lummi island wine tasting dec 20 ’19 winter solstice
click on photos for larger images
Friday Breads This Week
Cranberry Walnut Braid – Not a quick bread but a yeast bread enriched with buttermilk, eggs, sugar, butter and lemon. Then stuffed full of dried cranberries and toasted walnuts. This bread has a soft, tender crumb and is bursting with flavor. Truly a celebration bread that is a great addition to your Christmas table -or Christmas morning breakfast as french toast! – $5/loaf
Caramelized Hazelnut Squares – an unusual bread in that it uses four different preferments made with different flours and techniques. Made with bread flour, freshly milled whole wheat and rye flours and is enriched with sugar and milk as well as being chock full of the caramelized hazelnut in the title. The end result is a special bread full of flavor for the holiday season – $5/loaf
The pastry being delivered this week is Christmas Stollen which had to be ordered last week due to the lengthy preparation.
(breads must be pre-ordered by Wednesday for pickup here at the wine shop at our Friday wine tasting, 4-6pm. Planning a visit to the Island? Email us to get on the mailing list!)
Holiday Hours
We will be open our regular Friday-Saturday hours through December.
Please join us for our Fifteenth Annual “East Coast New Year’s Eve Party” from 7-9pm on Tuesday, December 31! We provide the wine, and You bring something delicious to share! When the ball drops in Times Square three hours East, we break out the Bubbly, toast our Great Good Fortune to live in this wonderful community, belt out Auld Lang Syne, and offer our Best Hopes that Aught-Twenty unfolds well for our Country and our Planet!
This event is our annual opportunity to thank all of you for your support during past year, and toast to even more good times in Aught-Twenty!
…Arrrr, ‘n’ don’t ferget, lads and lassies, it now be time to start plannin’ yer Finger Foods to share for our Annual Best Snack Awards! This year everyone will get a ballot to vote for The Best Tastin’ Dish, (which wins a $25 gift certificate!), and Best Lookin’ Dish (which wins a $15 gift certificate!) So make ’em Tasty an’ make ’em Purty, eh…?!
Red Willow Vineyard
The geography and geology of Yakima Valley’s Red Willow vineyard was shaped by the numerous cataclysmic Lake Missoula floods at the end of the last Ice Age. Periodically Glacial lake Missoula, over a mile deep, would undercut the melting glacial ice, launching a 300-foot wall of water across across what became eastern Washington. The swirling flood waters left a layered mound of ancient soils of richly varying soil types, including sandstone and river rocks from the ancient flows of the Columbia river.
After being farmed for many decades, in the early 70’s WSU agronomist Walter Clore planted experimental vineyards involving over 300 grape varietals. His pioneering work demonstrated laid the foundation for the development of the Washington State wine industry, and his work with Red Willow vignerons demonstrated the potential of the vineyard for wine grapes in general and for syrah in particular. Syrah cuttings came from the Joseph Phelps winery in Napa Valley.
Vineyard owner Mike Sauer, working with Columbia Winery winemaker David Lake, noticed the strong resemblance between Red Willow and the iconic hot, steep, south-facing slopes of Hermitage in France’s Northern Rhone wine region– so much so that they erected a little chapel on the slope above the vineyard which strongly resembles the Jaboulet vineyard and chapel at Hermitage.
This week’s Red Willow Syrah was made from Red Willow grapes by Lady Hill Winery in Oregon, and there’s a lot to like!
Mar a Lago Update: Guiding Principles
Whew, here it is it only Thursday and it has already been an Emotionally Exhausting Week, mostly due to the relentless shouting of Republicans through the House Impeachment Hearings. It is tempting to embark on our own R U Kidding Me??? screed on the Relentless Republican Insistence that any Remotely Plausible Hypothesis effectively Trumps all Scrupulously Documented Facts, especially if delivered with Righteous Anger and Feigned Victimhood.
But we have all had Quite Enough of that this week, and need a break. We turn instead to a few of the many memorable and encouraging quotations evoked by the Impeachment discussion.
The Lincoln Project:
— a new group founded by prominent New York attorney George Conway (husband of Kelly Anne Conway, the Tweetster‘s Czar on Alternative Facts). As described in a recent op-ed in the New York Times, the goal of the Project is to assure the T’ster does not get a second term. Mr. Conway has creds as an Old School Conservative who has joined with several other like-minded people to form the Project. Their Mission is to Defeat the Tweetster at the ballot box in 2020. “We do not undertake this task lightly nor from ideological preference. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain. However, the priority for all patriotic Americans must be a shared fidelity to the Constitution and a commitment to defeat those candidates who have abandoned their constitutional oaths, regardless of party. Electing Democrats who support the Constitution over Republicans who do not is a worthy effort.”
Isaac Asimov
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
Alexander Hamilton as quoted by Rep. Adam Schiff
“When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date 13,445 as of 10/10/19
This week’s tasting
Ronan by Clinet Bordeaux Blanc ’15 France $15
80% sauv blanc, 20% semillon; fresh and appealing aromas of yuzu, grapefruit, white flowers, and passion fruit; flavors of citrus, white fruits and warm spices are fleshy yet crisp and clean.
Chateau Sicot Bordeaux Superieur ’16 France $14
Classic right bank Bordeaux, organically farmed, and a blend of Merlot, Cabernet, Cab Franc and Petit Verdot. Aged for a year in used and new barrique.
Carmen Carmenere ’17 Chile $16
Aromas of fresh berries, baking spices and chocolate get this wine going; full bodied yet balanced, with toasty black fruit flavors with grip and intensity; full bodied yet balanced, with blackberry, herbal plum and spices.
La Quercia Aglianico ‘17 Italy $13
The new vintage of one of our favorite italian reds; full bodied with notes of ripe plum and white pepper on smooth, fine-grained tannins. A lovely match with a wide range of savory dishes.
Ad Lucem Syrah ’14 Oregon-Wash $38
Eggplant purple color with subtle notes of vanilla bean, mulled plum, and brambled blackberries; on the palate rich and concentrated flavors of blackberry liquor and intricate barrel spices, finishing with both red and black fruits, a lingering and balanced mouthfeel and a sweet, juicy finish.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
2072 Granger Way
