Lummi Island Wine Tasting October 6, ’12 “Frugal Fun Day”
“Frugal Fun Day”
According to people who pretend to know, October 6, aka Frugal Fun Day, is widely celebrated (or, if we all got behind it, it could be!) as
“a day to enjoy fun activities that are free (or very inexpensive). If you use your imagination, the ideas are endless. Go on a bike or walking hike. The Fall leaves are on display. Have a picnic in the park, or your back yard. Take a bunch of friends to visit Artisan Wine Gallery on Lummi Island for their frugal and delicious wine tasting (only $5!!). Go fly a kite (they mean that in a nice way). Pull out the those old board games or puzzles that you have stored in the basement (and get rid of them once and for all!). Play cards with friends.”
even more frugal fun
Muddling Toward Frugality
Actually, as I am writing this, I have been struggling to recall a title from years ago, something like “Muddling Toward Frugality,” one of many neo-Malthusian calls to arms about over-consumption back when people were, you know, concerned about the environment. I just looked it up to find the first edition was 1978 (back when I was a practicing environmental economist), with a revised edition in 2010. Glancing through the new edition online, I am struck by how cynical I have become about the possibility that anything at all can or will be done about the multitude of environmentally-related woes now facing the world.
This is exacerbated by the surreal experience of watching the Obama-Romney debate last night. By all accounts Romney was the “winner,” and I have to admit he was the better debater. I was also, of course, fascinated by the rational ideas that came out of his suddenly Centrist mouth, ideas very far removed from anything else he has espoused in the last several years of his more or less permanent campaign. As President Obama quipped this morning (day after the debate), “Last night I was in a debate with a spirited fellow who claimed to be Mitt Romney.”
The reason I bring this up, yes, intruding some level of politics into today’s posting, is that it suddenly occurs to me how far into the ozone the zeitgeist of our political economy has moved since the hopeful days of the seventies. Since then we have endured the Reagan years (who heroically decided we had to throw the poor out of the lifeboat to save the lifeboat), the Bush years (Reagan Lives On?), the Clinton years (Episode Three: Rise of the Reagan Clones?), the W years (Reagan Knows Best?), and the Obama years (The Curse of Reagan?).
Back in the seventies there was an excitement, a tangible sense of Possibility that the World could be saved, or healed, or at least managed with good intention, stewardship, and compassion. Now, as I look through the revised edition of “Muddling,” only a year or so after having been deeply involved in working to establish an academic program in Sustainability at WWU, I find I have grown quite cynical, which is a way of saying I have become way less confident that human beings have the will, the good sense, or the ability to avoid destroying the ability of the world to support civilization. Suffice it to say I could go on at some length about this, but not here, and not now. Maybe over a glass of something…?
My point for right now is the curious juxtaposition of last night’s “debate,” my random discovery tonight that October 6 has been named by somebody as “Frugal Fun Day,” and the other random discovery that there is a recent version of the old environmentalist treatise, “Muddling Toward Frugality.” Which leads us to…
The Other Debate
It turns out that the so-called Presidential debate is very carefully designed and managed so as only to include two candidates, the Republican and the Democrat. The format, the questions, and all the rules are made by the two parties. As you might imagine, the rules are strongly oriented toward not letting us see behind the Wizard’s curtain, and last night was no exception, which brings us to the Other Debate.
in order to get other voices heard in the debate, Democracy Now! found a way to include Jill Stein of the Green Party and Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party to answer the same questions asked of Obama and Romney in the mainstream debate. They had also invited the Libertarian candidate to participate, who declined. Still, it is encouraging to find that at least in small corners there is information NOT wholly managed by corporate interests, and I encourage anyone who is curious to check it out; it is a comfort to find serious people who reinforce our values while the mainstream goes further and further into la-la land. Link below:
Expanding the Debate Exclusive: Third Party Candidates Break the Sound Barrier As Obama-Romney Spar
Which brings us to:
This week’s tasting:
St Michael-Eppan Pinot Bianco ’10 Italy 91pts $12
Another winner from the alpine region of Alto Adige, this Pinot Bianco is again one of the stand-outs in San Michele’s 2010 releases. The aromas and flavors are beautifully delineated in this layered, expressive Pinot Bianco. White stone fruits, flowers and crushed rocks wrap around the insistent, layered finish. Anticipated maturity: 2012-2015.
For no particular or planned reason, it turns out that we have visited three of the four wineries whose wines we will be pouring this weekend, ranging from Bellingham to France to Spain. The first wine is NOT from an area we have visited, although by all accounts it (Alto Adige) is a stunning landscape, and I already know it produces exceptional and unusual wines. It is in far northern Italy, at the foot of the Alps, along the border with Austria.
