lummi island wine tasting april 12-13 ’24
Hours, April 12-13 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
mama and maturing eaglets
This week’s wine tasting
Juggernaut Sauvignon Blanc $17 New Zealand $17
Marlborough’s Wairau Valley has a global reputation for its bright, vibrant acidity and aromas of fresh-cut grass and
gooseberry and citric notes of zesty grapefruit, lemon, and passion fruit that carry through the elegant finish.
Masseria del Feudo Nero d’Avola Sicilia ’21 Italy $19
Cherry, plum, vanilla and toast highlight a smooth, well-balanced wine with easy flavor, soft tannins, and silky consistency, pairing beautifully with stewed meats or pork dishes, (or pretty much anything edible!)
Alexander Valley Vineyards Zinfandel ’19 California $19
Dark purple/red hue; spicy, earthy aromas of black cherry, pepper, plum, raspberry and citrus; rich earthy flavors of cherry, plum, boysenberry, black pepper, cranberry, apricot and a hint of chocolate…everything a California zin is supposed to be.
Friday Bread This Week
Poolish Ale – the preferment here is a poolish, made with bread flour, a bit of yeast and a nice ale beer for the liquid and fermented overnight. Mixed the next day with bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. This makes a great all around bread with a nice crisp crust – $5/loaf
Buckwheat Walnut & Honey – also made with a poolish of fresh milled buckwheat and bread flours. Buckwheat is not a grain it is actually a seed and closer in the plant family to rhubarb and sorrel than to wheat and contains no gluten– (**note: contains wheat flour so NOT gluten free). Buckwheat has an earthy/nutty flavor, a little honey and toasted walnuts. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Chocolate Muffins – Rich and delicious, great chocolate flavor, and a seductively moist texture: flour, brown sugar, sour cream, and eggs, with lotsa chocolate chips inside and sprinkled on top–2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list.
Wine of the Week: Alexander Valley Vineyards Zinfandel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Valley_AVA
Alexander Valley is a lovely wine region north of Santa Rosa and Napa Valley. Is is also the largest and most fully planted wine region in Sonoma County. Its many vineyards have a long-established reputation for high quality cab and merlot, which consistently deliver great flavor and texture from the alluvial soils and the hot days and cool nights that bless the entire Sonoma region. Zinfandel and Chardonnay also thrive in the region.
It is also a beautiful place just to drive through, soothed by its lush, intensely green and voluptuous vineyards. This area, east of Healdsburg and the Russian River which flows through the Valley, always seems many miles away from the hubbub of traffic just a few miles to the west.
But of course everyone already knows that vineyards themselves are soothing. Maybe it’s the constant care that keeps them healthy and thriving. Do vineyards just happen to be in beautiful places, or is it the vineyards that make these places beautiful…?
Economics of the Heart: Women to the Rescue
pink hats from the 2017 Inauguration protests
A recurring theme in this blog has been the inseparable relationship between values and facts. It’s not just that we like or prefer certain things. it’s that we make meaning from our experience based on our values, both consciously and unconsciously. Some people come into the wine shop and say “I don’t like chardonnay,” or “Red wines give me a headache.” Others might say, “I’m here to taste, whatcha pouring today?”
We all operate in a decision framework of our own personal construction, built from our experiences and the meanings we have made from them. We take it for granted that our beliefs about wine and art and beauty and politics are rational, consistent, and correct. Therefore it is not surprising that our personal values are not universal. Ten of us can share an experience and we can all make different meanings from it based on our unconscious values. This is why we have political divisions. I value a healthy planet. You prefer more $ in your pocket.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in today’s politics. It is no longer a simple ritual of “my idea is better than your idea (nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah) followed by negotiation, discussion, listening, learning, and compromising. Since about 1988, American politics has been turned into an ongoing war between our two dominant political parties, and compromise has become not only vanishingly rare, but also met with disdain, simian posturing, and fiddling faster and louder as the flames get higher and hotter.
Everybody knows at some level that this crap has to stop. The world is teetering on the abyss of an Earth-swallowing whirlpool of human making, and the brats who have taken over the toy box have climbed up into their little clubhouse to dance their little “victory” in stopping the business of government in its tracks. Meanwhile, the world teeters between the accelerating climate crisis and the growing menace of authoritarian rule everywhere, including here. As everybody knows.
At the moment there seems to be only one brightening ray of hope for pulling our country, our planet, and our world out of this global death spiral: Our Women!
There are a lot of moving parts in this picture, but the one force that has been gaining some traction in opposition to this authoritarian implosion is the rebellion against forced birth triggered by the red-state-forced-birth bandwagon. Numerous states have already passed legislation to restore every woman’s right to choose, and others will follow.
Picture OBI-WAN Kenobi saying: “Help us, Princess Leia…you’re our only Hope!”
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