Our September staff pick comes from the wonderful Elisabet Spaulding. As Tasting Room Associate, Ellie hosts guests here at the Elk Cove tasting room. Her favorite wine is our Estate Riesling, but Ellie has spent the summer getting to know our Pinot Noirs and is particularly drawn to Five Mountain:

“This is a wine that invites conversation. I’m usually the queen of food pairings, but Five Mountain is one where there’s enough going on to enjoy on its own.

I love to open this wine on days when I can sit quietly with it. It really evolves in the glass. First you get a sense of the structure of the wine, then the richness and the leather, and then the fruits come to the forefront as it continues to change. “ 

– Ellie

Thanks Ellie for all of you hard work in the tasting room this summer and for sharing your thoughts on our Five Mountain Pinot Noir.

Interview with Ellie

Tasting Room Associate

How long have you been working at Elk Cove?
Five months now! 

Why the Five Mountain?
When we first put the Five Mountain on the flight I opened it and tasted it, and it was great. An hour later I came back to the glass and everything I had first tasted was still there, but also so much more. I’m someone who likes a quiet evening with conversation and people I love. And this wine is just the perfect invitation to slow down.

How did you get into wine?
I worked in the restaurant industry for a long time. I owned a restaurant that I sold at the beginning of the pandemic. I found myself in this place where my industry was in complete disarray. But I’m used to being very busy, and I’m a lifelong learner, so I started the WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust). I’d been involved with wine tangentially, but I started studying in earnest and fell in love with it. Wine had everything I loved about food – it brings people together around a shared sensory experience, but there’s also an intellectual component to wine. It brings your senses and your intellect together. You will never stop learning about wine, there is always more to learn.

Tell us something interesting about you:
I’m from Barcelona, Spain, and that element of taking time to share food and wine with friends and making sure there is time in your life to be together is more common in Spain. I think what first drew me to food is that all of the interesting conversations that kids weren’t supposed to hear happened around the kitchen and at the table. So if I hung around my mom and her sisters and helped out in the kitchen, I’d hear more of what the adults were talking about. Now I’m a pastry chef by training. I love making fruit tarts and pies, especially here in Oregon with all of this amazing fruit.