lummi island wine tasting aug 16-17 ’24
Hours, August 16-17 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Friday Bread This Week
Black Pepper Walnut- made with a nice mix of flours, bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A fair amount of black pepper and toasted walnuts give this bread great flavor with just a bit of peppery bite to it. Works well with all sorts of meats and cheese- $5/loaf
Four Seed Buttermilk – Includes all the elements of whole wheat, adding cracked wheat and bran in to the bread flour instead of milling whole wheat berries. It also has buttermilk and oil for a tender bread and a little tang, and finished with a bit of honey and sunflower, pumpkin, and sesame seeds and toasted millet – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Muffins – Four muffins/ $5… two each of: Cinnamon Streusel – Made with flour, sugar, eggs and butter with a brown sugar, butter, pecan and cinnamon filling swirled through the batter and then topped with a streusel made with more butter, brown sugar and pecans and as if that isn’t enough topped with a cream cheese glaze, and... Chocolate – Rich and delicious; chocolaty and incredibly moist to last a day or two. Made with all the things that muffins good: flour, brown sugar, sour cream and eggs; with plenty of chocolate chips stirred in and sprinkled on top!
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list at least a week before visiting!
This week’s Wine Tasting:
Idilico Albarino ’22 Washington $17
Fermented on the lees for four months, lightly cold stabilized, fined and filtered before bottling; nose of citrus and tropical fruit leads to luscious, crisp, and refreshing flavors. “Drink anytime the sun shines…”
Goose Ridge g3 Red ’20 Washington $17
Syrah-cab-merlot blend; supple ripe plum and blackberry notes with hints of spice, vanilla, black currant and Bing cherry. Nicely balanced with a lush, round mouth and a long, lingering finish.
Sineann Cabernet Sauvignon Lady Hawk ’21 Oregon $27
Classic Columbia Valley cab– dark, well-balanced, food friendly, and age-worthy. “We easily could have vineyard-designated any of the components of this Cabernet; we chose instead to blend it into this gorgeous wine. You will rarely experience a wine this good that costs this little!”
Economics of the Heart: The $War For $Everything Continues…
Costco’s Wine Monopoly / Davinci AI
We started this little wine business on a whim in 2005. We knew nothing about wine except that it was tasty and deeply interwoven in human history, geography, and customs. The more we learned and tasted, the more interesting it became. Every varietal, vineyard, culture, cuisine, and region has its own very long story. It’s been an interesting journey!
Fyi, one requires a different State license to sell wine as a producer, retailer, or wholesale distributor. The passage of the 21st Amendment to the Constitution in 1933 marked the end of Prohibition (and the extensive black markets it had spawned), and established the “3-tiered system” to provide predictable and stable rules for all the players in the industry. In our case, we are licensed as a “wine retail outlet.” Until 2011, Washington law provided that all retailers paid the same wholesale price for every wine purchased for resale.
That all came to a screeching halt in late 2011 when Washington State yielded to years of financial pressure from Costco by closing State Liquor stores and eliminating the 3-tier system which had been in place for 90 years. The fallout was immediate and has continued to this day. The State lost a valuable source of revenue; very large buyers like Costco got gigantic volume discount prices from producers and wholesalers, and countless small wine distributors we had worked with for years went out of business within the first year. Costco gained something of a monopoly on retail (and in some states, wholesale too).
Btw, this is exactly the kind of market-disrupting distortion that antitrust legislation was designed to eliminate. By the late 1800’s John D. Rockefeller expanded his Standard Oil Company into some 40 subsidiary companies, making it “a maze of legal structures which made its workings virtually impervious to public investigation and understanding.” And perhaps more apropos to our particular case here in Washington, there is the equally famous A&P antitrust case. As the very first “supermarket,” it grew into the first chain of thousands of supermarkets, A&P monopolized the grocery business for many decades. It stifled competition through “tying agreements” with its suppliers, and generated extraordinary profits for its corporate owners. Even when broken up by the courts, it still formed the model for all the grocery chains that followed.
