Cameron Hughes Wines at Birch Ridge Inn Wine Dinner 

On Saturday Evening July 21st, the Birch Ridge Inn is pleased to partner with Cameron Hughes Wine to present an evening of fine wine and dining in conjunction with the 2012 Killington Wine Festival. For this special evening, Birch Ridge Inn Executive Chef Stephen Byrne has created a menu to delightfully complement a selection of wines from the Cameron Hughes Lot series.

Cameron Hughes Wine is a modern day international negociant that specializes in domestic and imported super premium wine. The company was founded by Cameron Hughes and partner Jessica Kogan. They have been dedicated to delivering truly exceptional wine at real world prices since starting their company in San Francisco more than 10 years ago. Further information about Cameron Hughes Wine can be found at www.chwine.com.

At the wine dinner on July 21st, Cameron Hughes Wine will be represented by Christine Zecker, New England regional manager for the company. Christine will be on hand to discuss each wine with guests during the evening.

The menu for the wine dinner includes 5 courses, each paired with a fine wine. The evening begins with summer appetizers in the Great Room of the Birch Ridge Inn chosen to compliment Cameron Hughes Lot 330 Arroyo Seco Monterey Chardonnay. Upon moving into the dining room, guests will then be presented with a ceviche of sliced halibut, scallops, and shrimp, paired with Cameron Hughes Lot 217 Russian River Valley Sauvignon Blanc. This will be followed with a black and blue surf and turf duet of oriental peppercorn crusted sliced beef tenderloin and sesame rimmed rare tuna, paired with a Cameron Hughes Lot 301 Lodi Zinfandel; and a duo of lamb chops sliced from the rack with a port wine glace d'agneau, paired with a Cameron Hughes Lot 251 Arroyo Seco Monterey GSM. To finish the evening, a Cameron Hughes Lot 247 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon will be paired with a house made chocolate box filled with Bing cherries and white chocolate mousse accompanied by a plait du fromage of fine Vermont cheese from local fromagiers.

The first wine will be presented at 6:30 PM, followed by dinner starting at 7:00 PM. The price per person for the evening is $89.00, not including tax or gratuity. This price is inclusive of the evening's wine and dinner. Reservations are required, and can be made by calling the Birch Ridge Inn at 802.422.4293, or 800.435.8566. The full menu for the evening can be found online at birchridge.com.

The Cameron Hughes Wine dinner at the Birch Ridge Inn is being served in conjunction with the Killington Wine Festival. In it's 11th year, the Killington Wine Festival is produced by the Killington Chamber of Commerce, in cooperation with the Killington Resort.

We hope that you can make it to Killington for the wine festival from July 20-22. But where ever you may be this summer, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sun screen!

Killington Wine Festival - July 20-22, 2012 

You might not know it from todays weather conditions at Killington, but the summer season is entering high gear at Killington. With the summer solstice behind us, a wide array of events are on tap for the summer months at Killington.

At Birch Ridge we opened our restaurant for the summer season last week. We serve dinner during the summer months Tuesday thru Saturday evenings starting at 6:00 PM. There are a couple of exceptions to that schedule, including the 4th of July and Labor Day weekend.

This year, the 4th of July is on a Wednesday. If you are in Killington on the 4th of July --- that means one thing --- you ARE going to attend the Fireman's BBQ and 4th of July Celebration put on each year by the Killington Volunteer Fire Department. The festivities take place at the Town Pool on River Road starting with the traditional 4th of July Parade and ending with a spectacular fireworks display. This is an absolute don't miss if you happen to be in central Vermont over July 4th!

Labor day weekend is a different story. Being the "end of summer", our restaurant WILL be open for dinner on Sunday September 2nd in conjunction with the holiday. Also that weekend, the Killington Classic Motorcycle Touring Rally returns. Last year this event was cancelled because of the impacts Hurricane Irene had to the area. This year Killington looks forward to greeting thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts as they use Killington as their hub to tour Vermont's Green Mountains.

With the July 4th celebration and Labor Day weekend as bookends for the summer, there is a lot going on in between as well. Right now, planning is entering the final stages for the 11th Annual Killington Wine Festival scheduled to take place between July 20 and July 22nd. The wine festival this year will take place in and around the Roaring Brook Umbrella Bars at the K1 base lodge. The Killington Resort has graciously donated the Umbrella Bars to the Killington Chamber of Commerce for use during the festival. If you want to attend the festival, Birch Ridge has a full range of packages which including tickets to the festival and reservations for the inn's Wine Festival Dinner. You can go to our Wine Festival page for full package details.

