Kids in need: Taste of Oregon comes to Port Royal for lavish Wine Festival dinner

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Naples Winter Wine Festival trustees and honored vintners Grace and Ken Evenstad entertain guests of their vintner dinner in the couple's Port Royal home on Friday, Jan. 28, 2011. David Albers/Staff

Perfectly Paired

A Winter Wine Festival Dinner

Honored Vintner for the 2011 Naples Winter Wine Festival is Grace and Ken Evenstad of Domaine Serene in Oregon, producers of award-winning Pinot Noir.

NAPLES — When winter weather prevented his sous chef from coming to Naples from New Jersey, Le Pigeon executive chef Gabriel Rucker looked to the kitchen of Grace and Ken Evenstad’s Port Royal home for some help.

He found it in the Evenstads’ daughter, Serene Warren, and daughter-in-law, Shannon Evenstad. The two helped chop vegetables Friday afternoon for some of the dishes to be featured in the Naples Winter Wine Festival vintner dinner co-hosted by the Evenstads and Patricia Aluisi and Donna Solimene.

“Oh my gosh, that’s divine,” Shannon Evenstad said after tasting a soup she had a hand in.

Guests from around Naples traveled to the Evenstads’ home to partake in the night’s events. The vintner dinners, featuring food prepared by some of the finest chefs in the world and wine from sought-after collections, are the preamble to Saturday’s Wine Festival auction to raise money for kids’ charities.

Solimene has been a part of the festivities for a decade.

“This is, by far, the greatest avenue to help the largest number of people,” she said. “We want people to be pumped and ready to go tomorrow.”

The 28 guests who gathered at the Evenstads’ home for cocktails and dinner included Wine Festival regular and Naples attorney John Vega, who began volunteering for the event 11 years ago.

“I like being a part of something so much larger than myself,” he said.

Of course, the food and wine is a draw, too, he said.

New York Mets Hall of Fame baseball player Rusty Staub can remember the first Naples Winter Wine Festival when a handful of people went to visit local children’s charities to see the good work they did. The event, he recalled, raised $3 million.

“I am glad to be here and support this,” he said of the event. “The way it’s grown. I have never seen a group use money better. I am proud to be a hiccup in what they do.”

The theme of the dinner was “Perfectly Paired” and reflected the pairing of Rucker’s Oregon-inspired menu with wines from the Evenstads’ Domaine Serene vineyards, which are about 30 miles from Portland.

“We did a Mardi Gras theme one year and an Italian theme one year. But this year, the theme – Perfectly Paired – refers to the food and the wine both being from Oregon,” Grace Evenstad said.

Pairing and Oregon were featured in touches throughout the dinner, from the jazz being played – jazz is popular in Portland – to the pears with guests’ names on them, which were used as place cards for dinner.

Rucker, 29, who has been cooking in Oregon for eight years and has owned Le Pigeon for five, said Oregon cuisine isn’t fussy.

“It’s simple. There are not a lot of bells and whistles on the plate,” he said.

But there were several interesting dishes. Diners were treated to a foie gras torchon with 7-Up compressed apples and lemon-lime sea salt.

“The 7-Up and the vinaigrette – it lifted the flavor and made it so vibrant,” Grace Evenstad told her guests.

Dishes of seafood sausage with cabbage and cod cheeks; crispy lamb shoulder with carrots, mint and yogurt; and roasted pigeon with truffles and creamed chard were among the other dishes of the meal, which ended with a chocolate and almond financiers.

“I want people to leave thinking, ‘I need to go to Oregon and eat at that restaurant,’” Rucker said of his food.

The food was paired with wines from the Domaine Serene vineyards, including the vineyard’s specialty, pinot noir, and a rose wine, which will be distributed for the first time on Valentine’s Day.

“We got into the wine business because we had a passion for pinot,” Grace Evenstad said. The couple is the honored vintner at this year’s festival. “Oregon is perfect for it. There is a perfect climate, perfect soil.”

Grace Evenstad said their goal was to see that diners had a great time.

“I think part of the reason the Naples Winter Wine Festival is so successful is that it is so much fun,” she said. “We want people to go home happy and excited for the auction (Saturday).”

MORE COVERAGE OF THE 2011 NAPLES WINTER WINE FESTIVAL

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Wine Festival foundation makes hunger a priority

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■Kids in need: Taste of Oregon comes to Port Royal for lavish Wine Festival dinner

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