lummi island wine tasting jan 22 ’21
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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 – a flavorful artisan bread also made with a poolish, fresh milled buckwheat and bread flour. 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. Buckwheat has an earthy flavor that in this bread is balanced with a little honey. Some toasted walnuts add a nice crunch. This bread goes well with meats and cheeses – $5/loaf
Individual Cinnamon Rolls – These are made with a rich sweet roll dough that is full of eggs, butter and sugar. The dough is rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Then rolled up and sliced into individual rolls for baking. Then topped off with a cream cheese glaze. And boy are they delicious!! I can only make a limited number so get your order in early so you don’t lose out – 2/$5.
Wine of the Week: Penley Phoenix Cabernet
A bouquet of dark, berried, inky fruit with plenty of sawdusty/smoky oak. While it’s warm with alcohol it remains smooth, supple and persistent. It’s all blackcurrant, bay leaves and rich palate. Tannin is fine-grained. This is a complete and harmonious wine with great persistence of flavor. Bright and delicious.
Penley Estate Phoenix Cabernet Sauvignon ’17 Australia $18
The first vines were planted in Coonawarra in South Australia in 1890, predominantly shiraz. The terra rossa soil was quickly recognized as something special covering limestone and dolomite bedrock.
And yes, we will have a bottle open if you drop by!
Wine Emergencies…Who Ya Gonna Call?
While Covid continues to limit our movements and associations, we will continue to help you keep your wine shelves topped up. We know how it is…one minute your wine shelves are reassuringly stocked, and the very next day you reach for something and OMD, where did it all go?? It happens to all of us during these undifferentiated days and weeks of semi-quarantine.
But fear not, mis amigos! When a wine emergency strikes YOUR wine pantry, just click on the Order Wine link in the header above to browse our list of currently available wines with tasting notes and prices. When you have made your selections you can phone us with your order or email us using the Contact Us link above. We will confirm your order and make arrangements for pickup/delivery at your convenience. EZ-PZ!
Mar a Lago Update: And We Thought Nixon Was A Long National Nightmare…!
The last five years (including the 2016 primaries) have revolved around 24/7 chaos kept churning by the now-silenced (!) Tweetster. Shhh….listen…for a moment, could it be…? Yes, the noise has stopped! Order is being restored, and we find ourselves in a state of weary exhaustion, wrapped in warm blankets waiting for it all to make some kind of sense.
We have been thinking the last few days about the role of Populism in the rise of Trumpism. During the Primary Campaigns in 2015, we all noticed the curious parallels between the rise of Trump on the Right and Sanders on the Left. Both were mavericks from their party mainstreams, and drew wide support. Trump, already a media creation, drew constant press attention, while Sanders, despite drawing huge crowds, got far less coverage than Trump or Hillary Clinton. The point here is that Populism was a big draw among voters on both sides, suggesting that a large swath of the population was dissatisfied with the direction of the country.
Populism generally arises from voter alienation from bread and butter economic issues and social hardships that cause resentment among the affected populace. As we discussed last week, the Tea Party had been active against Obama from the beginning, and Trump had already jumped on that bandwagon with his Birther conspiracy against Obama. It was only a few short steps from Birtherism to the need for a Border Wall.
Historically, right-wing populism has relied on the appeal of xenophobic and racist anger against the Other of the moment, whoever could be blamed for their fears and failures, their dwindling share of the pie. A good example is the Know-Nothing Party, “a xenophobic political movement that arose in the 1840s, in reaction to a huge influx of Irish Catholic and German immigrants.” Native-born Protestants saw these immigrants as job-stealing threats to their cultural and religious identity. Btw, as recently as the 1920’s my Mother’s Irish Catholic family in Maine experienced KKK cross burnings on their lawns.
Such groups also proliferated in Europe as Nazis and Fascists in the 1930’s. Clearly Donald Trump represented right-wing populism, inflaming his followers (all, ironically, including him, descendants of immigrants) against more recent immigrants.
Left-wing populism has generally expressed a desire for a more equitable sharing of the economic pie. William Jennings Bryan stoked such a national movement for decades around 1900. His work was eventually manifested in much of FDR’s New Deal, redistributing wealth and opportunity from richer to poorer, favoring unions, an eight-hour workday, women’s suffrage, and a progressive income tax. It is worth noting that Republicans who tout the “Good Old Days” of the Fifties always fail to mention that the New Deal still included a 90% marginal tax rate on the most wealthy, and yet the economy grew handsomely.
Today Trump is out and Biden is in. That’s very Good News, Hallelujah, brothers and sisters, for those of us on the Left. With the Miracle of Georgia’s two Senate seats, we have a narrow path to progress over the next two years for an agenda of equal opportunity, more equitable distribution of wealth and income, universal health care, and, perhaps most important, saving Life on Earth from Climate Extinction.
It’s a small and temporary opening against the formidable enemies of democracy we have seen clearly over the past three months. After two decades of Mitch McConnell’s lies we should take a lesson from legendary coach Vince Lombardi: Winning isn’t the Most Important Thing; Winning is the Only Thing.
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