lummi island wine tasting march 30 ’18

(note: some photos will enlarge when clicked)

Bread this week

Prairie Bread – Named for the goodness of the grains that grow on the prairie:  bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat, oats, and cornmeal,  loaded up with poppy, flax, sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds with just a hint of brown sugar. – $5/loaf

Le Pave d’autrefois – Which translates roughly as “old paving stones.” This is a ciabatta like bread which has a lot of hydration so it isn’t really shaped so much as simply divided into approximate squares – hence the paving stones name. Made with a mix of bread flour as well as fresh milled whole wheat, rye and buckwheat flours for a lot of hearty whole grain goodness. A great artisan bread. -$5/paving stone

And pastry this week…a traditional Easter bread…

Columba di Pasqua- (aka Easter Dove) A traditional Italian Easter cake similar to Christmas panettone. Made with a sweet italian levain, flour and plenty of eggs, sugar and butter plus candied orange peel. Topped with a crunchy almond and hazelnut glaze and pearl sugar before baking in a dove shaped baking form. – $5/loaf

Sunday Concert April 22!

It’s become an annual Event: our Spring Concert with singer-songwriter-minstrel Robert Sarazin Blake! This year’s concert will be from 4-6 pm on Sunday, April 22 in the wine shop!

As Robert’s many local followers know, he is a modern-day troubadour who travels widely (mostly here in the Pacific Northwest and in Ireland) to share his craft, very often in pub atmospheres like our dear wine shop. Robert has visited the shop several times in the last few years, and we have grown fond of his engaging style. For those of you who have not attended any of our concerts, know that our little shop is a great venue for acoustic music, and Robert’s performances are always engaging and energizing.

Suggested performance donation is a modest $15 per person, and a selection of wines will be available by the glass. And since space is very limited, please confirm reservations asap!
Learn more about Robert’s music here.

T@da finds new home

Well, it would probably take one o’ Robert’s complicated ballads to describe our mixed feelings about it, but we have accepted an offer on our Darling Trailer, and she will soon have a new home…and Be a new home as well.

One of  the compelling aspects of travel of all sorts is that every day is filled with unique experiences, not like the day before, not like the day after. Everything is new and memorable, creating new sets of experiences that keep us attentive to the moment and free from our usual habits. This is what re-creation is all about, getting out of familiar patterns and attending to new and different experiences for awhile. Always Good Medicine, and Highly Recommended! We wish her new owners lots of great adventures!

Moulin a Vent Beaujolais

Moulin-a-Vent is one of the most noteworthy of the ten Beaujolais crus, located in the very north of the Beaujolais region,. Its wines are some of the most concentrated and tannic of the region, often developing spicy and earthy characteristics as they age.

The wines from Moulin a Vent are strongly influenced by pink granite and veins of manganese in the soil, which retards growth of both leaves and fruit.  As a result, Moulin a Vent produces smaller yields of high concentration that tend to be more structured, ageable, and intensely flavored than other Beaujolais crus.

We confess a lack of experience with gamay noir in general, so are happy to have found this interesting wine on a closeout from one of our distributors. Gamay is its own thing, not like Bordeaux grapes (cab, cab franc, merlot, malbec), not like Rhone (grenache, syrah, mourvedre), not like Burgundy (pinot noir). We hope you will come by and try it!

 

Mar a Lago Update: The Art of Propaganda 

The recent Serial Firings of top Cabinet officials has ratcheted up the Political Chaos Level to new heights: FBI, CIA, and National Security advisors are all Gone (looks even more Creepy when you write them in a list!), along with the VA director, all replaced with Hawkish Tweetster Loyalists. The only sane one in the picture these days seems to be our Defense Secretary; probably time to start wondering where is the Tweetster gonna find another Douglas MacArthur to replace him…? You know, the one who will cry, as Randy Newman sings it, “They All Hate us Anyhow…so Let’s Drop the Big One Now…!”

This particular Chaos does seem to slide measurably toward a more Chilling kind of Psychopathy. Maybe it’s Part of the Act: the Flexing, the Preening, the Parading, the Posturing. Or maybe it’s the leadup to the Tweetster’s Reichstag Moment, a phony crisis of such magnitude that he must impose Martial Law Immediately until we figure it out. Or maybe it’s about Making Side Deals with the Other Players so they can all get Richer.

Fact is, we Don’t Know; as with the Mueller investigation, all inquiries become Targets in themselves. But it is beginning to come into focus that the Tweets, the Lies, the Bluster, the Inconsistencies and the Contradictions are all part of a recognizable style of Propaganda first outlined in great detail by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf:

“Propaganda must… present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side and confined to a few bare essentials…slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”  more

 

This week’s wine tasting

Montinore Borealis White   Oregon   $12
Müller-Thurgau, Gewürztraminer, Riesling, and Pinot Gris; scents of orange blossom, ripe honeydew, guava and kiwi; sumptuous and round, bursting with stone fruit, Meyer lemon and juicy pear drizzled with caramel.

Dom. Belair Moulin a Vent Beaujolais ’15   France   $19
Perfumed and rich in tannins and generous, ripe black fruits. Aged nine months in wood, it shows hints of caramel and spice that adds extra dimension. It is juicy, ripe and needs to age further.

Chateau Mayne-Vieil Cuvee Alienor  ’15     France     $15
Old vines merlot; serious and sumptuous with perfumed fruits and firm tannins that will soften with age into dark blackberry and generous structure.

Pasanau Ceps Nous Garnacha ’14    Spain     $14
Ripe dark berries, licorice and a hint of smokiness on the perfumed nose. Plush, round and open-knit; a peppery note adds lift to warm blackberry, bitter cherry and licorice flavors. Focused and youthfully tannic.

Torbreck Woodcutter’s Shiraz ’16   Australia   $19
Rich, opulent fruit with a wonderful freshness and balance. An incredible deep, central core of dark fruit gives way to an intense textural mid palate full of cassis, plum, spice and dark chocolate.

 

 

 

Wine Tasting

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