Lummi Island Wine Tasting October 5 ’13
What? Hungarian Wine? Dahling, you must be joking!
Okay, okay, so I have no idea at all what this wine tastes like. But it was recommended by the distributor I bought it from, so how bad can it be? (actually, so far he hasn’t steered me wrong). And, I have to admit I like the label a lot. Over the years I have developed a philosophy of “show me a good winemaker and I will show you someone who is about equal parts Artist and Geek.” The Artist is at some level a sensualist who knows what good wine tastes like, and the Geek has the techno-mind and intellectual discipline that wine chemistry requires. So I think there may be some case to be made that artistically interesting labels should predict artistically interesting wines. So we shall see…!
Besides, this particular wine is also interesting because it is from a grape (furmint) and country (Austria) we gringos rarely associate with wine. However, most of us have heard of Tokai (tokaj, or tokaji) the legendary dessert wine of Austria, of which furmint is the predominant grape, traditionally grown on a small volcanic plateau near the Carpathian Mountains with harsh winters, cool dry springs, and lingering hot summers allowing a very long ripening period. Read more
Verdicchio Dei Castelli Di Jesi
Meanwhile, across the border in Italy, in the eastern region of Marche, since Roman times has grown another noble white wine, verdicchio. a versatile and seductive wine that goes well with pungent Italian cheeses like Pecorino and Parmesan, and with nuts, olives and seafood dishes. Way back in 410 AD, when Alaric, king of the Visigoths, was passing through the Marches on his way to sack Rome, (any excuse to head for a sunnier climate…?) he reportedly ordered that 40 mules be loaded with barrels of Verdicchio to take along with him because he held that the wine was excellent for maintaining and stimulating the strength of his soldiers. Another ancient endorsement came from Tuscan poet of the 16th century Pietro Aretino, who, despite his reputation as a cynic, had nothing but warm words of praise for verdicchio’s gustatory virtues. You should also know that a Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi can only be labeled with the geographical qualification Classico when it is produced in the oldest sector of the zone…like the one we are pouring this weekend. Finally, do you suppose Alaric ever reached Rome, whether he did indeed sack it, and whether he found any wines there he liked better than verdicchio? Do we suppose the Sacking of Rome was just a bunch of teenaged heathens out to Party? Read more
Republican Crackpots: The Trendy New Terrorism
OMD..is Ted Cruz channelling Joe McCarthy…??
I’m thinking about a new sci-fi script we could pitch. It would make a great movie. It’s set far in the future (like later in 2013), and the main character is this guy who has a really bad hairline and a really bad tailor. And, like Marlon Brando’s character in Waterfront, he really, really wants to be a Contender, but he has, you know, a big Trashbag full of Flaws that he pushes around dark streets at night in a stolen IGA shopping cart.
Despite his flaws, somehow, through various twists of fate, he gets to be an actual US Senator, and in a Flash of Brilliance he realizes that he can say or do anything he wants, and the more outrageous it is, the more air time he gets! He is working hard on figuring how to play it when he is visited in a dream by Joe McCarthy and Newt Gingrich, who equip him with the Chutzpah to think he is a real player, and even to believe that his idiotic ideas have some kind of screwy merit. We leave the viewer wondering if the Populace will realize before it’s too late that this guy is a Crackpot, or if they will follow him like the Pied Piper over the Fiscal Cliff, or if they will start putting Liberals into Concentration Camps– are you now or have you ever been a member of the Green Party…???!!!
First Warning: Mark your calendars!
This is a Countdown of sorts, toward something new for the wine shop. In a little over a week, Pat and I will be heading to France for a few weeks of wine-cation. One complication is that part of the time we will be taking part in Ryan’s Loire Valley wine tour, which means that for a couple of weeks neither he nor we will be available as your dutiful weekend hosts. What to do, what to do, such a Dilemma!
The plan for the moment, modelled vaguely after our elementary school days, is to offer you Substitute Hostesses who will pour your wines, lift your spirits, take your money, and show you a good time. (Hint: they both have the same first name…!)
Your Takeaway from this is that the wine shop will be CLOSED on BOTH Friday, October 18 and Friday, October 25th, but it will be open for tastings on every Saturday in October for the usual hours, 2-6pm. More on this next week!
This week’s Tasting
Tavignano verdicchio Castello di Jesi Classico ’11 Italy $11
Bright straw. Pure, penetrating aromas of apple and pear. Clean, fresh flavors of apple and apricot lead to a long, spicy, tannic finish and archetypal, chewy verdicchio character.
Evolucio Furmint Tokaj ’11 Hungary $11
100% Furmint, unoaked. Aromatic, richly flavorful, and bursting with citrus, fresh market apples, cantaloupe, and apricots, floral, and mineral notes. Slightly off-dry, with faint hint of tangerine just enough to bid this summer a fond adieu.