In similar fashion, over the next several years the new “Costco liquor laws” spawned an explosion of gigantic distributor-retailer warehouses with acres of floor space, and which now pay so much less under the new laws than small retailers like us that they can easily make a profit selling at our wholesale buying price. This concentration of market power is exactly what the Three-Tier system was designed to prevent. As most of you know, “The Islander,” our dear local General Store does virtually ALL of its wholesale buying at Costco. This is what market concentration is about, folks. Like the proverbial Company Store, its leverage forces wineries to give it massive discounts.
The Big Takeaway here is that Republicans have been grump-stipated for the almost 100 years by New Deal restrictions on competition-reducing market interference. The Costco Law is just one. Others include Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions that have increasingly benefited a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals at the expense of the other 8 billion of us.
lummi island wine tasting aug 9-10 ’24
Hours, August 9-10 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Both Saturday and Sunday owner-winemaker Tom Stangeland of Cloudlift Cellars in Seattle will be pouring five of his wines for this week’s tasting. Tom and wife Joanie have been celebrating their August wedding anniversary on Lummi Island for decades, and have become long-time friends many of you will remember. We have also helped out with crush and bottling at their winery.
Btw, Tom is also a long-time Craftsman furniture maker, and his meticulous attention to detail carries over into his wine-making. (btw, we have discovered that almost without exception, every top winemaker we have encountered is equal parts chemistry geek and artist (poet, musician, painter, chef…)
Cloudlift Lucy Rosé of Cab Franc ’23 Washington $19
Pale salmon in color, with aromas of fresh nectarine, citrus peel and strawberry; palate is dry, bright, and focused, with lively, mouthwatering citrus and minerality that extend the finish.
Cloudlift chardonnay ’22 Washington $28
Scents of honeysuckle, sweet lemon curd, and pear drift out of the glass. The rich palate brings a mouth watering acidity carrying flavors of crisp green apple and pear with a burst of lemon zest on the finish.
Cloudlift Ascent Cab Franc ’21 Washington $34
74% cab franc and 18% merlot with a bit of cab sauv and Petit Verdot; deep ruby color and a rich, smoky nose of raspberry, cherry, and plum with scents of rosebuds, brambles, tobacco, sage and pepper. The flavors follow the aromatics with notes of licorice, dark cocoa, French roast and scorched earth.
Cloudlift Zephyr ’15 Washington $34
Beautiful blend of 44% Syrah, 28% Mourvèdre, and 28% Grenache presents rich aromas and flavors of blueberry, huckleberry, orange peel, garrigue, raspberry, black pepper and sweet fruit flavors that linger like satin on the finish.
Cloudlift Halcyon Cabernet Sauvignon ’18 Washington $36
From Gamache and Elephant Mountain Vineyards; bold aromas of currants, anise, black cherry, and herbs lead to bright raspberry and dark cherry flavors and a bright, lingering finish.
Friday Bread This Week
Buckwheat Rye – Fresh milled buckwheat and rye flours are soaked for several hours without yeast in a method known as an autolyse. As buckwheat has no gluten and rye little, the autolyse allows the grain to start the fermenting process before the final mix, which is then fermented overnight in the refrigerator. The buckwheat/ rye soaker is then mixed with bread flour, salt and yeast and a bit of honey.– $5/loaf
Whole Grain Spelt Sweet Levain – similar to a bread I sampled in Latvia it is made with a levain, also known as sourdough, freshly milled whole wheat and whole spelt before mixing with bread flour as well as a nice combination of dried apricots, golden raisins, slivered almonds and both sunflower and flax seeds. Chock full of flavor! $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Bear Claws! – Made with a danish pastry dough rich in cream, eggs, sugar and butter. The dough is rolled out and spread with a filing made with almond paste, powdered sugar, egg whites and just a bit of cinnamon to round out the flavor. Then, because bears love honey, topped with a honey glaze after baking. As always, quantities are limited, be sure to get your order in before you miss out- –2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list at least a week before visiting!
