The Bark Lounge Blog

Wine Knowledge a Click Away

Thu, 17 Feb 2011 08:40:31 -0800

Have you found yourself standing in the wine supermarket aisle looking at the vast selections of wine, sale and promotion tags blowing in the the air conditioning, and felt overwhelmed? Or how does it feel peering in the window of a specialty wine shop that looks more like a library than a store?

Well, wine apps for mobile devices can make you an instant pro no matter where you are.

Not only can you have vast amounts of knowledge at your fingertips, you can interact with other wine drinkers, match a wine with dinner, read reviews, or maybe even find a person in the next aisle posting about a wine they just bought.

Here a few we use and like.

Pocket Wine gives you basic knowledge that is organized very well, and is extremely user-friendly. The list of grapes goes well beyond the usual suspects, so if a Pinotage is staring at you from the shelf, Pocket Wine is there to help. Their “My Taste” quiz tailors your tastebuds for wine preferences, and that may have you thinking outside the box about what to buy. I like the functionality, or layering of the pages, I can be looking at the Pinot Noir grape and get to the food paring page from the same screen. You can also add your own notes! The app is $3.99.

Corkbin is a social media app for capturing and sharing your wine adventures. Take a photo, jot a quick tasting note and share it with friends. It’s a great way to remember what you and your friends have been drinking and the frames around the photos are a nice look. You do get some wine knowledge on the extras page, and we like the “Nearby” map feature that shows what people are drinking next door or across the world! The app is $0.99

An AVIN number is like an ISBN number for wine. As many wine lovers are aware, it can be difficult to find information about a wine from either the bottle or from the various online sources. The AVIN solves this problem by assigning a unique number to every single wine. Just type in the AVIN into your favorite search engine, and a list of where that wine has been mentioned will appear. Plus you can keep track of the wines you love without having to know how to spell Gewurztraminer! 30 million labels are using AVIN; now that’s a wine database! Try it out here, AVIN0292755246691

Pinot and Pooches This Weekend

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 12:33:52 -0700

The 4th Annual Pinot & Pooch event is a fun-filled affair for dog and wine lovers that benefits the Willamette Humane Society (WHS). The event is set for, this weekend, Friday and Saturday, September 24th and 25th, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Willamette Valley Vineyards.

Fine wine, art, entertainment, prizes and a doggie fashion show are on the ticket for the 4th Annual Pinot & Pooch.

Tickets to the event are $25 per person and include wine and food sampling, a Riedel Oregon Pinot Noir wine glass for each attendee, a complimentary sketch of your "furry friend" and much more.....

With the purchase of Willamette Valley Vineyards wine, attendees receive a complimentary portrait of their pooch sketched by a local artist. A portion of the event ticket and wine sales will benefit the WHS. They are dedicated to promoting the welfare of animals through leadership, education and action.

Funds go to help provide a temporary shelter for discarded, abused, abandoned, and lost animals; to match companion animals with people; and lead the community through education by teaching respect and compassion for animals.

To purchase tickets to the 4th Annual Pinot & Pooch, visit www.willamettevalleyvineyards.com or contact Claudia Bowers by email at praviawines@gmail.com.

To book a 30-minute appointment for a complimentary sketch portrait of your pooch, contact Willamette Valley Vineyards at 503-588-9463.

Best of Oregon's Wine And Food: Get your Tickets!

Thu, 8 Jul 2010 11:07:17 -0700

Valerie like to shop local for her ingredients and wine, and I get to taste those heirloom tomatoes and grass fed beef! I DO love tomatoes, mmm. Now you can taste “local” all in one spot - on one day, how’s that for multi-tasking!

Best of Oregon Food &Wine Festival, now in its second year, showcases the very best of Oregon's culinary culture -- world class wineries and food artisans.

Close to 30 wineries and 20 restaurants are participating in the event at the Reserve Vineyards & Golf Club in Aloha, Oregon on August 14, 2010. The food and wine fun starts at 5pm.

If noshing and sipping aren’t enough, you can learn how to create easy and delicious dishes in less than 30 minutes from some of Oregon's top chefs. Cooking demos will be available during the festival at 6, 7 and 8:00 pm.

The festival ticket is $30.00 in advance and $35.00 at the door, and includes the food and wine tasting.

For those who like to take to the greens, the festivities will begin with a charity golf tournament taking place from noon to 4:30 p.m.

Tickets are moving fast, so scamper over to the Best of Oregon Food & Wine Festival’s website and get yours!

Grochau Cellars Opens Urban Tasting Room

Thu, 27 May 2010 11:43:58 -0700

JRDn: A Modern oasis in PB

Tue, 2 Feb 2010 09:48:01 -0800

PB equals Pacific Beach, CA, a beach community just north of San Diego’s Sea World. We have pals in San Diego, so we like to play in the surf and eat at ocean side restaurants.
Tower 23 is a fairly new spot on the beach walk; sleek, modern and spirited are words that come to mind when we had dinner at this hotel last night. JRDN is a twitter ready name for a restaurant that is hard to sum up in 140 characters.
So Raw,Way Cool, Getting Warm, Pure Sizzle, Burning Up are menu chapters.Valerie took the waitress’s advice and ordered a Way Cool beet salad to start and the Pure Sizzle Arctic Char, a fish Valerie is very fond of. The salad was large and filled with sweetened nuggets of yellow and red beets, dark leafy greens, goat cheese and pickled cauliflower. A Spanish Granache was a perfect pairing.
The Arctic Char, pale salmon in color was perfectly cooked, which means not over cooked, and tasted clean, fresh and sweet. It was served on a bed on green lentils, flavored with raisins, country ham, small shreds of onion and sauteed brussel sprouts, amazing! Valerie had a french chardonnay with it but she thought it was a bit too mild for the lentils, a Pinot Noir would have worked better, I think.
Ah the leftovers!!!
The menu is focused on meat that you have options of playing with, and Chef, David Warner gets his all-natural meats from Meyer Ranch. This is also true of the build your own salad. The raw bar menu is also extensive and inventive.
This is a high end place and is a bit noisy because of the very active bar scene spilling into the dining room, but the service is impeccable and we had a table that looked out onto the darkened patio and that reflected the changing wall sculpture and made people watching easy!
It’s a paws up from me!