Winery, food by 4 & 20 Blackbirds and Leah’s Lunch.
Saturday, June 27 — Big Winds Beach Party, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Hood River Event Site. All kinds of fun, including a Mt. Hood Meadows Kids Section, with races, relays and the Never Ever Windsurfed Before Race. For us bigger people, the day includes music, food, drink, gear demos, archery tag and more.
Sunday, June 28 — All Sports Swap Meet, 7 a.m. (sellers), 8 a.m. (buyers) to noon, Luhr Jensen Parking lot (just to the east of the Hood River Waterfront Park). Sellers pay $10.
Closing BBQ — 1-3 p.m., Northwave Lawn.
Just for the fun of it and to get you all jacked up, we’re sharing a video below from the recent Pistol River Wave Bash on the Oregon Coast. Winds pushing 50 mph, and a lot of talent. The Hood River Beach Bash will be a lot calmer. Count on it.
The Naked Truth 