“I love to cook with wine, sometimes I add it to the food.” This quote is often attributed to WC Fields. But I really think I thought of it myself before I ever heard it. Anyway, it is so true. I love to cook with wine. I love to sip wine while I cook. I love to add wine to my dishes. The other thing I love is all the fresh vegetables that are available this time of year. Oh, and one more thing I love – Flying Otter Winery Noiret. I often tell people when we offer tastings of Noiret that I wish they could taste it with food. It makes such a great red table wine. Here is something I did recently to feature all of these – cooking with wine, Noiret, and fresh vegetables.

Noiret Marinated Pork Roast
Ingredients:
4 lb pork shoulder roast
1 bottle Flying Otter Winery Noiret
fresh herbs from the garden – I used rosemary, tyme, and French tarragon

Place the pork roast, herbs, and a whole bottle of wine in marinading container. I like to use a container that came with our vacuum sealer.





Allow the roast to marinade in the refrigerator over night.
Place the whole thing including the marinade into a brazing pan.
Cook covered for ~4 hours @ 275-300. Check it occasionaly to make sure you don’t run out of liquid and the pork reaches the desired tenderness.
Allow to rest, serve with vegetables (see recipe below) and a glass of Noiret





Like I said earlier, I love all the fresh vegetables available in the summer. But if you are anything like we are the refrigerator starts to fill up faster than you can eat them. Here is something I like to make that can use whatever vegetables are filling your frig. I call it Ratatouille, though I doubt that it qualifies as the real French provincial dish.

Start by chopping up whatever vegetables you have in the frig that you are wanting to use up. The basics include onions, peppers, garlic, summer squash, tomatoes, eggplant, etc. The recommended French method is to cook each vegetable individually to the desired doneness and then add them together at the end so thay are all cooked to the proper level. This method uses way too many bowls and pans, and takes too much extra effort.  A more common alternative is to add the individual vegetables to a stove top pot in order based on cooking time, waiting 5-10 minutes between each addition. Again, for me this requires too much time and effort. The method I like to use is the one pot brazing method. It is true that some of the more tender vegetables that require less cooking time will disappear and just become part of the sauce. But what a wonderful, flavorful sauce it is!

Northern Lights Ratatouille
Ingredients:
8 cups chopped vegetables
2-3 Tbl flour
2 cups Flying Otter Winery Northern Lights wine
fresh herbs
salt and pepper

Add the vegetables to a brazing pan
Add flour, stir to coat vegetables
Pour in wine
Add salt and pepper to taste
Cook covered ~ 1.5-2 hours at 300 degrees, stirring occasionally to reach desired tenderness level and make sure you don’t run out of liquid.
Remove from oven.
Add fresh chopped herbs (basil and taragon are my favorites)
Add sugar or Splenda to taste (I like to add just a touch of Splenda to balance the acid in the wine. It just takes a little bit. I don’t want the dish to taste sweet.)
Adjust salt and pepper to taste
This is even better after the flavors meld overnight in the refrigerator. Just reheat and serve.

Enjoy,
Bob Utter
aka The Flying Otter Curmudgeon

It has been quite a while since we blogged - shame on us. We have been busy and here is an update on what's happening in the vineyard and winery. The following podcast was recorded early April, 2014 following the coldest, snowiest winter in decades. We are anxious to open the pavilion tasting deck and resume our Friday Night Live Music in the Pavilion events. This recording includes music and a conversation with one of our most popular entertainers, Cat Canyon.

We hope you enjoy listening.

Podcast #9 A New Season Begins

It is hard to believe that we have been open for almost a year. We will celebrate our first year anniversary the Saturday after Thanksgiving. In the this podcast Bob and Linda take a look back at the first year and discuss our upcoming anniversary celebration.

Podcast #8 - Our First Year in Review

Now that June is here, Bob talks about how the vineyard survived the warmest March in decades, spring planting in the vineyard, and other news. Jeff and Linda talk about attending spring wine fests and wine judging competition results. Yay. We won medals!

Podcast #7 Ahhhh Spring - planting and wine fests!

Podcast #6 Unseasonably Warm - Bah Humbug

Bob and Linda discuss the record setting high temperatures and the impact on the vineyard. They also discuss the latest winery news.

Bob and Nick talk to Michael Wells, owner of Arbor Vineyard. We discuss how he got started in wine making and his plans to open a winery near Tecumseh, MI.

Podcast #5 Michael Wells Interview

Bob and Jeff discuss the wines initially available at our opening, as well as new releases that will be available soon. There is an interesting discussion of aroma versus bouquet or as Jeff's says, "It's the nose".

It's the nose!