Economics of the Heart: An Appealing Ferry Tale …
PHOTO courtesy incatcrowther.com
Ongoing discoveries and developments in our ferry replacement process have brought us to a multi-dimensional crossroads where what signs we have all point in different directions, and there is a growing concern both here on the island and in County government that the 34-car vessel on the drawing board is neither achievable nor desirable.
There are a lot of moving parts, including:
1. COVID related cost inflation, as reflected in the marine repair and construction price index began a steep climb about two years ago, substantially reducing the buying power of our grant so much that our various grants and subsidies are no longer adequate to pay the new higher price tags for the 34-car vessel and necessary infrastructure updates.
2. County officials are already talking about discontinuing vehicle service to the island altogether, and blaming nit-picky, penny-pinching islanders for the problem.
3. Washington State Ferries is one of the largest ferry systems on the planet, serving all of Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. Four car ferries are operated by County governments: Skagit, Whatcom, Wahkiakum, and Pierce. The first two serve small populations of rural residents and related commercial and government service providers getting back and forth from the mainland. Wahkiakum is a small ferry operating across the lower Columbia a bit east of Astoria. And Pierce provides ferry services in the densely populated urban environment of South Puget Sound.
One important takeaway is that Whatcom and Skagit Counties are operating complex systems and schedules like the State Ferry system, but without the tax base and extensive financial resources necessary to meet the rising costs of these services. Indeed, it not a coincidence that both Skagit and Whatcom Counties are “in the same boat” with inadequate financial resources to cover replacement of a vessel and its worn-out infrastructure,.In addition, smaller local governments also face growing demands on local infrastructure from climate-related destruction, homelessness, and addiction. These growing imbalances clearly require ongoing renegotiation with the State and the Feds for financial assistance.
As discussed recently with our State Senator Sharon Shewmake, we need to push forward with USDOT and with WSDOT about additional financial support, beginning with an inflation adjustment to our federal and state grants. We also should explore the feasibility of modifying the vessel plan to a smaller, more affordable, and more climate-friendly vessel…which leads us to…
A New Idea…
Boat Design. While browsing for information on lighter, more efficient ferry designs, we ran into this website. The vessel, Nairana, was built in Australia for a two-mile ferry passage between Bruny Island and the Tasmanian mainland. The vessel has an efficient aluminum “catamaran” style hull, and is powered by four Ro-Pax electric motors, which can all be rotated to provide thrust in the same direction at the same time. The design is state of the art and compatible with our goals of energy efficiency and performance, as well as stimulating our local economy, because…
Vessel Construction. Coincidentally, we have an aluminum shipbuilding company right here in Bellingham that is interested in exploring the project, and preliminary indications are that it is feasible to scale the vessel size down to maybe a 24-car (?) boat to meet budget and design constraints, not to mention…
Vessel Power. And as another coincidence, Echandia, a Swedish startup making batteries and electronics to power maritime vessels, opened a manufacturing and sales facility in nearby Marysville just a few days ago— its first site in North America!
lummi island wine tasting Aug 2-3
Hours, August 2-3 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Cloudless Mt. Baker
Friday Bread This Week
Fig Anise – One of the more popular breads in the rotation. Made with a sponge that is fermented overnight, then the final dough is mixed with bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. Honey, dried figs and anise bring in all the flavors of the Mediterranean. – $5/loaf
Sesame Semolina –Begins with a sponge that ferments some of the flour, water & yeast before mixing the final dough. Made with semolina and bread flour as well as a soaker of cornmeal, millet and sesame seeds, a little olive oil rounds out the flavor and tenderizes the crumb.– $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. –2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list at least a week before visiting!
This week’s wine tasting:
Ryan Patrick Rock Island Chardonnay ’20 Washington $16
A consistent local favorite, with aromas and flavors of wildflowers, crisp apples, honey, and cinnamon roll with a round, crisp, body and a graceful finish of sumac-spiced croutons.
