lummi island wine tasting may 3-4 ’19
Friday Breads This Week
Buttermilk Currant – A really flavorful loaf made with bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. A little honey for sweetness balances the flavors of the whole grain, buttermilk makes for a soft and tender crumb. Then lots of currants and just a little rosemary round out the flavors. – $5/loaf
Barley, Whole Wheat, & Rye Levain – a levain bread where the sourdough culture is built up over several days and allowed to ferment overnight before the final dough is mixed. Made with bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat, barley and rye flours. A hearty whole grain bread that is a great all around bread – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Brioche au Chocolate – A rich brioche dough made with plenty of butter, eggs and sugar, rolled out and spread with pastry cream before sprinkling with dark chocolate. The dough is folded over all that delicious filling and cut into individual pieces. As with all pastry quantities are limited so if you want these delightful pastries be sure and get your order in early. -2/$5
This Year’s Robin’s Nest, cont’d
click on photos to enlarge
Over the last week the chicks grew almost as big as the parents. As you might imagine, as the week went on it meant more and more food deliveries to the nest by both the roosting mom (only at night, too busy schlepping worms during the day!) and (we presume) the dad. In this photo taken yesterday, the dad ( you can only see his legs and tail) is precariously perched to feed one of the other nestlings not in sight. Balance is not a problem, though, because these feedings take less than about two seconds– seriously! So yes, this was a Very Lucky photo! And, as you can infer, the nestling is now of comparable size to the adult.
A couple of hours later there was only one young ‘un left in the nest. He would stand up from time to time and explore stretching and flapping his little wings. Hey these things must be good for Something, right? And most likely this one had seen the siblings jump out (Geronimo!) and could probably hear them nearby. So s/he had to be getting pretty motivated.
A little later it was taking a rest, as if to say, well, maybe I’ll just put this off till tomorrow…but a moment of distraction later, there was a kind of “clunk” across the yard, which prompted a look upward to find the bird was GONE, just like THAT! And we missed the Maiden Flight!
Not quite ready to say goodbye, we prowled over by the garage about 50′ away. Heard some rustling in the thicket of snowberry branches and cautiously approached, camera ready. A few more rustlings led to this photo, in which you will (of course!) recognize the same bird as in the previous photo (we are not making this up!)…So Cool!!!
Go well, Little Robins…!
Latta
Last July we poured Andrew Latta’s 2013 GSM (grenache/syrah/mourvedre), a standard Southern Rhone blend growing in popularity with Washington winemakers and their customers. It was a Big Hit with all of you, so finally we have brought in more, this time the 2015 vintage which we are pouring this weekend.
After growing up in Kentucky Andrew worked his way up from being a busboy in local restaurants to being a sommelier at a high-end resort in Thailand. He came back to America, got a job helping out at Washington’s Dunham Cellars, learned to make wine, and eventually became winemaker at Seattle’s semi-iconic Charles Smith winery. He opened Latta in 2011, and has set a standard for excellence at every step.
Each of his wines is a Complete Package, from opening aroma to lingering finish. At the moment we are enjoying our last bottle of the delightful 2013 GSM, and looking forward to sharing the 2015 with you this weekend. Admittedly we have not tasted it yet; but we have high confidence it will be Superb!
Mar a Lago Update: When the Truth is Found to be Lies
There’s a LOT going on this week, all of it suggesting Irreconcilable Polarities in Human Perception, Cognition, and Understanding which have profound implications for Our Long-Term Survival.
It is difficult to look at Human History and come to any other conclusion that there are Two Distinct Species of Human Beings. One group finds Comfort in Authority, and the other finds Oppression in Authority.
The Authoritarians long ago invented Religion to Institutionalize the Rules that Everyone Should Follow, and History is replete with examples of the Horrific lengths these Authoritarians would reach in the Name of Order. Millions upon millions of human beings have been ostracized, imprisoned, tortured, and murdered since the Dawn of so-called Civilization by the rigid Laws and Thought-Police Enforcers that Authoritarians always need to stay in Power.
The Dominant Event this week has been the Defiant Positioning of Authoritarian Attorney General Barr as he dissembled on Reality As We Know It…i.e. Lied to Congress in response to direct questions. The significance of this event was articulately amplified in an Op-Ed by former FBI Director James Comey in which he named Barr as yet another example how subordination to the Tweetster “Eats One’s Soul” bite by bite, submission by submission. Today we see the entire Republican Congress and Administration pledging Fealty to someone who has been documented with having presented 10,000 Lies as Truth since his so-called Election.
All of this wreaks havoc with the comfortable notions we have learned about Good and Evil, Right and Wrong. Everybody knows the Good Guys wear White Hats, and the Bad Guys wear Black Hats. So from childhood we have always had a vague uneasiness, wondering why would anyone would Choose to wear a Black Hat. Only two possibilities come to mind: either they know and embrace that they are the Bad Guys, and consider it just the small price they must pay to be in Charge and Collect their Daily Fealty; or they are able to close their eyes to all the suffering they create and Pretend they are the Good Guys who save people from Sin by Whatever Means Necessary.
Scary stuff.
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 10,000 as of 5/1/19
This week’s wine tasting
Phantom Chardonnay ’17 Calif $17
Fermented and aged sur lie without oak; delivers rich aromas of white and yellow fruits, with bright crisp notes of citrus zest, honey, apple, and spicy minerality on the long, broad finish.
Campuget Tradition Rose ’17 France $11
Pale brilliant pink. Nervy, mineral-tinged aromas of orange zest and strawberry; Silky and light on its feet, offering zesty, light-bodied red berry and blood orange flavors and a bracing touch of bitter quinine.
Perazzeta Maremma Toscana Sangiovese ’15 Italy $12
Handpicked grapes from soils of ancient seabed fossils and aged for a year in neutral oak; bursts rich, ripe flavors and aromas of dark cherry, rosemary, sea salt, and violets.
Montfaucon Cotes du Rhone ’16 France $13
50% Grenache co-fermented on skins with syrah, cinsault, & old vines carignan and matured in concrete tanks; beautiful aromas of cherries, black currant; fresh and round on the palate.
Latta GSM ’15 Washington $28
58% Grenache, 23% Syrah and 19% Mourvèdre ; the mineral, savory, bright cherry aromatics of Grenache, the deep, meaty, earthy wildness of Mourvedre, and just the right amount of funk-laced floral Syrah. An outstanding wine from a warm vintage.
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2072 Granger Way