We visited Ponte winery in Temecula the other weekend to celebrate the birthday of our dear friend Meri. Her husband Jason had organized a lunch get together with friends – and graciously he treated all of us to a fabulous day. 🍷👍
It started off being seated in what they called The Boardroom. It’s a beautiful room with a large table surrounded by bottles of Ponte wine on racks. To begin they brought out some delightful bread with some flavorful scallion dipping oil.
Jason ordered some salmon cakes and brussel sprouts. As you may know, Jeney and I don’t eat meat so we passed on the salmon cakes, but from what we were told they were fantastic. The brussel sprouts were absolutely tasty. The leaves were fried perfectly crisp and the goat cheese complimented it very well.
For our main course I ordered the avocado flatbread. It was delightfully filled with vibrant flavors. Jeney ordered the gnocchi and said that the sauce was out of this world tasty. For dessert the two of us shared their spring cake. The cake itself was perfectly spongy and the mascarpone was smooth and the fresh blueberries complimented it perfectly.
As for wine, I ordered a white from another local winery that Ponte kindly offered, Bottaia Arneis. It was a flavorful wine, not overly sweet with crisp stone fruit flavors. It paired nicely with the acidity of the fried brussel sprouts and the flatbread.
After lunch we went to The tasting room and had a wide variety of delightful wines. I personally rather enjoyed their Port, so I picked up a bottle. They also offered their scallion dipping oil, so we grabbed a bottle of that to take home as well.
No matter if you are a local to the Temecula Valley or coming from out of town, this is certainly a stop you should make. Details and/or reservation info for the restaurant can be found at: https://www.pontewinery.com/restaurant-2/
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