lummi island wine tasting oct 21-22
Hours this weekend: 4-6pm both Friday and Saturday
Voluntary Covid protocols remain in place while the weather permits outside seating. Please use discretion and kindness in protecting your own safety and that of others, thanks!
Also note: though there WILL BE BREAD PICKUP NEXT FRIDAY, Oct 28, the wine shop will be CLOSED both Friday and Saturday, Oct 28-29.
Friday Bread Pickup This Week 4-5:30 pm
Poolish Ale – the preferment here is also a poolish, made with bread flour, a bit of yeast and a nice ale beer for the liquid and fermented overnight. 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 preferment, fresh milled buckwheat, and bread flour. Though buckwheat contains no gluten, this bread is not gluten free as it also includes bread flour made from wheat. Buckwheat has an earthy flavor that in this bread is balanced with a little honey and toasted walnut; goes well with meats and cheeses – $5/loaf
and mmm, pastry this week…
Chocolate Croissants – a traditional laminated french pastry made with a bit of sourdough flavor and another pre-ferment to help strengthen the dough to create the traditional honeycomb interior. Rolled out and shaped with delicious dark chocolate in the center. – 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on 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: Sineann Merlot ’19 Washington $28
Though the Sineann winery is in Oregon, much of its fruit is sourced from top Washington vineyards. The following notes on this wine, taken directly from the Sineann website, tell its story in the winemaker’s own words.
“We almost decided to stop bottling a varietal Merlot. Despite making excellent Merlot off the Hillside Vineyard year after year, slow sales of the wine had us leaning towards abandoning it.
Merlot has been sabotaged in the marketplace by overpriced, under-fruited wines for years. That is what originally drove us to reduce crop size – the goal of producing a truly worthy Merlot to help resurrect its name. The wines we made have shown their stuff. The older ones have aged beautifully.
Then along came Merlot from Champoux Vineyard. We started getting Merlot from Paul Champoux in 2005. Wow! True to form, his vineyard delivers dark, rich (to the point of voluptuous), powerful wines.
No way we were not going to bottle this alone as a varietal! We’ve kept that up over many vintages, now sourcing fruit from Phinny Hill Vineyards – right across from the Champoux Vineyard…this is what Merlot can be: dark, supple, complex, powerful. We wish there were more of it!
Economics of the Heart: The One-Item Republican Platform: Toxic Masculinity
cartoon courtesy of Steve Greenberg, 1983
It has been at least since 2015 since Republicans abandoned any actual political platform. In the fifties they were all in with the John Birch Society, Joe McCarthy’s Communist Witch Hunt (where have we heard that before?), and claiming Ike as their own (but he wasn’t!). In the sixties and seventies they claimed they stood for that growing military-industrial complex Ike warned us about when he left office in 1961. But it was Reagan who deliberately threw the poor, the sick, and the mentally ill out of the New Deal lifeboat and began robbing the poor to benefit the rich as a national policy which endured until 2008.
While those policies were plenty mean-spirited enough in the Reagan years, it was the Gingrich Speakership in the 90’s that started turning the Republican platform into something actually Toxic, focused almost entirely not on a positive platform of beliefs and goals for the nation, but an ongoing negative campaign to end the New Deal once and for all and reduce the less economically fortunate to chronic poverty.
As we have lamented many times before, it has been the Republican sense of corporate Entitlement to gross and ugly excess profits that has defined it since Reagan. Devoid of any ethical underpinnings, the party under the Tweetster stands for nothing except wielding power. There has been no official Party platform since the Romney campaign in 2012. All that’s left are name-calling, criminal conspiracy, a nonstop torrent of lies from right wing media, and its latest variant, “toxic masculinity.”
As we approach what is likely to be the most consequential election in our history on Nov 8, we pause to take a brief look at two elements of the toxic political landscape.
While it has become fashionable for Republicans to whine about high gasoline prices and blame Biden for the global inflation actually brought on by two years of pandemic isolation, only about 3% of current inflation in the US is attributable to Federal policies. In yesterday’s Daily Kos, Rep. Katie Porter pulled out her economic charts and brought us all up to date on what has really been going on: 1) https://twitter.com/i/status/1582475617723113472 2) https://twitter.com/i/status/1582802684393816065 .
The takeaway from her analysis is that Corporate America was quick to see Covid as an excuse for exorbitant price hikes that had nothing to do with increased costs and everything to do with a golden opportunity to rip off their customers and blame it on”Biden’s inflation.” As the article notes, “Few have pointed out that corporate profits have shot through the roof at the exact same time and to such a degree that saying our current ‘inflation’ wasn’t manufactured by big business greed is laughable.” Even our local car wash raised its fee by $3 not because water was more expensive, but “because it could.” In economic theory this is called ( I am not making this up) “the bandwagon effect.”
Our other recommended piece is from prolific WaPo opinion writer Jennifer Rubin on the uniform adoption of Republican leaders of “toxic masculinity,” roughly translating to an ongoing “aggression divorced from virtue…turning bullying into strength (and) restraint into vice.” It seems to have taken hold across the party, a toxic denial of the virtues typically characterized as “masculine:” courage, strength, and honor. Indeed, she points out, the lot of them have regressed to cowering careerists who have thrown away their honor for a nod from the Tweetster. Or, as another female writer and “Never Trumper” put it, “Trump has emasculated every other Republican by demanding that they all become weak in his service.”
We have no idea how this election will turn out. We do know that if Republicans control even one branch of the legislature, they will make choices that serve their own political and economic interests, not their constituents’ and not their nation’s.
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting
Cloudlift Viognier/Marsanne/Rousanne ’20 Washington $22
Aromas of white flowers and honeysuckle lead to well-defined flavors of melon and pear, a full bodied palate and ample acidity.
MAN Vintners Pinotage ’18 South Africa $11
Aromas of dark coffee beans, red berries, nutmeg, and vanilla spice turning to dark berries and smoky plum; rustic yet silky and juicy, with smooth tannins, balanced acidity, and comforting intensity.
Sineann Merlot ’19 Washington $28
Deep and dark, with nose of red berries, tobacco and chocolate, typical tannic structure, and elegant balsamic notes, well-balanced and soft, pairing well with well-seasoned meats and sauces.
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2072 Granger Way