Killington is a great place to visit this summer. Where ever you may be, keep the ball in the fairway and don't forget your sun screen!

Freshly landscaped (sans grass) Covered Carriageway entrance to the Birch Ridge Inn on Butler Road, Killington. 

After our usual spring hiatus, the restaurant at the Birch Ridge Inn reopens for dinner tomorrow evening (Friday June 22, 2012).

Chef Stephen "Frizzie" Byrne has been busy all week getting ready for tomorrow nights re-opening. While we have all been enjoying the warm weather, Frizzie has been in the kitchen prepping new recipes for the summer.

Dinner service begins at 6:00 PM. We will be following our normal Tuesday thru Saturday schedule from here on out over the summer(with the exception of Wednesday July 4).

If you would like to look at this weekends menu, all you need to do is click on the link "Birch Ridge Restaurant Menu" here or at the top of your screen.

If you would like to make a dinner reservation, give us a call at 800.435.8566 or 802.422.4293, or go online to our dinner reservation page.

We hope to see you this weekend, or some other time this summer. And of course, where ever you may be, keep the ball in the fairway and don't forget your sun screen!

Room 10 at the Birch Ridge Inn deconstructed 

Work continues unabated at the inn as Mary and I complete our various between season tasks.

Outside the inn, many of the tasks are completed. Mary still has one or two gardens she wants to work on, and our excavator still needs to do some finishing touches to complete some landscape work, but overall the outside work has progressed nicely. With the grass being cut on a regular schedule, and the gardens all around the inn starting to show nice flowers, the outside of the inn is beginning to pop!

Our inside activities are also moving forward smartly.

Last weekend I rebuilt the sky lights in the restaurant. All of the seals on the windows had degraded due to the harsh Vermont climate. It was an interesting job with a few good and bad surprises. On the good side, the frame for each of the three sky lights is held on to the building with just 4 little screws. On the bad side, the plexiglass windows of the sky lights were held to the frame with 5 bolts. Of the 15 bolts total, weather rusted half of them solid. To get them off, I had to break 7 of them, and hack saw off an eight one. But I was able to completely rebuild the 3 sky lights for $55 in small parts, versus replacing each one for $500 a piece.

In the guest rooms, deep spring cleaning is progressing nicely. We always break the rooms down after the winter so we can take a very close look at them.(We do the same thing in the late fall.) The punch list of things needing to be repaired or replaced is getting smaller each day.

The big physical project for the next week is the complete refurbishment of Room 10, the French Provincial Room. The wall paper ceiling border is being replaced with carved moulding, similar to what we have previously done to rooms 5 and 8. Once that is done, we will be completely repainting the room from ceiling down to the trim. With the weather getting nicer, it is hard to stay inside all of the time, but at least Room 10 has nice big windows that look off to the gardens and the forest in back of the inn.

In the virtual world, there are a whole collection of new internet campaigns we have launched to spread the word about Birch Ridge to different audiences. Just as we do for the physical inn, every year I conduct a "Spring Cleaning" of our marketing efforts, eliminating underperforming programs and starting new efforts. We recently entered into an agreement with The Knot to promote the Birch Ridge Inn to brides for weddings. We also entered into an agreement with Resorts and Lodges to promote the inn to the general travel market.

Of course, all work and no play make Bill and Mary dull people. We have been able to get out and play a few rounds of golf at Green Mountain National between the rain drops of the last 10 days. I am happy to report that Green Mountain is in great shape.(You should really come to Killington and play golf!) The new irons (Callaway Razr X HL's) I acquired a few weeks ago are being dialed in nicely. My last two rounds had scores in the 80's; something that has not reliably happened since I had surgery on my left shoulder 2 years ago. Mary is working her game as well. She had her clubs "regripped" so she is just starting to get used to their new feel. But she is driving the ball very well.

The official start of summer, the Summer Solstice, is just around the corner (June 20th this year). With our restaurant reopening 2 days later on June 22nd, I am sure we will be keeping our heads down for the next 2 weeks as we work to finish off all of our spring projects.

And of course with summer approaching, where ever you may be, keep the ball in the fairway and don't forget your sun screen!