St. Cosme Little James Basket Press Grenache ’12 France $12
Precise, aromatic nose of cassis, cherry and lavender. Tightly wound, rustic Old World style, with a firm mineral spine giving clarity and lift to the dark berry and bitter cherry flavors.
Rigal Malbec ’10 France $11
From Cahors, the birthplace of malbec in France (not Argentina!); lots of plum and a bit of oak on the nose and palate, with lively notes of raspberry and licorice and a touch of earthiness.
Bodegas Breca Garnacha de Fuego ’12 Spain $9
Dark ruby/purple color; nose of jammy black cherries intertwined with crushed rock minerality. Full-bodied, with notes of ripe raspberries and black currants intermixed with camphor and forest floor.
Lummi Island Wine Tasting September 28 ’13
Another Equinox
This photo was actually a couple of days late (too cloudy on actual equinox). But you can compare the photo from last year (the camera was failing) and see that indeed the point of sunset has moved further south from our view of last year’s equinox point. All of you (both of you…?) who have followed this blog for awhile know that this business of the solar and lunar years holds a fascination for me, something about the Drama of how these huge Cycles of Sun and Moon and Earth affect everything we do. It is easy to understand how obvious it must have been to our distant ancestors that our Fate rested in the constancy and predictability of these repeating seasonal cycles.
Nowadays we can back far enough away from this sunset image to visualize our planet’s rotation and its annual orbit of the only Star we really know: all intimations of Infinity. So it makes perfect sense that our ancestral mortal beings on tiny planet Earth should have been awestruck enough by the Miracle of the Sun to have deemed it worthy of worship. Makes sense to me on these occasions when we take a moment to reflect on the celestial phenomena that define our existence…it’s almost enough to make you want to create some kind of ritual in which you sit in a group around a fire and eat and drink and dance and celebrate the Mystery of it All …!
(as usual, click on images for larger versions)
Newlyweds, Zero to Ten
Some stroke of fate last weekend brought us two couples celebrating wedding anniversaries. The newlyweds were celebrating their wedding, of course, which we could call their 0th annniversary (go ahead, say it out loud– “zeroth;” it’s perfectly acceptable mathematical Jargon!), while another couple were celebrating their 10th. One important take-way from their visits is the delightful contact jolt of well-being we all get when we are around people who are happy. It’s a drug we all love, and I’m sure you will all join us in wishing these two couples long and happy lives together, full of deep affection and good fortune. (Can you tell which couple is which…??!!)
It’s the Bottle, Stupid!
On most Mondays I join a group of curmudgeonly contemporaries for “brown-bag” lunch. Our friend and long-time member Bob Fodor, who passed on to the next world last winter, referred to us affectionately and jokingly as the “Manly Men,” which is quite a chuckle because this is a group of card-carrying nerds (I mean that in the nicest possible sense!); creative, inquisitive, curious, a little technical, a little artistic, a little independent, and more than a little skeptical of any and all Sacred Cows. In other words, like me, only, you know, more so…i.e., not your usual image of “manly men.”
One of these fine gentlemen recently encountered a wine he particularly enjoyed, and suggested I order a few for him, so of course I ordered a whole case so we can ALL try it! The wine arrived today (Hurray, Drydock is over!!!), so we will be pouring it this weekend: Villa Sparina Gavi di Gavi. I have never tasted this wine, and am looking forward to it. By the way, the lovely bottle mimics blown-glass bottles used in the region hundreds of years ago.
Gavi is a famous white wine DOCG zone in Piedmont, Italy, surrounding the city of Gavi. Dating back to the 17th century, Cortese is the grape behind the wines of Gavi di Gavi, distinguished by its crisp, floral, peachy, aromatic qualities. It is mostly found around the city of Alessandria and the Monferrato hills. The wines are best enjoyed young; it goes well with Asiago and Parmesan cheeses, and is often paired with seafood.
Geese
Most days around noon we walk the dogs from the house down to Legoe Bay. Last week I posted a photo of the Great Blue Heron we encountered along the wetland just inland from the Bay. This week, with mostly gray skies and curiously little wind, I was struck by a collection of Canada Geese which had settled onto a small bar in the part of the wetland. Like monks in a Zendo, they sat very still most of the time, and the still water added glassy reflections. The combination of still birds all oriented in the same direction (sunlight from the left), the perfect reflections in the still water, and the soft fall colors in the grass and brush formed a compelling image….
This week’s tasting
Three Rivers Steel Chardonnay ’11 Washington $13
Notes of stone fruits, mineral, and green apple; medium-bodied, lively and fresh on the palate, with a clean, focused texture, juicy acidity and a good finish.
Villa Sparina Gavi di Gavi ’11 Italy $17
Bright golden color. Scent of overripe pears, spices, citrus fruit and aromatic herbs; Well balanced notes of honey and butter; full-bodied and savory.
