The Sun Never Sets on Good Ideas

by C&RB Staff (editor@clubandresortbusiness.com)
June 2008
 

When the staff at the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa. began planning its 2008 Club Events and Entertainment Calendar, a thought was suggested: With wine dinners continue to grow in popularity, why not compliment the ones the club would be hosting throughout the year by taking the idea outside, once the weather got nice?

And so it was that Merion's "Sundowner Dinner" concept was conceived, to hold an intimate wine dinner at dusk on the club's storied course (which will be the site of the U.S. Open in 2013). Plans were made to set up tables near Merion's 17th Tee, overlooking a unique feature of the course known as "the Quarry."

"The original plan was to keep it small-about 20 people or so," says Clive Smith, Merion's Director of Food & Beverage. "But after our first [indoor] wine dinner in January, when we mentioned it while talking about our other plans for 2008, the excitement snowballed. Soon, we had 40 members signed up."

To keep the outdoor dinner intimate, the Merion staff decided to limit the Sundowner to 40 (and start a wait list, as interest continued to build). Then the staff set to work planning the particulars of the event.

"We decided to set up five farm tables, each seating eight, to serve a family-style meal," Smith reports. It was determined that the first Sundowner dinner would feature South African wines, to take advantage of Smith's special knowledge of those vintages (he is a native of that country).

The price for the dinner, which was "not planned as a money maker, but as a memorable dinner," Smith notes, was set at $50 per person. The menu, as planned and prepared by Merion's Executive Chef, Jerry Schreck, included flower pot bread, smoked tenderloin of beef with blue chees and pear relish, Maine lobster with popcorn shoots and champagne vinaigrette, lemon free-range chicken salad, cornmeal fried green tomatoes, stuffed zucchini squash with ratatouille, marinated artichokes, and russett asiago potato skins. Dessert was blueberry peach pan dowdy, with corn ice cream.

As guests arrived, they were offered (along with passed hors d'oeuvres) a glass of Pearly Bay Celebration Sparkling, a semi-sweet sparkling wine from the Cape Winelands.

During dinner, two different South African wines from the Warwick Estate Winery were served: a 2006 Sauvignon Blanc and a 2003 blend called Three Cape Ladies.

While the weather cooperated splendidly, pulling off the event still had its challenges, Smith says-most prominently, setting it up without disrupting play on the golf course, and then breaking it down in the fading light.

Still, it was hailed as an unqualified success, so much so that another Sundowner Dinner was quickly scheduled for July-with the 28 names on the waitlist who weren't able to attend the first dinner quickly contacted to get a head start on filling up the tables for the next time around of what is sure to now become a regular, but still-always-special feature of Merion's annual events calendar.

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