A conversation with Jeff and Sarah Utter, co-owners of the Flying Otter Winery, as they discuss their history with wine and the Flying Otter Winery.

Jeff & Sarah talk about starting the winery

Here is the second episode of our podcast. Bob and Linda Utter talk more about what it takes to start a small winery. 

Podcast #2 Bob & Linda talk about starting the winery

We hope you enjoy and as always we look forward to your feedback and comment.

If there is anything you would like us to discuss, or questions you would like us to answer, just let us know.

We are pleased to announce that our Starboard dessert wine is now available at the Flying Otter Winery. Maybe we aren't supposed to have favorites, but I have to admit this wine has a special place in our hearts. It's only right that it should make it's appearance for Valentine's Day.

Starboard is a dessert wine made in the style of traditional dessert wines of Portugal, which are called Port. For many years wines in this style made around the world were often called port, but in 2006 the US signed a trade agreement with the European Community on Trade in Wine which disallows the use of the term Port for new wines (wines before 2006 are grandfathered in) made by anyone outside of Portugal.

For this reason we were forced to turn in a different direction for naming our new dessert wine, and we chose to turn Starboard.

Made with our our home grown Frontenac grapes (which we are not allowed to list as "estate grown" on our labels because we are not in an officially designated AVA [American Viticultural Area]), and fortified with grape spirits, this lush, rich, dessert wine is great now and will get even better with age if you'd like to add it to your cellar for future special occasions.

Come on out for our Valentine's Day open hours:
Feb 4 & 5, Feb 11 & 12 Noon till 6 PM

Last Saturday we had our Grand Opening Event, and it was everything we hoped for and more. So many good people came out to try our wines. We saw some old friends and met some new ones. It is so gratifying, after spending so long planting and growing grapes, building a winery, and making the wines, to find that people really do like our wines. I mean, WE always knew we knew what we were doing, but validation is GOLD.

I especially want to thank Erika Aylward, Tim Monger, Lauren Utter and Nick Lepeschkin-Noel for helping to make our event special. Erika did the cheese trays for us, with cheeses from her Boulevard market in Tecumseh beautifully arranged. She always has a delicious supply of domestic and imported cheeses, along with cheeses from Four Corners Creamery, made in Tecumseh by her husband John Aylward. Boulevard also has all kinds of unique gourmet foods, wine, and beer. Such a fun place to browse when you want something special. If you need a cheese plate for a special Christmas gathering, I highly recommend Boulevard.

Tim Monger provided some musical ambiance to our event. He is a favorite singer/songwriter of mine, and we hope he will return next spring for some fair weather concerts in the vineyard. If you'd like to hear his songs without the noise of our tasting room, visit his website: http://timothymonger.com/listen
Tim is also a founding member of the music group Great Lakes Myth Society, and will be with them on New Years Day at 11:45 playing Mittenfest at Woodruff's in Ypsilanti.

Nick and Lauren are our Media Team and they came to shoot photos and video of the event. When things got very busy very fast they moved in to help with sales and customer service and I don't know what we would have done without them. They also brought some delicious homemade breads to go with our wine that were very well received by our customers.


We were very excited to set some all time sales records for Flying Otter last Saturday. Considering it was our first day that wasn't too hard, but I'm sure it will be a while before we are able to top it. We are down to only one case of 2010 Northern Lights, so if it was your favorite, you might want to stop by to be sure you have some for Christmas. We will release our 2011 Northern Lights in early 2012.

We are now open for business, but our hours are somewhat flexible. We are open Saturdays and Sundays through December 18th from noon to 6 PM. We can be open by appointment, just call to let us know you are coming and we will make arrangements. If you are in Lenawee County we will deliver an order of 3 bottles or more to you. Just call 877-876-5580 or email [email protected] for delivery. You can order through our website and mark it "hold for pickup at winery" and we will have it ready, or email for local delivery. If you are farther in MI, we can ship via Fedex. We recommend at least three bottles to get the best deal on shipping. Outside of MI, we regret that we do not yet have licensing to ship outside the state. Each state requires separate licensing and we are currently evaluating the regulations to determine where it will be possible for us to ship.

We want to thank everyone who helped spread the word about our Grand Opening to make it so successful. We thank the Daily Telegram,Michigan Wines, Sue Osgood and Food For Thought Magazine, Michigan By The Bottle, Pure Michigan, Local Harvest.org, and others and so many of our Facebook friends for getting the message out.

We are looking forward to growing our business, with your help, and making our wines at our Lenawee County home in the years to come. Southeast Michigan is becoming a new Michigan Wine area, and we are happy to be a part of a growing wine community.

Thanks to everyone for giving us a fantastic start!