Ventisquero Carmenere ’10 Chile $10
Glass-staining purple. Smoke-accented aromas of black and blue fruits and violet, with a peppery topnote. Juicy and light on its feet, with a seamless texture and good clarity to the fresh blackberry and blueberry flavors.
Domaine Escaravailles les Sablieres ’10 France $14
(70% Grenache and the rest Syrah and Mourvedre) exhibits a seductive style filled with black cherry and strawberry fruit intermixed with Provencal herb and earth notes. Medium-bodied, deliciously fruity, pure and well-made.
Avignonesi Rosso de Montepulciano ’11 Italy $17
Perfumed aromas of red berries, violets, cinnamon, and almond flower. Juicy and bright, with precise strawberry and redcurrant flavors and lively acidity. Finishes long and fresh, with lingering floral perfume.
Lummi Island Wine Tasting Autumn Equinox ’13
Great Blue
Last week we had an up close encounter with a great blue heron , and it was absolutely breathtaking! We were walking the dogs on Legoe Bay Road, along the little slough across from the old aquaculture school, when we startled into flight the Greatest Blue Heron I have ever seen! It must have been standing in the water very close to the road, hidden from view by the rose bushes, when very suddenly, with Great Whooshing-Flapping it filled the air right in front of us, huge and angular, massive wings unfolding and grabbing air, reaching for altitude. Even when it landed fifty feet away on the other bank it seemed the biggest Great Blue I had ever seen! (this is the very one, left, just sitting…ah, so very Zen…!)
I spent some time online looking for a photo that captured what we had experienced, but none of the hundreds of photos I found captured the sense of looming closeness, mighty power, and fluid angularity that came from being only ten or fifteen feet away from this sudden, primeval takeoff. Together, though, they might convey a suggestion of the feeling, especially if you imagine yourself right next to the bird in the photo, so that the air would seem for a moment full of wings! It was Amazing! (click on the thumbnails for larger images)
Destemming
A few weeks ago we posted the photo at left of once-a-year visitors Tom and Joannie Stangeland, who annually celebrate their anniversary with a few days at the Willows. Tom is a longtime master furniture maker (see photos) and relatively new commercial winemaker (Cloudlift Cellars). This year on their annual visit to the wine shop we finally finagled a bottle of one of Tom’s wines to try out, his current release of “Updraft,” a delicious white Bordeaux blend of semillon and sauvignon blanc. (Tom in pink shirt, Joannie holding wine bottle)
This past Sunday I drove to Seattle to help with “crush” of the new grapes he had picked up in Eastern Washington on Saturday. My menial jobs involved mostly sorting (not that much to it because the vineyards do a nice job of minimizing leaves, dirt, and bugs) and dumping grapes into the destemming machine. This particular machine leaves a fair number of grapes amidst the stems, so he likes to do a second sort by hand to retrieve the fairly large number of grapes that aren’t separated initially– so I spent a good part of the day shaking down the pile of stems to retrieve a few more grapes. It was meditative if sticky work, all quite enjoyable.
Images, above: 1) destemmer hopper; 2) close-up of destemmer worm gear that gently separates grapes from clusters; 3) resulting bin of stems that requires a second pass to get all the grapes (no, the Big Guys don’t bother with this step!). (click on the thumbnails for larger images)
The other thing you all need to know about this is that I brought back a case of the Cloudlift Updraft white blend ( $17, delicious!) and one of his Bordeaux blends (“Panorama,” $23), which we will be pouring this weekend. Don’t miss it: Tom is one of the most focused winemakers I have met in Washington, and you are really going to like this wine!
Autumn Equinox
September Equinox in Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A. is on Sunday, September 22, 2013 at 1:44 PM PDT, shortly after noon. So you can look up at that time and see the sun and know that for that one moment the sun is directly over the Equator on its way south, marking the beginning of the winter half of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Spiralling into six months of colder and darker is probably a great time to stock up on wine, and to help you out with that, there is one more weekend of our fabulous Drydock Case Sale. See last week’s post for details!
This Week’s Tasting
Leonildo Pieropan Soave ’12 Italy $15
Well-balanced, lively, and tangy, with distinct minerality and appealing flavors of cantaloupe, pear, blood orange and ginger.
Borsao Rosado ’12 Spain $9
Spicy strawberry and orange zest on the nose, with a light floral quality. Juicy and clean, offering tangy red berry flavors, a kiss of white pepper, good focus, and a light touch.
Garmendia Tempranillo ’10 Spain $12
Organically grown grapes ferment in carbonic maceration, yielding a balanced, round wine with sturdy tannins and notes of strawberry, raspberry, banana, and a note of fennel.
