lummi island wine tasting june 16 ’23
Hours through June: Fridays from 4-6pm
wild roses at the Legoe Bay slough
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Kamut Levain – Kamut, aka khorasan wheat, is an ancient, protein-rich grain discovered in a cave in Iran in the 70’s that many people who can’t tolerate wheat find more digestible. This bread is made with a levain that is fermented overnight before being mixed with with bread flour and fresh milled whole kamut flour. It has a nutty, rich flavor and makes a golden color loaf. – $5/loaf
Barley & Rye w/ Pumpkin Seeds – Made with a levain that is fermented overnight before the final dough is mixed with a nice mix of bread flour and fresh milled rye, barley and whole wheat flours. Some buttermilk makes for a tender crumb, honey for sweetness and toasted pumpkin seedsfor flavor and texture. – $5/loaf.
and pastry this week…
Rum Raisin Brioche: A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with golden raisins and chunks of almond paste and (wait there’s more!) topped with a chocolate glaze before baking!- 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Wine of the Week: Clos Sainte Magdeleine ’21 France $34
courtesy https://shop.kermitlynch.com
Cassis is a stunning piece of geography, set lovingly along the Mediterranean coast between Marseilles and Toulon. The carefully groomed vineyards at Clos Sainte Magdeleine sit on coastal bluffs in the heart of the Parc National des Calanques. The softly beautiful setting is a perfectly integrated blend of the area’s natural beauty and the care with which development has incorporated and even enhanced it in some ways. Steep limestone slopes and clear blue-green waters, delicate scents of garrigue and the soft Mediterranean air round out the charm that makes every wine taste even better.
We visited Clos Sainte Magdeleine several years ago, and fell in love with this lovely, richly textured white wine, and it is a great pleasure to have found a source for it and to have it on the tasting list for this weekend. The blend is 40% Marsanne, 30% Ugni blanc, 25% Clairette, and 5% Bourboulenc.
Vineyards have been cultivated here for some 2,500 years. The chalky soil, the sun, and the salt air make a perfect habitat for this unique and delicious blend of Rhone region white varietals. Come by and taste it!
This week’s wine tasting
Clos St. Magdeleine Cassis Blanc ’21 France $34
40% Marsanne, 30% Ugni blanc, 25% Clairette, and 5% Bourboulenc; Rich aromas with salty traces of garrigue and peaches; full and fleshy on the palate with a savory minerality, a cleansing, salty-stony flavor and a honeyed, dry finish. Unique and delicious!
St. Cosme Crozes-Hermitage ’20 France $18
Granite slopes give nice structure and complexity, with aromas and flavors of black fruits, smoked bacon, black peppercorn, and incense.
Marques de Caceres Rioja Red Blend Organica ’21 Spain $18
75% Tempranillo, 25% Graciano; we all loved this wine when Judy poured samples of it three weeks ago, and found it a bit disappointing when we poured it at our tasting. So third time is the charm, right? How do we really feel about it?!
Economics of the Heart: A Moment of Traction…?
courtesy https://www.redarcelectronics.co.nz
Six months ago the County Public Works Dept. that runs our ferry (our only way to the mainland, about a mile away), announced that ferry financing was suddenly found to be on the brink of disaster and would require a substantial fare increase as soon as possible to avoid financial calamity. The announcement carried a tense urgency for immediate action by the Ferry Advisory Committee ( I am a member) and the County Council to get their fare increase request reviewed, discussed, and passed within barely a month…precious little time to review the numbers and the arguments.
For a whole bunch of reasons, for a few of us that story did not seem to meet the available facts, and we started asking questions. Over the next few months, it became increasingly clear that neither the numbers nor the offered rationales could stand up to closer scrutiny. Very slowly more and more residents became concerned and interested, dug into the data, and discovered more and more indefensible errors in the proposal. Each month brought a new battle for more time for review from the public, and to move faster with the fare increase for PW.
Public resistance led to a new, distracting proposal by the County Ferry Department to, under the auspices of “clarifying ambiguities,” completely rewrite the County Ordinance that governs ferry operations to remove existing, carefully crafted limits on what expenses can be charged to fare revenues. Meanwhile, further digging by Islanders continued to uncover even more accounting errors, assertions, and outright misrepresentations going back some fifteen years that have turned the forecasted shortfall into a $2 million surplus. And while it was good news when the fare increase proposal was finally withdrawn, at least temporarily, the Ferry Dept then shifted its focus to Plan B– gutting the guiding County ordinance of the every constraint that limits the kinds of expenses that can be charged against fare box revenue.
Under the existing statute, only “regular and routine maintenance” can be charged to fare revenues. The proposed PW rule changes remove that constraint completely, opening a very wide door to allow charging “anything that we can possibly classify as maintenance” as an ordinary operating expense.
This direction is clearly demonstrated by this document I recently put together from ten years of ferry maintenance expenditures. It is clear from the charts that for most of those years, it was rare to find any individual expenses more than about $25,000. However, in more recent years the graphs show a growing “mission creep” that reaches a crescendo in 2022 and already in 2023, with individual “repairs” some ten to twenty times higher than any others in ferry accounting history.
Last night a barrage of well-spoken public comments at our monthly LIFAC meeting, (watch video) along with a petition with nearly 600 signatures (from an early summer population of maybe 1200) requesting the Council to delay any action on the proposed ordinance changes) was approved by 5 to 1 majority, a significant accomplishment. The Council, in turn, meets next week to decide on that, and we are encouraging every interested Islander to attend the meeting to lobby against the ordinance change proposal. We are hoping the Council will heed the LIFAC resolution and postpone further discussion for at least another month.
Stay tuned. It appears to be increasingly true that “just because we’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get us!”
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2072 Granger Way