lummi island wine tasting december 15 ’17
(note: some photos will enlarge when clicked)
Bread Friday
Pain au Levain – Made with a nice mix of bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat and rye flours. After building the sourdough and mixing the final dough it gets a long cool overnight ferment in the refrigerator. This really allows the flavor to develop in this bread. A great all around bread – $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. Judy A. says this is her favorite! These flavors go really well with meats and cheese, but it also makes pretty darn good toast – $5/loaf
For pastry this week:
Individual Cinnamon Rolls – Made with a rich sweet roll dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. The dough is rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Then rolled up and sliced into individual rolls for baking. And boy are they delicious!!– 2/$5.
Holiday Season Schedule
- Friday, December 22- open 4-7 for both wine tasting and bread pickup, Janice hosting
- Saturday, December 23- closed
- Friday, December 29- open 4-7 for wine tasting and bread pickup
- Saturday, December 30- open 2-6 for wine tasting as usual
- Sunday, December 31- 12th annual East Coast New Year’s Eve Party 7-9 pm (see below)
12th annual East Coast New Year’s Eve Party!
As the Fortunate Few well know, our annual “East Coast New Year’s Eve Party” is a Hallowed Tradition. From 7-9pm on New Year’s Eve we provide the wine, you bring Something Delicious to share, and when the ball drops in Times Square three hours away, we all hoist our glasses and toast the New Year! The Young at Heart move on to their next party, and we Old Timers can get to bed at a decent hour! We welcome this annual opportunity to Thank all of you for your support this year, and to toast ahead to even more fun in aught-eighteen. Arrrr, lads and lassies, ye best mark yer calendars now ‘n’ start plannin’ yer Finger Foods!
Important Note! Speaking of Finger Food, we will again this year have a Secret Operative sampling the dishes and Assigning Points! Yummiest Dish wins a $25 credit, and Yummiest-Looking Dish wins a $15-dollar credit! Let’s see if Competition really does improve Quality!
Holiday Wine Sale
Somehow once again the end of the calendar year is Upon Us. For some of us that means that Taking Inventory is also Imminent, as well as an Uncertain schedule for the next couple of months. Therefore it’s a good time for us to Reduce Inventory and for You to Stock Up for the Winter!
These days most of you are Wine Club members, and so already buy our wines tax-free (8.7% discount over our Usual Low Prices), as well as paying only $5 for our five-wine tasting flight, compared to $10 for non-members. HOWEVER, all Wine Club memberships expire at the end of the calendar year, and rising costs demand that we raise the wine club membership price for 2018 from $35 to $50. The Bottom Line is that wines keep getting more expensive, our pours are generous, and we are in the Red on club tastings.
So. To make all of this more Palatable, if you are a current wine club member and buy any mixed case of wine before December 31, you can renew your membership for 2018 for $35. Think about it! And while you’re at it, Consider that we have just Replenished our Stock of Theo’s Chocolate, including delicious bars, Almond Butter Cups, and Chocolate Coconut Clusters!
Mar a Lago Update: Hypocrisy is the New Pragmatism
As we go to press, Dark Lord McConnell and Zealous Apprentice Ryan are launching their newly designed Death Star on an Unsuspecting Galaxy. Under the auspices of Tax Reform (finger quotes), and Widely Portrayed in the Tried and Untrue Republican Metric of “Returning Hard-Earned Tax Dollars to our Beloved Workers,” they will now Raid the Public Treasury yet again to line the pockets of the .1 %, themselves, and their Corporate $upporters.
Our hats are off to them this time (but our middle fingers are still extended), for adding a Bold New Level of Cynicism to the Old Recipe. It is in fact a Stroke of Dark Genius to offer Permanent Tax Cuts to Corporations and the Top Tier while building near-term Sunset Clauses into the middle-income tax cuts so they will self-destruct after a couple of carefully timed Election Cycles. “There is No Way,” they snicker, “that those Dummies will remember to Blame Us!”
The one Bright Note in all of this is the Astonishing Electoral Victory of Doug Jones in Alabama…Wow! If McConnell ever allows Jones to take his Seat in the Senate (don’t hold your breath) maybe it would slow the rate at which Things Keep Getting Worse. That would be a Great Improvement, because for the Past Year things have been Getting Worse Faster than we are Getting Older, and it would be, you know, a Relief to Slow that Down a bit. I mean Really, we can only take So Much!
