lummi island wine tasting january 18 ’19
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Bread Friday
Poolish Ale – In place of water in the poolish, the liquid is a nice ale beer. I
look for one with a lot of flavor and this week I’m using a nice Belgian ale. The
final dough is 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 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 it 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. – $5/loaf
Ann another delicious pastry this week…
Chocolate Babka Rolls – A sweet pastry dough full of eggs, butter and sugar, rolled and spread with a chocolate filling, rolled up and cut into individual rolls and brushed with sugar syrup after baking. – 2/$5
Pomum
This week we return to an old favorite wine from a favorite Washington winemaker, Javier Alfonso of Pomum Cellars in Woodinville. The wine is his Pomum Red, a compelling blend of cab and cab franc, rounded out with malbec, petite syrah, and merlot. Javier grew up in Spain’s Ribero Del Duero region, and brings his heritage to his winemaking here in Washington. His wines show his preference for highly drinkable wines with rich, evolving, and lingering flavors, silky tannic depth and length, and a Muse that beckons “hey, Amigo, un vaso mas!”
A few years ago (OMD, just realized it has been seven!) Javier and wife Shyla made a surprise visit to the wine shop on a Saturday afternoon, and it was great fun. We remember this now because this weekend we are pouring his Pomum Red wine, and this vintage (sampling at this very moment!) is really Quite Delightful!
He also has a second label we have carried for some years called Idilico. At the moment we have his Idilico Garnacha on the shelf, and in warmer weather we generally carry his Albarino as well. Both bear the fingerprints of his winemaking style, which generally means “yes, you’re gonna like it!”
Pasanau
In the classic film “Sideways,” there is a scene where our male anti-hero asks our female heroine (as I see it) what was The Wine that made her Love Good Wine, like, OMD, I never knew Wine Could Taste This Good!
In our boy Donald’s case the wine that did it for him was Pasanau Finca de Planeta, a blend of cabernet sauvignon and garnacha from the iconic Spanish wine region of Priorat, about two hours west of Barcelona.
Pasanau is located in the Northwest corner of this very dry, rugged DOC very reminiscent of the American Southwest. Because its old vines have to grow deep into the ancient schist, limestone, and licorella soils to survive and produce fruit, they develop a certain profundity. We visited the winery a few years ago and were moved by its gnarly old vines and spectacular setting.
More important for you, by chance we have acquired a few bottles of the 2012 vintage of this wine at a substantial discount, allowing us to offer our limited supply for $29 each, a Substantial Discount…and we are pouring it for your tasting pleasure this weekend!
Mar a Lago Update: Bringing Back the Progressive Income Tax
Last week Nobel economist/ NY Times writer Paul Krugman wrote an interesting article about proposals of new Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for increasing the marginal tax rate on the extremely wealthy to something over 70%. Btw, that doesn’t mean the Super-Wealthy would pay 70% tax on their entire incomes; it means they would pay an increasing amount of tax per dollar earned as income increased, topping off at 70 cents per dollar earned over some very high amount.
The two main arguments for such progressive taxation, which worked extremely well in the U. S. between the Thirties and the Sixties, are 1) the marginal utility of money, and 2) the importance of competitive markets. In the first case, if you are living at subsistence level, a thousand dollars of additional income makes an enormous difference in your quality of life. But if you are a Bazillionaire, an additional thousand or even ten thousand dollars is completely inconsequential. In the second case, despite decades of Republican Trickle-Down Propaganda to the contrary, rigorous data analysis has shown clearly that Social Benefits to the Economy as a Whole are not at all decreased by higher marginal tax rates until they are between 70 and 80 %.
The Big Takeway here is that all The Economy got from the Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and the Tweetster Tax Cuts was a Smaller Overall Pie, Huge Increases in the National Debt, and exponentially increasing disparities between the Rich and Poor. As is clear from the graph in Krugman’s article, the exponentially increasing wealth of the Very Rich and the stagnation of the Overall Economy under Reagan, Bushes I and II, and the Tweetster have been the only consistent result of Tax Cuts for the top 1%, and Krugman is making a strong case that the Return of those very high marginal tax rates would make for a Bigger Overall Pie shared much more Equitably.
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 7,546 as of 1/1/19
This week’s wine tasting
Palama Salento Bianca Verdeca ’17 Italy $11
Refreshing, flavorful, and aromatic, with notes of lemon zest, salty minerality, and green herbs.
Sharecropper’s Pinot Noir ’17 Oregon $15
Aromas of bing cherry, rose petals and pomegranate with hints of baking spice and forest floor, and flavors of cherry, and olive with toasty cinnamon notes.
Martoccia Poggio Apricale ’17 Italy $15
Sangiovese Grosso with a little Merlot and Cab Franc; Fruity and persistent nose of wild berries and spice. Soft and balanced with fine tannins this Sant’Antimo Rosso works well with any meal!
Pomum Red ’14 Washington $19
Mostly cab and cab franc with malbec, petite verdot, merlot; aromas of both fresh and leathery red fruit and exotic spices; On the palate shows black cherry, cranberry and garrigue, fine elegant tannins and a long finish.
Celler Pasanau Finca La Planeta Priorat ’12 Spain $29
Crisp, focused aromas of ripe berries, tar, and spice; flavors of spicy plum, crushed peppercorn and mineral-rich schist; thorough and complex; drink through 2028.
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2072 Granger Way