Pugliani Treggiaia 09 Italy $11
A smooth and satisfying blend of sangiovese, canniolo & cabernet, serious but friendly, delightful with anything from pizza to lamb chops.
Cloudlift Panorama ’09 Washington $23
Boysenberry, black currant and cherry accents include hints of graphite, cedar and bittersweet chocolate, with nice balance of fine-grained tannins and bright acidity, backed by hints of violet and tobacco leaf in the finish.”
Lummi Island Wine Tasting September 14 ’13
LI Parade and Fall Festival Sept 14
The Parade will begin at the Jenkins’ field just up Centerview from the school, go down Centerview, right on North Nugent and end at the Grange. The Fall Festival will be at the Grange Hall where there will be a beer garden and wonderful food from 11-3. There will also be a number of booths offering crafts, produce, and goodies, and proceeds from food and beer sales will benefit island Library. If you have any specific questions call Pat Moye at 360-510-7392. Btw, last year (see video, left) we participated as part of the FOIL (Friends of the Island Library) fundraising kickoff for the Library remodel– which as most of you will have noticed, is now almost completed…the sheetrock is freshly installed and painted, so you can peek in and get a sense of what it is going to be like. For now, mark your calendars for Saturday– it’s a worthy cause, it’s fun, and afterward you can come by the wine shop for our regular Saturday wine tasting!
Lummi Island Run Huge Success!
Last Sunday, along with many others, we participated in the Lummi Island Walk/Run (another Beach School benefit.) It was a beautiful day, mercifully foggy and cool in the morning, and a lot of people turned out. I regret I don’t have pictures, but let’s just say it was great fun and a great success. To show our appreciation to all of you who participated, we are offering a free wine tasting if you come in wearing your pink “Run for Beach School” visor (like Tator’s, left) to claim your free tasting…and thanks again for supporting Beach School!
Salmon Season
Anyone who has driven around the west side of the Island in the last week or two has probably noticed the sustained level of activity in the reefnet fleet in Legoe Bay. You may not know, however, that during the current run of pink salmon (the locals call ’em “humpies”) most of the gear have qualified to hoist a broom to their mastheads, signalling that the rig has caught over 100,000 fish in the current run! Multiply that by the number of rigs (seven?) and we are pushing a million fish in a very short period of time. Makes you wonder what it must have been like Back in the Day, when the fishery was open all summer and fish were plentiful…a level of abundance that is hard to get your head around.
I found this picture online, and really like how it portrays the archetypal struggle between man and fish, predator and prey…every one of those fish wants with its whole being to be somewhere else than in that net, and every one of those men has other plans for them. So here they all are in this high-stakes tug-of-war between “ha-ha I gonna eat you, pretty fish” and “oh no, I gotta get outa here!” Being salmon, even the “lucky ones” who don’t get caught don’t have long to live, but maybe they do get some sense of completion for making it home to spawn. It’s a deep mystery, difficult to fathom (puns intended); maybe the best we can do is be grateful for and awed at this phenomenal bounty of Nature. Pretty amazing.
Dry Dock Case Sale is Back!!!
Let’s face it, it’s Drydock. The Lemmings have left. The Tourists have left. Even the Weekenders have left. We Rats who are left are uneasy, wondering…what do they know that I don’t know? It’s at times like these that we need something extra, something special, something– I don’t know– soothing that says ‘yes,’ you are on the right track, and yes, it IS going to be Okay.
So in that spirit, for the remaining two weekends of Drydock we are offering case dicounts of the following kind: Buy any twelve bottles, and we will take 10% off. Not only that– if you are a Wine Club member, we will apply your current wine club discount in addition to the 10% off. This will only last through next Saturday, September 21, so don’t delay!
This week’s tasting
Brancott Sauvignon Blanc ’12 New Zealand 89pts $12
The spicy quince and Asian pear flavors rest on a crisp, juicy body, with plenty of lime zest and grapefruit notes, especially on the finish.
Ryan Patrick Rose ’11 Washington $10
Made from syrah; greets the senses with aromas of rose petals and subtle spice; palate is a bright medley of violet and a hint of cloves.
La Joya Carmenere ’10 Chile 89pts $11
Dark violet. Primary aromas of dark berry and cherry preserves, with notes of licorice and violet. Plush blackberry and boysenberry flavors stain the palate, with a smoky quality that gains power with air. Finishes on a licorice note with impressive clarity and sweet persistence.
Veramonte Cabernet Sauvignon ’10 Chile 90pts $10
This rich red leads with distinct earthiness to dark cassis, plum reduction and kirsch notes, gaining traction with layers of woodsy spices, maduro tobacco and licorice on the long finish.
Sant’ Antonio Monti Garbi Ripasso ’09 Italy $17
A gorgeous, expressive, tasty Valpolicella; floral notes give lift to the expressive, beautifully centered palate and a long, polished finish.
2072 Granger Way
