
Flagon & Vine: In the Keep with Owsley Stanley
By Mugroso Illustration by Ken Sellen Fattened by a sensuous flight around Gabe Rucker’s Bird (not the Little one, but the seven-year-old squabbery, where goose-liver fat and beef cheeks are tormented by the former ecstatic raver turned James-Beard-Award-winning chef), our talk turns to next steps and haunts. We have options. Two in our group have that doe-eyed look and exit stage right, homeward bound. Our remaining two companions are sturdier, ready for more: Hit the wine vault. Their suggestion. I couldn’t come up with that one: don’t have one and never been, baby. A phosphorus glow from a street lamp ahead radiates off an unseasonable puddle in our path. Stepping lightly, we see the modest entrance to our destination ahead on the right of this Kerns Gulch block. Our tour-guide nee dinner companion from Rucker’s experiential eatery leads the way. A garrulous and well-upholstered man, fun and full of food, he has insisted on showing us his “wine storage,” a hideaway like many places and things in this rosy river city: atypical and largely unexpected. Portland is home to a handful of these understated overstatements; warehouses for the avaricious and excitable oenophile, the unquenchable, quaffing collector of bubbles and grape…