Maryhill Winemakers Red ’22 Washington $14
Aromas of blackberry, cherry, and baking spice with hints of chocolate and dried herbs; ripe black currant and cherries on the palate with hints of tobacco and a rich, chewy finish.
Townshend Cellars T3 Red Washington $18
Bordeaux style blend of cab, merlot and cab franc; fruit forward with hints of black currant and vanilla, with layers of complexity and depth through extensive oak aging in French and American barrels.
Wines of the Week: Washington Wine Bargains
This week our tasting includes three wines which consistently sell out quickly. The broad range of Washington soil characteristics, elevations, daily and seasonal temperature variations makes it possible to find very favorable growing conditions for pretty much any wine grape grown anywhere in the world. Therefore, a lot of Washington wineries make wines not just from grapes they grow on their own land, but also from other vineyards around the State.
Ryan Patrick winery is located in Leavenworth, but sources fruit from several different vineyards and AVA’s (growing regions), each with different soils, rainfall, and temperature ranges, including Elephant Mountain Vineyard, Sagemoor Farms, Red Mountain AVA and Red Heaven Vineyard.)
Maryhill is a well-established, multi-generational family winery situated in the “town” of Maryhill, and overlooking the Columbia River (dine with a stunning view of the Gorge landscape!). It makes dozens of different wines each year to a consistent level of satisfying quality. It sources fruit from over 20 different vineyard locations from about half of the 14 major American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in Washington, effectively displaying the breadth of Washington Stats winemaking prowess.
Townshend Cellar winery is located in Spokane. It is a small family winery that recently lost its founding patriarch and seems to be transitioning its operation. It has also developed a reputation for pursuing sustainable farming and production methods, and donates 2% of its annual revenue to organizations that promote leaving a positive impact through sustainability, innovation, and community.
Economics of the Heart: Harris/Buttigieg…??
www.washingtontimes.com
Two weeks ago we posted Timothy Snyder’s hypothetical analysis of the options available to Democrats for the rapidly approaching national election. His last two involved VP Harris: 1) Joe drops out of the race, leaving her to become the nominee, or 2) Joe resigns, making Kamala the President now and the likely incumbent for November.
Last week Biden made the decision to drop out of the election, and passed the baton to Harris to head the ticket and find a new VP candidate. Since then Harris has garnered the convention votes to make her the Oval Office candidate, and there has been a great deal of speculation and trial ballooning of potential VP candidates. All the chatter and speculation seems to have narrowed to a short list of likely candidates.
Most of the discussion seems to center around which candidate is most likely to nail down a ticket win in a tossup state. However, opinions on the matter are largely speculative, because there are no tools, statistical or otherwise, that are likely to answer this question definitively. However, over the past week we have seen numerous airings of each of these candidates, and to us the choice has become quite clear: Pete Buttigieg runs circles around all of them. His easy-going assurance and positive manner create a safe space for cooperation and mutual benefit.
He has done recent interviews on numerous news programs including WaPo , NYT, CNN, MSNBC, Youtube, and the Daily Show...the list goes on and on, a busy and productive week. In every case Pete has the facts at his fingertips, weaves ideas together smoothly, graciously, and confidently, and slides his points across with an easy-going assurance. As we all saw in the debates for the 2020 election, he is an energetic, charismatic, good-natured, confident, uniquely intelligent, and effective communicator.
Well, that’s our dream ticket: Kamala & Pete. Unlikely. But sooo appealing!
lummi island wine tasting july 26-27 ’24
Hours, July 26-27 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
July morning backyard
Friday Bread This Week
Poolish Ale – The preferment here begins with a poolish made from bread flour, yeast, and ale and fermented overnight…then mixed the next day with bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat– a great all around bread with a nice crisp crust. – $5/loaf
Buckwheat Walnut & Honey – Also made with a poolish of fresh milled buckwheat and bread flours. Buckwheat is not a grain it is actually a seed and closer in the plant family to rhubarb and sorrel than to wheat and contains no gluten, and has an earthy/nutty flavor. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Morning Buns – Made popular by Tartine Bakery in San Francisco…mine are made with the same laminated dough as croissants. The dough is rolled out, spread with a filling of brown sugar, orange zest, butter and cinnamon, rolled up and sliced before baking. 2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list at least a week before visiting!
