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.
Lummi Island Wine Tasting Sept 7 ’13
Another Drydock
Okay, here’s a wild and crazy idea— a little late for this year, but hey, suppose that next year when the Whatcom Chief goes out of service for three weeks of drydock maintenance, instead of having the whole complicated passenger boat, bus shuttle, parking hassles, and so forth, we took the opportunity to “try out” possible replacement ferry designs. Would that be fun or what? We could play around with different schedules, maybe even try out a boat that would go all the way to Fairhaven so we could see what that would be like! While we’re at it, maybe sometime we ought to try out a floating bridge, too…! If Alaska can build a “bridge to Nowhere,” certainly Washington State can build a bridge to Lummi Island, where there is a lot more “here” here than there is “there” there. Pass it on!
Lummi Island Run Reminder!
As we mentioned a few weeks ago, the Beach School PTO is doing an ambitious fund-raiser on September 8 that should appeal to many of you who read this blog. It’s a Run on the Island, a bit more grand than the “Run on the Rock” events held a few years ago. See the complete brochure online for all the ways you can participate and make the event a success. You youngsters (you know, under 60!) should go easy and sign up for the half-marathon, and maybe a bunch of us geezers can sign up for a nice long walk that day…! Seriously, there are several options, and to add a little incentive, we will give all of you who participate a free “thank you” tasting to help you recover!
Start times
14-mile: 8:30am
7-mile: 9am
3.5-mile: 9:30am
100-yard dash: 9:45am
The Obscure County Election That Could Change the Planet–OMD, it’s OURS!
It has been national news for some months that the upcoming Whatcom County Council election may have global (No, I am not making this up) environmental and social implications. This is of course because the next Council may decide whether or not to allow the huge, proposed Peabody Coal Train/Port development project to locate here. As this article points out, our job as voters is particularly complicated: “here’s the kind of Twin Peaks twist you find only in local politics: The council is designated as a “semi-judicial” body, a sort of mini-court. That means candidates can’t disclose whether they would vote for or against the terminal, leaving voters in the dark about whom to support.”
The picture shown above is of Richards Bay, a comparably sized coal port in Africa to that proposed for our area. I am mentioning this here and now because this is a serious issue that deserves serious consideration by all of us who vote here. As mentioned above, our candidates are, perverse as it is, not allowed to say whether they support or oppose the coal port and all its implications. That means that we as voters must look deeper than rhetoric and slogans when marking our ballots. We must look at candidates’ track records, and make some inferences about their values. Candidates who have strong environmental credentials are likely to oppose the coal port. Candidates who have shown strong business, development, and property rights affiliations are more likely to support the coal port. Whatever your point of view, I urge you to get informed and to take this particular County Council election very, very seriously.
This week’s tasting
Cottat “Grand Caillou” Sauvignon Blanc ’11 France $11
Offers a light, crunchy feel, with lemon peel, thyme and tarragon notes, showing a flash of gooseberry on the finish.
Eguren Protocolo Rosado ’12 Spain $8
Bright, mineral-accented aromas of redcurrant and strawberry, with incisive citrus fruit and red berry flavors that gain weight with air. Finishes dusty and long, with lingering spiciness.
Venta Morales Tempranillo ’12 Spain $8
Bright purple; pungent aromas of cherry, blackcurrant and dark chocolate. Supple and juicy in the mouth, with spice-accented cherry and fresh herb flavors, finishing on a tangy note.
Montes Classic Cabernet Sauvignon ’10 Chile $10
Medium- to full-bodied; delivers solid varietal character, with cassis, ripe plum, graphite and medium tannins adding grip to the finish.
Bieler Lou Ven Tou Rouge ’11 France $10
(84% grenache, 13% syrah, 2% cinsault and 1% carignan): Dark ruby. Spicy red fruits on the nose and in the mouth. Juicy and easygoing, with good energy on the clean, peppery finish.
2072 Granger Way
