lummi island wine tasting oct 4 ’14
Cameras
I have had my “new”camera for a year or two now, and have been very much enjoying it. It’s a Nikon Coolpix P7700, kind of a high-end “point and shoot.” It has a long list of features that I find quite incomprehensible. Some of you may remember some of the images I shot when the old camera was on its last legs.
When it comes to cameras I still have the mindset of the nine-year-old I was in the mid-fifties, taking pictures with my (I am not making this up) Hopalong Cassidy box camera. You held it in front of your belly button and looked down at a little prism at the tiny image of what was in front of you. I believe I also had a Hopalong Cassidy Lunchbox at some point, which included a little Thermos bottle, for which I have deeply conflicting memories!
For those of you who are too young to have any idea what this means, the original Thermos bottle was, like the simple cameras of the era, an ingenious invention. A disturbingly rubberized cap screwed onto a plain cylinder of unknown composition, which contained a mirror-bright coating of Some Magical Substance, vaguely Otherworldly. From time to time a Thermos would get dropped on a hard floor, and the shiny veneer inside would shatter into a bazillion pieces.
The unpleasant takeaway from this is that the rubber cork always managed to have a disgusting and extremely unappetizing aroma, an oddly disconcerting combination of old galoshes and milk on the verge of spoiling. In point of fact, the old Thermos didn’t keep anything all that hot or all that cold for all that long. But we all thought it was way better than, you know, waxed paper!
The Incredible Disappearing photos!
I am bringing this up because I absolutely have NO IDEA what just happened tonight while writing this little post…! Sometime this past Spring I took a day trip to Seattle to help out with bottling at Cloudlift Cellars in Seattle. The winemaker and his wife, Tom and Joannie Stangeland, visit the Island each summer for their anniversary, and we have written about Tom’s wines several times in the last couple of years. Bottling at an “artisan” operation like this (1000 cases or so per varietal) usually involves a group of friends and relatives who will volunteer several hours to help out. It’s definitely a lot of fun. Yes, it IS an assembly line, and, it’s deeply dehumanizing, but of course without dehumanization, how would we know what being human even means….?!!
Bottling is an interesting process, so at some point I wanted to take some pictures. I had plugged the camera battery into a charger while we were bottling and after a while, though the battery was not fully charged, I supposed I could take at least a few shots and maybe even a couple of short video clips. Eezy peezy, huh…? Later, however, when I tried to retrieve the photos from the camera for this blog entry tonight, they were nowhere to be found! Very baffling! So I figured, okay, the battery must have been just too low for taking pictures, so they never actually got taken! The important takeaway here is that I was pretty sure I had taken a bunch of photos and a couple of short video clips, which all seemed to record as usual. But when I looked for them..Poof!…Gone.! Kind of a head-scratcher. In circumstances like these, it is only Natural to wonder…“hmmm…Space Aliens…?”
Run that by me again….?
So Fast Forward to tonight. My camera has…er…had…about 80 photos in memory, most of which I have downloaded but not erased. My long-established protocol is to connect the camera to the computer (brief digression: this blog is written on an old Ubuntu (Linux) machine; my day to day PC activities are on a laptop with Windows 7, and of course we have an Ipad running Some Kind of Apple Thing). Standard Procedure is to connect the camera with the Ubuntu machine, which launches a freeware program called F-Spot, and which usually works out very well for uploading and editing images.
Except tonight! Tonight, just as I was downloading images, the camera fell on the floor (!), disengaging the USB cable. Somehow this minor incident seems to have caused the 80 or so photos in camera memory to disappear completely, and in their place have reappeared the missing photos from Cloudlift. At this point I need to assure you that I am NOT making ANY of this up! No, I am just presenting the Facts, in a completely Unbiased way. What we have here is a Mystery. Photos that have been Gone for six months have suddenly reappeared, while all the photos taken during that same six-month period have Disappeared!
All I can say about this is that we will be happy to give a free (and Generous) wine tasting to any of you Geeks out there who can make sense of this and explain it to us!
Happy Birthday, Gringo!
In a way I don’t fully understand, when I moved from the Northeast to the PNW in 1975, I went into a kind of exile. And I expect that back in 1975 anyone who pulled up roots in one place and replanted them elsewhere can resonate with that feeling. Between “reinvention” and “exile” dwells a maelstrom of subtle distinctions
One of my first first and best friends in the PNW is now my very old friend Rock, now living in Bend. I took the photo at left on a hike back in about 1976. Looks a lot like Mt. Shuksan behind him…? I can’t quite remember how the”gringo” thing got started, but nevertheless it endures.
Arrr, so today I ask all ye lads and lasses to hoist yer tankards to me old friend Rock on his birthday (10-4)….Arrrr!
This week’s tasting notes
Julia’s Dazzle Rose ’13 Washington $15
98% pinot gris, 2% sangiovese; bright, eye-catching orange-strawberry color, aromas of strawberry and orange peel, sweet fruit flavors, and clean, sharp acidity and a light and refreshing finish.
St. Innocent Pinot Blanc Freedom Hill ’12 Oregon $18
Bright, green-tinged yellow, with minerally scents of honey, tangerine, and herbs. Light and easygoing, with delicately earthy notes mixing with the pear and citrus flavors.
Harrington Pinot Noir Wild Horse Valley ’06 CA $10
Good deep red. Sweet aromas of dark raspberry, strawberry, smoke and flowers. Deep, round and sweet, with creamy red berry and smoke flavors, finishing with sweet, supple tannins.
For a Song “The Score” Merlot ’11 Washington $11
Lush and concentrated, with big New World notes of dark plum, blackberry, and cherry, and earthy Old World notes of coffee, dark chocolate, and leather.
Savage Grace Cab Franc ’12 Washington $22
Old World (Loire) style. Supple, tangy and graceful, offering refreshing cherry, raspberry and spice flavors. Very gently extracted, lightly saline wine with lovely purity and floral lift. Soft tannins, very appealing style.
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2072 Granger Way