Mary giving her "Baby" a bath 

Around the inn you can forget about the melted snow banks, the fresh cut grass, the planted gardens, the arrival of the summer solstice in 3 weeks....If you really want to know when summer officially arrives in Killington all you need to do is to look for Mary tooling around town in her gold 1973 Mustang with the top down.

The Mustang has now officially made its trek from it's winter garage to it's summer residence. In the process, Mary decided to give "Baby" it's early summer bath before the inaugural ride of the 2012 summer season.

Just add water....

Mary in full regalia planting the garden in front of the Birch Ridge Inn 

The outdoor migration of plants has begun.

With the completion of the rebuilding of the front garden wall at the inn, Mary has begun her work to make the space come alive.

For several months now the inside of the inn has been turned into a veritable green house to start plants for the inns summer gardens. Every window with a south facing view has seen plants being started; some from seed, other from bulbs harvested from the gardens before the ground froze last fall. In conjunction with her indoor garden of seedlings, for the last several weeks Mary has been working outside in her "bug suit" preparing the gardens to receive the growing plants. But always remembering that we live in the mountains in a climate than can turn hostile to tender young plants, Mary is always hesitant to begin the mass migration plants she has started from her faux green houses to the inns gardens until Memorial Day weekend.

But now the mass migration has begun. The plants are moving outside to their summer homes. Just add water....if it were only that simple!

Mary started the efforts last week with the chef's herb garden behind the inn. (Our restaurant reopens for dinner service on June 22nd). Yesterday she moved plantings to the front garden by the wall I rebuilt. Today she is focusing on some of the gardens in front of and beside the inn. The great news (for me) is that she genuinely likes working in her gardens. I am not sure how she does it in the bug suit (my tolerance for temperature is much too sensitive to work so covered up, and I have the bug bite buffet from the time I was working outside to prove it.) But, as we don't have any small children around the inn to scare, her bug suit serves her well as she enjoys digging in the dirt around the inn.

Right now the plants are just little green stubs, random shoots, and small clusters of leaves. In several weeks, with some sunshine and some constant attention, they will become alive in color as their flowers begin to bloom. By July it will all look effortless....

Just add water....

Mixing a bucket of concrete to repair the front garden wall at the Birch Ridge Inn 

It all sounds so easy. The label on the bag of concrete mix could not have provided easier directions...."Just add water"... And so started a 10 day spring project (half days) just after we got back from our vacation.

In front of the inn, between the parking lot and the sidewalk, sits the front garden of the inn. The garden is contained by a slate wall, roughly 60 feet, which slopes to match the grade of the sidewalk. 14 years ago, using scrape slate block we got from the Taran Brothers Quarry in Poultney Vermont, I spent the better part of 6 weeks putting together the intricate jigsaw puzzle which turned into the wall. In the intervening years, the wall has been scorched by bright summer sun, buried under mountainous snow banks, scraped by snow plows, hit by cars, sideswiped by delivery trucks... You name it.....but it has held up quite well over that time.

But it was time for some repair work. Most of the cap stones were loose, the result of many winter freeze thaw cycles. The top course of bricks (and then some in places) were loose, the result of car bumpers contacting the wall as people parked their cars. Yes it was time, before something major happened causing a catastrophic failure of some kind. So 2 weeks ago, the project began.

"Just add water" the six, 60lb bags of concrete mix proclaimed.

The project started with digging a trench in the garden right behind the wall. The soil of the garden was acting to bind the wall. This is normally a good thing as it provides stability; but for the repair project I wanted some instability so I could determine which stones were loose needing repair.

With the trench dug, I was able to get a true view of the magnitude of the needed repairs. The low side of the wall to the far right, was in pretty good shape. The last pier of stones needed the top row reset; but the next pier up had virtually no damage. This contrasted with the row closest to stairs leading into the inn. Being much taller than a normal car bumper, this section of the wall was very fragile. It required that multiple courses of stones be rebuilt, with some additional grout work required on the lower courses.

Once I started mixing concrete, it was pretty easy. Since there are other things to do at the inn, I limited the work flow to one bag of concrete per day. This gave me a realistic daily goal, as well as an opportunity to make adjustments along the way.

Early last night, I finished the job. I refilled the ditch I had dug with about 20 wheel barrows of dirt. Now it's Mary's turn to do her thing and get flowers planted for the summer.

Just add water....