This week’s wine tasting
Vielle Ferme Blanc ’23 France $12
Flavorful blend of bourboulenc, grenache blanc, roussanne, ugni blanc, & vermentino delivering seductive aromas of jasmine, hawthorn, and pear with flavors of blood orange with delicate saline notes.
La Quercia Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Riserva ’17 Italy $19
From 50-yr-old vines; rich, full-bodied and rustic in expression, with rich notes of cocoa, rhubarb, blackberry, and herbs; long, lingering finish of juicy black cherry, with a silky/velvety mouthfeel.
Domaine Chibaou Surnaturel Merlot ’22 France $25
Complex nose of black fruits, candied strawberries and caramel; round, rich and concentrated, balanced, with good length in the mouth. No sulfites.
Wine of the Week: La Quercia Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Riserva ’17 Italy $19
https://www.summerinitaly.com/guide/la-quercia-winery
We buy many of our Italian wines from our friends at Small Vineyards, an importer in West Seattle with family ties to Lummi Island. This wine is particularly special, and we are down to the last few bottles until our next shipment in the late fall. This is a big wine with lots of character and flavor. The importer describes the winemaker as follows:
A “true blue,” grizzled farmer-type, winemaker Antonio Lamona is both utterly likeable and totally invested in his wines. Although his father also grew grapes, Antonio is the first in the family to bottle his own and, beginning in the late sixties, began cultivating vines that are entirely organic. As Antonio says, “I would rather forgo an entire vintage than put man-made pesticides in my soil.”
Ownership of La Quercia is shared with three of his lifelong friends – it’s a gorgeous, rustic estate in a tiny Adriatic town where sea, sun and wind abound. The farm is entirely self-sustaining: they produce their own salami, bread, vegetables, olive oil, and cheeses. Regardless of what may be happening elsewhere in Italy, Antonio’s estate remains steadfast, renowned for its consistency in terms of both style and quality from one vintage to the next.” read more
Economics of the Heart: The Game is Afoot…!
As we have all seen, the response to Uncle Joe’s decision not to run has been surprisingly electric, evoking $millions in campaign donations to VP Harris and tens of thousands of new voter registrations, particularly in the 25-35 age group. The mood is ebullient across the nation in support of Biden’s decision and of Harris’ rapid collection of enough convention votes to clinch her candidacy.
Meanwhile, the Maga Party has been caught flat-footed by Biden’s decision just days after celebrating their Tweetster/Vance ticket and their Project 2025 commitment to shredding the Constitution, eliminating women’s rights, voting rights, immigrant rights, color of skin rights. Not to mention ignoring Climate Change, crushing Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and more while transferring wealth and opportunity from everyone who needs it to the top 1% who don’t but feel entitled to it. Make no mistake; theirs is a Dark Dystopian vision in every sense of the world, deliberately centered around their frightening vision of making our country a totalitarian, white, male, Christian, and planet-killing hell.
Political writer Thomas Friedman just posted this view of the strangeness of this present moment in our history. Democrats are energized, engaged, organized, ad excited about possiblities, a mood in stark contrast to the recent chaotic Republican convention, which deliberately (again) had no party platform except to take rights away from women, immigrants, elders, the sick, the poor. (…you know, the tired and hungry masses that seek the same freedom and opportunity that most of our ancestors sought when they came to this country.)
As Friedman suggests, this pivotal Campaign has begun in earnest with one side cheering opportunity, inclusion, freedom, and unity for all while the other claims boundless opportunity for the Few and smug indifference to the needs of the many.
It’s a promising starrt!
2072 Granger Way