Off in the countryside of the Yamhill-Carlton AVA is a little restaurant and B&B called AgriVino. It's owned by an extremely competent Italian Chef, Dario, and his American wife, Sheena. They serve prix fix dinners according to Italian themes, which include Italian wine pairings. Dario and Sheena run the operation themselves, and Dario attentively appears at your table to explains each course in detail and his choice of wine. All the wines are also available for sale at the restaurant. If you go to McMinnville, AgriVino should be on your dining agenda. Oh, and the dinner? $85 per, not inclusive.
The couple we dined here with had been once before, and the theme that night was Piedemonte. On this evening, the theme was "Italian Vacation": the wines started in Friuli and ended in Sicily. Every wine, and every course, was spot on.
With a velvety pureed carrot soup:
2016 Colli della Murgia Gravina Tufjano Fiano
Muscatty spice on the nose; peachy and fuller on the palate than expected. Nice!
The next course was a remarkable small potato terrine stuffed with taleggio cheese--I would kill to duplicate this--and apparently I was so smitten with it that I didn't take notes on the wine, but it was a 2014 Castelfeder Shiava.
Then followed a terrific lasagna which Sheena promised to be the best lasagna we had ever eaten. It was close! Made in the style I learned from Mario Batali, using bechamel sauce throughout instead of cheese.
2015 Germano Ettore Barbera d'Alba
Aged in stainless, it's warm, rich and bright and little gamey, good body.
Next up, roasted salmon with vegetables, and:
2014 Russiz Superiore Collio Cabernet Franc
Anyone who loves Loire CF will appreciate this. Medium bodied and minimally oaked, solid CF character--a genius pairing with roast salmon in the heart of Oregon wine country where it's practically against the law to serve salmon with anything but pinot noir.
And finally, a milk flan topped with a homemade strawberry sauce that everyone at the table swore was the best of it's kind any had ever had was served with:
NV Moscato Villa Pozzi
A delicious and apparently quite inexpensive Moscato. A perfect way to end the evening too, in that it kind of brought us back to the first course where the dry Tufjano hinted at the Muscat spice--it set in motion a craving for a sweet ending just like this.