To start, as always, an “amuse bouche”:

Here is Erik, shaving a black truffle over the second course, a celeriac soup served with my 2008 William Augustus Cabernet Franc.

We had started planning about two months ago, with a tasting of multiple vintages of Velocity, my new Cabernet franc, two vintages of viognier-marsanne, and even my long sold-out rosé, of which I had just one case left in my personal cellar.

Erik and Ben put together magnificent pairings throughout the meal, from the belgian endive radiccio salad with duck confit and truffle vinaigrette, to the celeriac soup and the wild boar risotto.

Dessert was an astounding truffle crème bruleé tart whose flavors lingered on the palate for nearly an hour after I had the good luck to drop in and have a nibble before the dinner started.

I have heard of the scent of truffles being intoxicating, but had never before experienced first-hand the near blissful state this modest little fungus could produce.

Erik gave me three truffles to take home – like gold! – and tonight I’ll try my hand at a risotto, though sadly without the wild boar. Or the culinary wizardry – but I will try to do them justice.

The wine is a blend of Viognier (72%) and Marsanne (28%) and is named after my great, great grandfather, William Augustus White. That’s his silhouette on the bottle, from a 1923 photograph depicting him atop New York State’s highest peak, Mt. Marcy, on his 80th birthday. He was both a great book-lover and an enthusiastic outdoorsman, and I suspect that at even half his age I would have had some difficulty keeping pace with him on his birthday ascent.

The idea for this wine took hold two years ago, after I had made various whites in the Rogue Valley for eight years under several labels, from a range of varietals such as Pinot gris, Pinot blanc, Chardonnay, Roussanne, Grenache blanc, Marsanne and Viognier. As I brought the grapes in and made the wines in a variety of styles for clients or employers, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how consistently Viognier performed. Bursting with flavor, with a mouthfilling richness and an ability to stand up to barrel fermentation and lengthy lees contact, it promises to be one of the wines with which our little fledgling valley can really make a name for itself.

There are, however, some challenges to making Viognier here: it has a tendency to have higher alcohol and lower acidity than I think are appropriate for a good white wine. My approach was the same as with my other winemaking projects: select a site that yields balanced fruit. As it happens, Gold Vineyard came through again for me. With its higher elevation, easterly aspect, and Randy’s meticulous farming, we have so far been able to harvest two successive vintages (the ’09, bottled last month, and the ’10, just harvested last week) with moderate sugars, balanced acidity, and rich, mature flavors. No de-alcoholization, no acidification, just the straight deal from vineyard to glass.

And the Marsanne? To be honest, I was hedging my bets. I liked what I had seen of Marsanne so far, and was planning on using its lower sugars (below 22 Brix both years) and higher acidity to further correct Viognier’s potential problems of alcohol and balance. From a chemistry standpoint, my choice was unnecessary, since the Gold Vineyard fruit came in so nicely. However, the Marsanne brought a beautiful melon character to the wine, and further fleshed out the midpalate while slightly toning down the overtly floral nature of the Viognier. The grapes are grown on a west-facing slope out at Crater View Vineyard, near Jacksonville, Oregon.

We’ve been enjoying the wine at home, certainly, and I have released it in the Bay area through my excellent broker down there, Real Wines Company, so now I need to release it in Oregon and get it up on my website. The website thing may take a month, so be patient, but the wine is only improving since September’s bottling. Can I just say that I am very, very happy with it?

Looking at the first five or six vintages of Velocity and Velo is like looking at the steepest part of a graph of evolutionary change. In the beginning I hoped that Malbec would play an important role in the blend, but did not imagine that it could dominate as successfully as it does now. I feel now more than ever that it was a wise decision to let the wine follow its own natural path, and not to try to force the style into some predetermined recipe imported from another winegrowing region.