This week’s wine tasting
Masia Parera Brut Reserva Cava Italy $13
Delicate perlage, deep minerality, and intoxicating white flower and baby mushroom aromas make this wine memorable
and delightful.
Palama Salento Bianca Verdeca ’16 Italy $11
Refreshing, flavorful, and aromatic, with notes of lemon zest, salty minerality, and green herbs.
Perazzeta Mercurio Rosso Toscana Italy $12
Sangiovese, cab sauv, alicante blend from Maremma; Dark notes of prune, cherry, soft leather, and Italian herbs over a bright acidic backbone. Craves meat and fat!
Sallier de la Tour Nero d’Avola Sicilia ’15 Italy $13
A friendly wine from a soothing grape; aged partly in wood and partly in steel, showing youthful freshness and fruitiness, with enticing notes of spices and liquorice.
Zenato ‘Alanera’ Rosso Veronese Italy $15
Dark, inky color; rich and focused nose, with ripe berries, dusty oak and a precise note of waxy vanilla bean. On the palate delivers extracted flavors of cherries, strawberry, clay and even a hint of crushed mint. Soft tannins, rounded finish.
lummi island wine tasting december 8 ’17
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No Bread this week
With apologies to Our Faithful, your Baker is Away this week. She will be in touch with the mailing list on Sunday about next week’s bread offerings. If you haven’t saved any in the freezer, you might (gasp!) have to buy a commercial loaf to tide you over.
New Art Show
Last weekend we installed our Winter show, with some new watercolors by Meredith Moench. It is always fun to see how our artists develop from year to year, both in style, skill, and subject matter. Here are two examples of a new (to our eyes) bright look in Meredith’s work…looks like something here about putting the “Wild” into Wild Flowers…quite captivating. Be sure to take time to look at these new works…you will probably want to take one home with you!
Gender Truth and Reconciliation
We seem to be in the midst of a Cultural Revolution here in America. Civilizations by and large don’t seem to have done much to protect women’s rights since Writing was invented about 5000 years ago. According to some accounts, that’s when God told Dominant Males they They had Been Chosen to Exercise God’s Will on Earth, including Dominion over anyone Less Powerful. Therefore human history is pretty much the story of Dominant Males coming up with all kinds of reasons why everyone else’s Stuff is really Theirs, and how God wants Them to kill or enslave the Godless Infidels who took their Stuff and take it back, and thus the History of our Species is an endless Unfolding Kaleidoscope of Rationalized Brutality and Cruelty. Or, as we euphemistically refer to it nowadays, “Politics.”
While this Need to Control may very well have once had long-term Darwinian Genetic Advantages for our Emergent Species, in the last few Centuries (a blink of the Evolutionary Eye) it has become (arguably) an Evolutionary Constraint. Despite the creation of the Magna Carta, the UN, the U. S. Constitution, and the World Court, all urging peace and equality, Inevitably, in the Name of God, or Country, or Whichever Ancient Book, or Whatever Cause Du Jour, the Dominant Males keep us on a Path to Destruction. Figuring out how to stop them has been the Deep Koan of an Entire Generation.
So with that Perspective we Acknowledge that the Toolbox of the Dominant Male includes Violence toward Everyone and Everything that threatens to limit their Power, and this has Regularly, Thoughtlessly, Selfishly, and Unacceptably fallen on the least powerful in every culture and society: women, children, the poor, the sick, the minority Others.
Today we find Our Nation entering what might be a Profound Cultural Revolution that will go a long way toward improving Gender Equality. Or, given 50 Centuries of Human History, it might involve the Symbolic Skewering of a few Minor Players, after which the DM’s will quietly Regroup, Consolidate, and Go On as if Nothing Had Happened. Bottom line: just because Gender Justice is a worthy cause doesn’t mean it isn’t being used as a Political Tool by the Party of Dominant Males. Disgracing and unseating Al may be fleetingly satisfying to some women; but it may Way More Satisfying to the DM’s who are always pulling the strings. We shall see. Or as Senator Franken noted today, it is Ironic (and Disturbing) that he has to Go while Trump and Roy Moore remain Invulnerable. I mean, Really, No Wonder the Other Species just Roll Their Eyes when they look at us…!
