Last weekend I was fortunate enough to help represent my company at an open house for Painted Hills Natural Beef. While Painted Hills beef is from Fossil, OR, the company had paired up with Methven Family Wines in Dayton for the event — which meant a trip out to wine country!
Oregon wine country, as you have seen before, is a beautiful place and knowing that a fabulous — and free! — dinner was waiting made the gorgeous drive from Portland all the better. I won’t mention that gorgeous drive included an hour of terrible traffic — let’s just focus on the pretty (and delicious) stuff!
This was what greeted us when we arrived…
I never say no to pinot!
After checking out the scenery, my co-worker Ariel and I went to check out the food — always a high priority for us. The dinner was served buffet style, but what a feast there was: Painted Hills striploin, scalloped potatoes, grilled veggies and a salad of spinach, blue cheese and pears.
A plate full of happy.
Now here’s where the fun starts. Everyone chose their seats prior to lining up for food. So when returned to our chairs, Ariel and I noticed something that had slipped past us before, each table came with a bottle of wine, snuggled up in a burlap bag. Since drinks had to be purchased, we were very excited at the prospect of free wine.
However, on our table sat a bottle of white wine, which wasn’t cold and didn’t sound like the best pairing for our steak. So while our neighboring table was at the buffet, we convinced another co-worker to swap out their bottle of pinot noir for our pinot gris. After all, they had only dropped their jackets there, surely they hadn’t even noticed if their table had red or white wine. Right?
Nope. We were totally busted! Luckily after giving us a hard time, they seemed to forgive us, which was good because we had already cracked it open and started drinking. The bottle was dry when all the ‘thank you for coming’ speeches were over and then someone got on the microphone and said, “Everyone flip your chairs over, if you have a sticker on the bottom of your chair, you get to take home the bottle of wine on your table!”
Uh….
The (very empty) evidence of our dishonesty
Good thing for us my boss won the bottle at our table. We just let him know he had treated us to his wine and thanked him. I’m not too sure if he was pleased by that but what can you do?
Go outside and enjoy more pretty!
Just another lovely evening in wine country.
Attempts in Domesticity 
I like that story. And a rainbow, to boot!
I know! It was such a perfect rainbow moment! Just like a little kid, I still get excited when I see them. And in that part of town, I’m sure there was some tasty wine at the end of it. =)
The gold at the end of the rainbow might be Sauternes.
and some seared foie!
I don’t drink but I’d love the plateful of happy and the views.
The plateful of happy made me happy indeed. If I had had a purse with me, I might have tried to sneak a second steak home! =)
that’s a great story. And a very Martha Stewart-like dining experience 😀
Yeah, they really did it up nice! And the wine was really quite fabulous. Totally worth getting the stink eye. 😉
Ha! That’s pretty funny! But how were you to know the wine wasn’t for drinking?! I mean, really, any one of us would’ve done the same thing (including switching for the pinot noir) . . .
Glad to know I would have been in good company! And I mean, seriously! You put wine on the table and expect people not to drink it? Craziness! Though I guess there was the small detail of the bottles not being opened. But we just had our co-worker use his steak knife and in a jiffy, we were sipping!
What a hoot.
We were quite entertained! Whether the neighboring table was is still debatable…But oh well!
Plate full of happy, indeed!
Nothing says a good time like a big juicy steak and a bottle of wine! =)
I am in complete agreement! 🙂