
I’ll admit it: I had some ungracious thoughts for my husband when he asked me (very nicely, I feel compelled to add), to accompany him to Cellardoor Vineyard for a wine pairing with our chocolates this past Sunday. It was the vineyard’s last scheduled food and wine pairing for the season, and he really wanted me to come. The problem was, I had a raging head cold and was just beginning to stress about holiday production. Sunday was to be spent making ganache and mopping my kitchen floor. And sleeping, of course, and drinking plenty of liquids.
“I would feel a lot better if you came,” Steve said, couching his rationale in the fact that I was really the one that could wax on about the different flavor profiles that come out in our chocolate when paired with the right wine.
“Pfffft,” I replied, and then snorted, and he conceded, but just a little.
“Well, you at least sound like you know what you’re talking about, and I would feel much better if you were there.”
How can a girl say no to that? I mean, yeah, I had a cold, but then I was also looking at a Sunday working and cleaning. A few ungracious thoughts, yes, but drawn-out arm-twisting? Ah..no.
So Sunday morning found us hauling our wares off-island, and driving the 2 hours down the coast to the vineyard’s tasting room in Lincolnville. By noon, we had just tossed back a few sips each of the wines CC Peet had chosen to go with our truffles, and the Columbus Day revelers were beginning to pour in.
It was a great afternoon, and to make a long story short, there’s not much 3 hours of focused attention on wine and chocolate can’t cure. After we packed things up, we did our own wine tasting, and picked up a bottle of the vineyard’s Viognier to take home.
A stroll around Camden ended in a quiet alley enjoying a glass of Malbec at the White Lion Raw Bar & Bistro. We liked the wine so much, we stayed for dinner, where I innocently ordered a burger.
To call what I ordered a “burger,” barely does it justice. What arrived was the deep-voiced, red-headed sex kitten of burgers: a patty that would be dainty if it wasn’t so damn thick, cooked to a juicy medium-rare, and settled into a buxom brioche bun. It was smothered in a satiny brown sauce loaded with wild mushrooms, and a small pile each of shoestring potatoes and homemade pickle filled out the plate. This was a burger that was built for a woman, and I ate every bit of it, moaning softly with each bite.
Which might explain the reason why our waiter brought us our check before we had even finished our dinners. Deciding to just roll with it, we paid up (after noisily licking our plates clean), and walked back out into the night.
A short drive up the coast to Belfast landed us at the Colonial Theatre just in time for the last showing of Julie & Julia–which is what I’m now sure our thoughtful waiter intended.
All in all, it was exactly the kind of day I needed, packed full of things my female soul craves: Chocolate, wine. Burger, brioche. Julie, Julia. And it’s the kind of thing my husband does to make me fall in love with him all over again.