Domaine Moulinier St. Chinian Rouge ’10 France $14
Typical of the domaine, this blend of syrah, grenache, and mourvedre is made for food, offering bright notes of dark berries and fruits, a hint of spice, excellent acidity, and nicely managed tannins.
Both we and many of our regulars have visited Domaine Moulinier in St. Chinian, tasted their wonderful wines, enjoyed hanging out with dad Guy and son Stephane, and been amazed at the museum-quality collection of fossils and ancient human artifacts, including Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal stone tools.
Celler Can Blau Can Blau ’09 Spain 90pts $15
The 2009 Can Blau is made up of 40% Carinena, 40% Syrah, and 20% Garnacha aged for 12 months in French oak. Wood smoke, spice box, incense, lavender, black cherry and plum aromas are followed by a mouth-filling, round, dense wine with outstanding grip and length. It over-delivers in a big way. Drink it over the next 6-8 years.
It turns out that the Can Blau winery is NOT located in the Montsant region, where we visited last spring, even though that is where several of their wines originate. Spanish law requires that in order to carry the label of a region, the grapes must be grown AND the wine must be made in that region. So Can Blau is mostly made up of grapes grown in the Spanish region of Montsant, which surrounds the famous area of Priorat. The wines are actually made by the Can Blau winemaker (a woman we met very briefly) at the Masroig cooperative winery located in the village of, you guessed it, Masroig. You will recall that we have tasted several of the Masroig wines over the past month or two, including the Les Sorts rose, the Sola Fred, and the Vinyes Velles.
Masquerade Syrah ’07 Washington $22
Made by Bill and Jennifer Kimmerley in Bellingham from Burgess Vineyard in Pasco, this syrah is both fruity and crisp, a great accompaniment to the heavier fare we are starting to enjoy as our evenings are turning decidedly cooler.
Bill and Jennifer Kimmerley of Masquerade Winery in Bellingham did a special tasting of their wines here in June for the Schooner Zodiac Wine Cruise stop here at our shop, and we have poured them on other occasions during the summer. We keep their wines in stock, as we do with several neighborhood wineries. We encourage you to stop by their tasting room on Iowa street (open most weekday afternoons), and to come by this weekend to taste their syrah.
Lummi Island Wine Tasting September 29 ’12
The Sky is “Falling!”
Here we are, nearing the end of another summer– the summeriest summer I can remember in these parts– and right now while we are basking in glorious, sunny, fall days with cool foggy mornings and glorious, warm afternoons under deep blue skies, I look back and wonder, “why didn’t I go sailing more?” Our trusty old sailboat that we share with another couple has been moored south of the ferry dock since the beginning of June, and yes we have enjoyed a few daysails over the summer (and, yes, maybe a few more than other recent years!) but only one overnight cruise this year, a bit of a disappointment. Each of us probably has a long list of postponed pleasures like this, things we want to do, places we want to go, people we want to visit with, songs we want to sing, but that we don’t very often get around to realizing. Why is that?
In the case of sailing, there are lots of dimensions to the answer, but the one that seems the hardest to gain traction with is the sense that even though I am retired, and my time is my more my own– (or more precisely, our time is our own…!) than since I was a kid on summer vacation, I have not been able to escape the habitual sense of Duty and Responsibility that we develop as adults out in the Big World: when you get the ten thousand things done, then you can go sailing. So the koan for the moment is, “why do we spend our time the way we do?”
Note in a bottle
Let’s face it: there is something archetypically haunting and romantic about notes in bottles. What is it about our private conversations with ourselves that could bring us to pen a note, put it in a bottle, and throw it into the sea? What, if anything, do we expect in return? What, if anything, do we want in return? There is something here about the mystery of internal dialogue, the bizarre and, let’s face it, vaguely schizophrenic act of talking to ourselves as if someone else were listening, or as if there were another “us” who would what– reply? Of course, I am going out on a big limb here by assuming that everyone has an internal dialogue, some kind of ongoing narrative that we maintain for only one special listener: ourselves. Could anyone write a blog without having such an imaginary friend…?
Last week my old buddy and boat co-owner Bob and I took a little overnight sail; the wind was so light we only got as far as Inati Bay, but even that can be a world away. What is important for this story is that on the way we spotted a bottle floating in the water and grabbed it as we went by. It’s a plastic bottle, about a quart size, with an orange cap. It is weighted with a small handful of marble sized, crushed rock fragments (not round pebbles) and a note handwritten on white notebook paper with a red margin line and a series of green horizontal lines that have gotten wet and bled to be about an eighth of an inch wide.