Mar a Lago Update: Tearing Down the New Deal
Well, folks, it’s late here at the Wine Gallery. So we will leave this topic till next week. Meanwhile, send in your thoughts on it, and don’t forget to come by the Wine Shop this weekend!
This week’s wine tasting
Quails’ Gate Chenin Blanc ’16 Canada
Pale lemon in the glass, honeysuckle, grass, citrus, pear and melon mingle together on the nose. The palate is dry and complex with beautifully balanced acidity, lovely weight and mid-palate texture, along with its characteristic stony mineral note. Great with NW seafood!
Bodegas Ayuso Estola Reserva ’15 Spain $10
Tempranillo/ cab sauv blend; Warm aromas of spices and ripe fruit; wide and round palate, easy drinking, great buy!
Chateau Les Croisille Cahors Malbec “Croizillon” ’15 France $15
100% malbec organically farmed by hand; aromas and flavors of black cherry, saddle leather, blackberry, cocoa and spice.
La Quercia Montepulciano Riserva ’13 Italy $18
100% organic montepulciano from low-yield vines; rich, port-like nose of candied cherries that carry through on the expressive, rich, earthy palate; nice balance of fruit and acidity.
Pomum Shya Cabernet Sauvignon ’12 Washington $35
Slightly porty aromas of black cherry, tar, licorice, wild herbs, cocoa powder and spices. Densely packed and energetic, conveying flavors of dark berries and spicy oak. Serious and persistent boasting very good lift and structure.
lummi island wine tasting december 1 ’17
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Bread this week
Sonnenblumenbrot – aka Sunflower Seed Bread- made with a pre-ferment that is a complete dough itself. It takes a portion of the flour, water, salt and yeast that ferments overnight before mixing the final dough. The final dough is made with bread flour and freshly milled rye, then loaded up with toasted sunflower seeds and some barley malt syrup for sweetness. – $5/loaf
Honey, Wheat, Lemon & Poppy seeds – Made with a poolish that ferments some of the flour, yeast and water, but none of the salt, overnight. This results in a very active pre-ferment which is mixed the next day with the final ingredients which includes a nice mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. Some honey, poppy seeds and freshly grated lemon peel round out the flavors in this loaf. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
For pastry this week…
Croissants! – Pastry dough made with flour, milk, butter and sugar and then laminated with more butter before being cut and shaped into traditional french croissants. 2/$5
Touriga Nacional
Portugal has a lot of interesting wines with unusual and difficult to pronounce names. Most of these varietals are peculiar to Portugal and rare in our experience, the best known being Touriga Nacional, a full-bodied Portuguese red wine grape with aging potential similar to Cabernet Sauvignon. It has long been a blending grape in Port, and now is more often seen as a dry red wine which stands very well on its own.
Some people liken it to Napa Cabernet or Australian Shiraz for depth of flavor and tannic structure. It typically shows palate-coating and tooth-staining notes of blueberry, plum, blackberry, bittersweet cocoa, and a touch of mint and violet. Our featured wine this weekend is a particularly pleasing 100% touriga nacional that we think everyone will enjoy.
Bold and lush, Touriga Nacional appeals to all of us who like big fruit-forward red wines. It is often balanced and showing fine, gravelly tannins. When aged in oak, it often delivers aromas of toasted marshmallow, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon spice. and red-fruit flavors. Bottom line: it has a certain Bigness that will appeal to some (you know who you are!)
Dark Lord
As we go to press tonight, little Mitchie McConnell is once again the Dark Lord of the Hour. For the last decade he has Proven his Commitment to One-Party Government, through his year-long refusal to consider President Obama’s nominee to fill Antonin Scalia’s vacant seat on the Supreme Court, the consistent use of obscure Senate Rules to allow his party to make momentous National Decisions with a bare majority (when the rules call for a Two-Thirds majority), and his ongoing series of attempts to transfer more and more Wealth from the masses to the .1%.
As 2017 comes to an end, our Editorial Review Board has faced a Quandary: who is More Evil: Count Mar a Lago or Darth McConnell? To be sure we have had many Heated Discussions on the subject. In the final analysis, however, we have come to consider that Evil, like all skills and practices, has several levels of Mastery: Unconscious Incompetence –> Conscious Incompetence –> Conscious Competence –> Unconscious Competence (aka “Mastery”).
