lummi island wine tasting sept ’23 autumn equinox
Hours this weekend:
Open Friday & Saturday, September 21-22, 4-6 pm
– Mike in his Island Parade clown suit!
This week’s wine tasting
Ryan Patrick Rock Island Chardonnay ’20 Washington $16
Aromas and flavors of wildflowers, crisp apples, honey, and cinnamon roll with a round, crisp, body and a graceful finish of sumac-spiced croutons.
La Atalaya del Camino ’20 Spain $15
Intense aromas, fruit, and elegance on the nose with a distinct spiciness and a touch of floral notes. Rich and meaty structure, with rich dark fruits and hints of spice. Smooth and pleasant long finish.
Phantom Red Blend ’20 WA $17
Petite Sirah- Zinfandel blend delivers palate of dark blackberry and boysenberry with pepper notes and on a balanced structure with tantalizing layers of baking spices sandt velvety tannins.
NO Friday Bread Pickup This Week!
Whole Wheat Levain – Made with a sourdough starter that is built up over several days before a levain is made and fermented overnight in the refrigerator. This long slow process allows the fermentation process to start and the gluten to start developing; it has a ‘toothy’ crumb, great texture and flavor and a nice crisp crust. – $5/loaf
Semolina w/ Fennel & Raisins – A levain bread made with bread flour, semolina and some fresh milled whole wheat. A little butter for a tender crumb and fennel seeds and golden raisins round out the flavors that go really well with meats and cheese – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Brioche Almond Buns – Made with a delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Rolled out and spread with an almond cream filling. The almond cream is not made from pre-made almond paste, but rather is a delicious creamy filling made with lots more butter, sugar and eggs as well as almond flour. Yum! – 2 /$5
Wine of the Week: Phantom Red Blend ’20 California $17
The Bogle winery– a group of wineries these days– is a stone’s throw west of the Sacramento River, and about equidistant from Sacramento and Lodi in the Sierra foothills. It’s a big outfit, with 2000 acres of vineyards, a constellation of wine labels, and local roots tracing back to a Civil War vet and his nephew who moved to the area in the 1870’s. They grew orchards which they farmed until the Depression made them tenant farmers in nearby Clarksville. Over succeeding decades they planted vineyards, and now have an extensive portfolio of vineyards and wine labels.
“Each lot of grapes that goes into our Phantom program is hand selected from the multiple vineyards we have,” says Director of Winemaking Eric Aafedt. “We are looking for the grapes with notable quality and character to create a ‘reserve’ tier of wines.”
The best grapes are selected for the Phantom wines, and spend an extra year in 1- and 2-year-old American & French oak,” says Eric. “This time in the barrel creates a deeper concentration, a subtler touch of tannin and a richer mouthfeel for the wine.”
Phantom also has a unique and personal story to its name…”Bogle” is the Scottish word for “ghost.” Legends tell of a Phantom that stalked the hillsides of Scotland, only to travel to the New World and settle with the Bogle’s here in California. Today, sightings continue to occur at the family’s winery.
Mar a Lago Update: Climate Change, Forced Birth, and Voting Rights
Chris Hayes’ program last night made an encouraging case, based on a 538 analysis, that the political outlook is likely much better than various pundits keep implying. We all hear the Maga voices stuck in a repetitive loop of far-fetched , baseless conspiracy theories and a chronic obsession with Hunter Biden. They have no data-based arguments to support their insane Alternative Facts that somehow prove the Tweetster won the 2020 election, that the only danger to our country is Wokeness, and all the rest of it. We all see and hear it blaring every day, all day.
Everyone recalls the general fear that the 2022 election was going to be a “Republican tsunami,” a massive popular rejection of all things Democratic (or, as GOP grammarians prefer to call it, the ‘Democrat” Party). But, as we all know, while Democrats lost control of the House, they gained a small majority in the Senate and a large enough caucus in the House to have allowed the many legislative accomplishments the Biden Administration has produced in these divisive times.
The coverage focused on some thirty special elections held in the past year at varying levels and locations. The takeaway is that there no “tsunami.” In fact, in almost all cases, even in losing, the Democrat garnered far more votes than anyone had predicted. To put it another way, a lot of people Republicans were counting on (taking for granted…?) turned away from them, and that is a Pretty Big Deal.
While Republicans have gone even more Maga since 2020, much of America has moved on. While Maga is legislating forced birth for every female human being unfortunate enough to experience an undesired or life-threatening pregnancy, many American women are shouting No! A majority of women, especially young women, are not Maga, not Republican, not evangelical Christians, and are demanding the Constitutional freedom to make the religious, ethical, and practical decisions they choose.
In short, the present remnants of the Republican Party are the progeny of Reagan’s Southern strategy of race-baiting and his “trickle-down” economics that made a handful of people grotesquely wealthy at the expense of everyone else on the planet. So not only do they want to control every woman’s body to their template, they also want remove every economic safety net for the masses. Somewhere in their model is a world where a small handful of white men will own everything in a Giant Company Store that employs everyone, on which everyone depends for everything, and which maintains everyone at a minimum sustainable level.
If this sounds Dystopian, that’s because it is. Americans of all stripes are turning away from the tyranny such a model represents. Voters in many states, including Red ones, are acting to preserve the right to choose in their Constitutions, and slowing escalating damages from increasingly destructive winds, floods, heat waves, desertification, fire, and smoke damage.
Each year these damages have been getting worse, until now, this year, the entire world seems finally to be waking up to the sobering reality of the threat as many places become, first, economically uninhabitable (not worth rebuilding in the same way in the same place), and soon after, physically unlivable.
The growing question on the floor raised by the declining election performance of Republicans across a wide swath of America is whether Republicans are justified in taking for granted that the Tweetster’s voter base is also theirs. They have had no party Platform except to support whatever he says or does for nearly a decade. As mentioned above, that does not position them well with a public that is increasingly concerned about rapidly shrinking global habitability, increasing authoritarianism, and even the ability of civilization to persist.
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2072 Granger Way