lummi island wine tasting march 25 ’22
Open At Last!!
Based on today’s updated Covid data, case rates across all age groups in our county are now essentially Zero…!
Don’t know about you, but when we take even a moment to think about that, we find a mixture of elation, disbelief, relief, and sadness. It’s been a Very Long two years, and we are not the same as we were before. In most of the developed world, we can begin what is likely to be a long healing process as we turn our collective attention to vaccinating the vast population of the less developed world.
For those of you here on the Island, we are again OPEN for wine tasting and sales this Saturday (3/26) from 4-6 pm. Anyone with boosted vaccine status is welcome; please bring vax card.
There is NO BREAD PICKUP this week as our baker is away attending NCAA women’s college basketball playoffs. However, weekly bread pickup will return to the wine shop next Friday, April Fool’s Day.
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. The 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 needed for pickup the following Friday.
Mailing List Issues: The Continuing Saga
This week our little saga continues as we try a new approach to mailing out our weekly post. This week we are trying out some new software that might or might not take care of the problem. And due to that uncertainty, we are taking the precaution of emailing the link directly to our mailing list as well as trying to activate the RSS feeder.
Best case scenario is that you will receive the actual blog in one email, and a link to it in another at about the same time. Any other outcome means something didn’t work as it should.
After all, it should be clear to everyone at this point that it Really Is a Jungle out there, so we need to lower expectations and take a long view.
This Week’s $5 Tasting
Planeta Segreta Il Bianco Sicily $14
50% Grecanico, 30% Chardonnay, 10% Viognier, 10% Fiano. Clear yellow with greenish hints; engaging aromas of citrus and flowers and hints of peach, papaya and chamomile. Balanced and refined, with a lingering and refreshing finish.
Jordanov Vranec ’15 Macedonia $12
Aromas of ripe berries with notes of clove, nutmeg and cardamom. In the mouth it is full bodied with ripe dark fruit and hints of herbs with a noticeable dark chocolate edge on the well-structured finish. Enjoy with cheese, beef, lamb dishes or grilled sausage.
Rasa Occam’s Razor Red Columbia Valley ’18 Washington $22
Bouquet of blackberry and cassis, with nuances of spice, leather, vanilla, and espresso. Full-bodied palate shows suave tannins with rich notes of dark berries, black cherry, and vanilla with hints of cigar, chocolate, cedar, and spice.
The Economics of the Heart: Power and Cruelty
It can get confusing being human. As primates, social hierarchy is our natural milieu, leading us to gather in tribes, to engage in all manner of competition with each other for food, mates, status, and group approval. This is a game we are all involved with and all play with varying degrees of ambition, dedication, and inner need.
We have an ongoing fascination with our curious situation as primates, having instincts of both herd animals (safety in numbers) and predators (strength, deception, ambush, murder). Some of us just want to be left alone to graze and forage, and some crave to control who gets to graze where. It is interesting (and disturbing!) that our entire world in the past few years has been so hugely influenced by two such men, both textbook Authoritarians, narcissistic and psychopathic, with no allegiance to principle or truth. Like the “confidence men” of the 1950’s TV series Racket Squad, they are masters of “patting you on the back with one hand and picking your pocket with the other.”
Such people are not “leaders” in the familiar sense of inspiring others to follow or serve a common purpose. Because they are pathological, they can only feel safe when they hold such complete Authority that no one can ever hurt them…again.
Putin’s sadistic assault on Ukraine is a sad business all around, and it is impossible to accept that it offers any strategic or tactical value to the Russian nation. It is all about the emotional security of this one little man who happens to hold terrifying power for destruction and no apparent moral boundaries on its use. Below are some thought-provoking excerpts from a piece by Dominic Lawson of the Daily Mail which caught our eye:
- Putin is an absolute ruler — which is very much in the Russian tradition. Hence the old joke (sort of) that Russia is ‘an autocracy tempered by assassination’.
- ‘Government in Russia, like most of Russian business, is dominated by gangsterism.’
- ‘After Putin began his unspeakably cruel and bloody assault on independent Ukraine and its people, the Russian novelist Vladimir Sorokin wrote: ‘For Putin, life itself has always been a special operation…From the black order of the KGB, he learned not only contempt for ‘normal people’, but also [its] main principle: not a single word of truth…’
- ‘With this war, Putin has crossed a line. The mask is off.’
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2072 Granger Way