All of the Evidence available to us so far suggests that the Trumpster consistently fails to show evidence of any progress whatsoever beyond the Child-Level “unconscious incompetence;” i.e. he has No Idea what he is doing, and he has No Idea he has No Idea. McConnell, on the other hand, has consistently shown that he is completely Aware, Committed, and Dedicated to the Complete Destruction of Representative Government and its Replacement with Private Corporate Control on a Global Scale. Therefore he has earned the unanimous vote of our Editorial Board as Dark Lord of the Year 2017. If you agree, please donate $3 or more to our Lobbying Effort to capture and return him to his Home Swampy Frog Planet. We can only hope that Somehow he is Stopped before he, you know, Spawns and Multiplies…(gulp!)
Mar a Lago Update: One No-Trump
Also as we go to press tonight we offer an uncertain Magnanimous Shrug about our so-called President. Our recent Insights about the Current State of the Nation regard him as a Symptom, not a Cause. Clearly he is not a Politician, but rather a Leading Contestant on some Ultimate Reality TV series. This is His Real Gift: Manipulating Media to stay in the Headlines, to be the Center of Attention, and to convert that Attention into Money and Adulation. In his world, Notoriety is the Essence of Success. Add to that the Comfort of a Four Year Contract as Leading Man-Star…well, we can imagine him humming “Heaven…I’m in Heaven…” as he takes a shower, savors his Chocolate Cake, or Tweets his latest Ad for his Brand.
No, the Real Danger continues to lie with the Corporatists, whose greatest achievement in the past thirty years has been the complete elimination of the Progressive Income Tax. For those of you too young to remember, the concept behind the Progressive Income Tax was Equality of Burden. If your income is low, each additional dollar you earn is essential to meet Basic Necessities. But if you are Wealthy, each additional dollar buys goods and services that most consider “luxuries.” The importance of the idea of Progressive Taxation is that it was largely based on an Ethical Premise: that the highest dollar earned is more important to someone who is poor than it is to someone who is rich. And therefore, the concept of “Equal Burden” of taxation requires that people should pay progressively Higher Tax Rates on progressively higher incomes.
Essentially that reasoning all went away during the Reagan years, replaced by the notion that the Nation could not afford to Pamper the Poor. If Progressive Taxation had been a kind of Economic Lifeboat launched as part of the New Deal, Reaganomics basically said, “if you can’t afford a ticket, get out and swim.” For Mitch McConnell and his Merry Band, nothing has changed since then. As one top-hatted Gentleman in Industrial Revolution London said to a Colleague as he pointed out the Squalor all around them, “There’s a Great Deal of Money to be made here!”
This week’s wine tasting
Chateau Lamothe Bordeaux Blanc ’16 France $15
Bright and engaging, with fresh grapefruit and Meyer lemon pulp notes backed by a flash of straw on the open-knit finish. Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle.
Chateau Buisson-Redon Bordeaux ’14 France $11
Red fruit and cherry notes on the nose, with elegant soft tannins, and good backbone from the
Cab Franc; pleasant cinnamon and nutmeg aromas; medium-bodied and structured with round, warm fruit and a velvety finish.
Bocelli Sangiovese ’14 Italy $14
Bright,, lush, and appealing; deliciously ripe and smoky, with notes of marasca cherry, granite, and rhubarb compote. Finish is long and dry, with admirable acidity that makes the palate taut and pleasing.
Airfield Estate Merlot ’14 Washington $14
Slightly muted nose with dill, red cherry and raspberry, and flavors of red cherry, pomegranate, dill and milk chocolate. Easy, silky texture with good balance.
Quinta de Pinto Riserva ’13 Portugal $22
A lovely Touriga Nacional, laced with violets and wonderful aromatics that combine with its fine structure, balance and elegant mid-palate for a very pleasing whole. Fresh and lively, with a hint of eucalyptus on the finish: a great food wine!
lummi island wine tasting nov 24 ’17
Reminder: Closed Thanksgiving Weekend
Like many of you we are away for the Thanksgiving Holiday. The wine shop will be closed both Friday and Saturday. We will reopen as usual Next Weekend, and Janice will be in touch about bread orders this Sunday for pickup next Friday, Dec 1.
In the meantime we wish you a warm and relaxing Holiday!
2072 Granger Way