Pizza and Pinot are good buddies at Dancin Vineyards in southern Oregon's Rogue Valley.
This is the first winery in the valley to install a pizza oven, and not by chance. Owner Dan Marca--he's Italian--went to work in a New Jersey deli when only 10 and by 14 was making pizza.
Marca runs the wine operation and also pours in the tasting room (above), as if he were an employee.
His wife Cindy runs the kitchen, out of which come such must-eat pizzas as those at the top, a classic Margherita and, behind it, the Estancia, with mushrooms, caramelized onions, Alfredo sauce, crumbled gorgonzola and spinach.
Here is the Harlem Shake, topped with creamy mac n cheese.
Perfect with pizza is this Caesar salad, accompanied by a glass of the 2013 Farandole Pinot Noir.
Dancin, which opened in 2012, was among the first Rogue wineries to offer food full time. "We wanted to do something different," Marca said. "We wanted to have the food and wine together, to serve at tables, stay open late, have families come."
And they come in crowds to relax and eat outdoors, above.
Or to picnic on this tree-shaded lawn.
The menu offers much more than pizza, including mushrooms stuffed with Italian sausage, cheese and eggs, topped with a Chardonnay cream sauce and reduced balsamic (above).
For dessert you could have panna cotta or, in strawberry season, huge cheese cake-stuffed berries, or just a slice of The Moon Walk pizza, topped with fresh organic local peaches (when in season), caramelized onions, mascarpone, basil and balsamic (above).
The menu suggests wine pairings, such as the 2014 Chaine Chardonnay with the Harlem Shake. However, Dancin is essentially "a Pinot Noir winery," Marca said. And so the 2013 Pas de Deux Pinot Noir is recommended with the Margherita pizza, and the 2013 Ecarte Pinot Noir with the mushrooms.
For the strawberries, which were on hand when I was there in September, Marca chose the 2013 Adagio Pinot Noir. "This is the lightest and most elegant Pinot we have," he said. "The aromatics on this wine are amazing. That is the beauty of Pinot Noir, the aromatics that it provides."
Pinot Noir is the number one harvested grape in the Rogue Valley, and Dancin makes seven to 11 Pinots a year, Marca said. Above, he stops in front of Pinot vines during a vineyard tour. The grapes are hand harvested and hand sorted to eliminate rubbish and bad fruit. "It's a tedious process, but that's the way we want to do it," he said. By the time the grapes go into the fermenting bins, they are "as immaculate as can be."
Marca runs a very tight ship. "I'm a control freak," he said. "The goal is to continue to make better wine."
The Dancin wines are named for elements of dance and music, as fits the winery name. The real reason for calling the place Dancin is more personal, though. It's a combination of Dan and Cindy, the two owners.
Dancin Vineyards, 4477 South Stage Road, Medford, Oregon 97051. (541) 245-1133.
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