The Cape is not flashy off-season, Dennis even less so. Although Route 6A is a main thoroughfare, there is something about this easy-to-blow-by town that makes it feel like a discovery. You have to get out of your vehicle and nose around. Tucked behind the Post Office, the Harvest Gallery Wine Bar was our first stop.
When wood smoke mixes with salt air, the desire to hunker down with friends, a glass of wine, and live music is strong. If the Chandler Travis Three-O is playing at the Harvest you are in luck.
Sipping a merlot to the eclectic jug-jazz-ragtime sound of this happy-go-lucky foursome is the most fun one can have without hopping a jetliner and landing in Montreal. Travis, a well-known Cape crooner whose band The Incredible Casuals rocked the Beachcomber in Wellfleet in the ’90s, plays here frequently. The barefoot guitarist strums in the middle of the gallery-turned-dining room as jack-of-all-trades Berke McKelvey strolls around the tables playing his clarinet. It’s an authentic dose of Cape Cod cool. The band’s Appalachian-era singalongs had the all-ages crowd grooving in their seats.
Painter Michael Pearson is a Dennis native who has been gradually turning this gallery into a happening mid-Cape joint. In the seven years the Harvest has been open, it has become as known for its musical lineup as for its hidden stock of mind-blowing wines.
On the night we visited, a man who had just flown in from Chicago was in awe. “It’s the coolest place around,’’ said Paul McCarthy, who considers the musical acts at the Harvest on par with the best clubs of Chitown.
It’s worth hitting the Harvest on a Thursday for its unorthodox wine tasting. For $20, a knowledgeable distributor delivered a sequence of five 2-ounce pours from Merriam Vineyards to our table over the course of two hours. It was leisurely, personal, and graceful. Served with a pitch-perfect cheese plate of brie, fontal, and cheddar from Shelburne, Vt., and a basket of extra crisp gourmet crackers, it was a sophisticated start to a last-minute getaway.