It’s from a man to a woman, and it is clear that the relationship has ended, that it was very special (I can’t describe how happy and free I was when I was around you), and that he has a wife in the picture, and this woman is not the wife. The feeling that is conveyed is of deep involvement (“I am inspired by your outlook on life and what I saw has changed me forever”), and that this note is a way of trying to honor his love in a way that begins to let him let go of her: I am writing this to put in a bottle and throw into the sea. So when I visit anywhere in the world by the water, I will be able to let go of pain and appreciate beauty.
I am thinking we have all been Fools for Love at some time or another, and paid for the experience, and feel compassion for what this man is feeling and expressing. Because this note to his lost Love, sent so indirectly by way by of the Sea, this note from his internal conversation, is one that we all understand, let’s all put our collective cosmic hand on his shoulder and offer comfort…though we may have no great pearls of wisdom, maybe we can somehow acknowledge our common human experience, so poignantly represented by the simple act of throwing a note, in a bottle, into the sea…
Rosé Sale continues!
If I remember correctly, we didn’t sell any rosé last weekend. This is surprising, for two reasons. First, all our Rosés are 10% off, and second, the weather is gorgeous, and these sunsets continue to be perfect for rosé. I notice that for myself, rosé carries these meanings of summer, and of lingering lunches in European cafés in Italy, France, and Spain. So I think I have also come to the point where, okay, I am accepting (it has taken years!): rosé is actually wine, and, ah, oui, I actually like it, and I really don’t care what season it is. I DO think that the “shrine” at the top of the stairs represents the seasonal aspect of rosé, however, so after this weekend the rosés will migrate to their respective regional displays, and prices will go back to normal. I say this after considerable experimentation has revealed that, imho, a good rosé will rest comfortably on the shelf for several years and be just as refreshing as when it was released!
Wine Club
Tomorrow afternoon (Friday) Ryan and I are getting together to toss around ideas about our nascent “wine club.” All I can tell you right now is that we are looking to reward and encourage consistent support, expand our services to include island delivery, online ordering, member discounts, personal ratings, purchase history, and special deals on wines we might be able to import ourselves. We are actively soliciting suggestions about how we can serve you even better (yes I am serious–you know, just as if we were a Real Business!…I SO can’t get my head around that…or is it ‘I so can’t get that around my head”…?))
This week’s wines
Marques de Casa Concha chardonnay ’09 Chile 90pts $15
A medium-bodied, ripe, plush Chardonnay with vibrant tangerine, spiced apple, melon, and heather notes, with savory flavors, lively acidity, and excellent length.
L’Hortus Rose de Saignee ’11 France $17
The Hortus 2010 Rose de Saignee – Grenache with small portions of Mourvedre and especially late-ripening Syrah – delivers tart fresh red raspberry and cherry tinged with cherry pit and chalk on a polished palate, with a clean, refreshing finish.
Monte Oton Garnacha ’10 Spain $9
100% Garnacha sourced from higher elevation. Spice box, incense, mineral, and black cherry notes inform the nose of this round, supple, savory red.
Masquerade Cabernet Sauvignon “Troika” ’07 Washington $22
A big hit at our June”Zodiac” tasting, this well-structured blend of Cabernet Sauvignon from three renowned Columbia Valley vineyards is full-bodied with robust notes of black cherries and plums that give way to a smooth finish of chocolate and coffee bean.th
Lummi Island Wine Tasting Fall Equinox September 22 ’12
Fall for 2012…
…begins here in our corner of the Northern Hemisphere on September 22 at 8:49 AM PDT. This picture from our yard was taken at sunset tonight (the 20th), so on the day of the actual Equinox the sun will set (from our perspective) pretty much at the northern tip of Orcas Island, the flat part just to the left of the sun tonight.
The Great Rosé sale
Since Fall is officially here, it is time to phase out our Rosé Shrine at the top of the stairs. Rosé has made a big splash in the market in the last couple of years, and we, too developed a taste for it on our few recent trips to Europe. There it is common to have a pretty large meal in the early afternoon, when rosé is the perfect accompaniment with its subdued flavors, brisk acidity, and cheerful color, from pale pink to deep red-orange and everything in between. As many of us have learned in the past few years, the rosés that are being so widely enjoyed today are either bone-dry or just ever so slightly off-dry; refreshing and palate-cleansing, they are not, as some people fear, “sweet.”
So as another Northwest Summer (yes it was actually HOT here for a few hours this year!!!) fades into Fall, it’s a great time to enjoy another few bottles of rosé at sunset, with a little bite of something savory and someone special to share it with.
While it lasts, 10% off all rosés!
Famous Chef visits Artisan Wine Gallery!
They seemed like just another charming couple, he (Maxime) the famous-in-certain-circles French chef and author, and she (Katie) the sweet young cowgirl from Montana. And they were very charming, dropping in late in the afternoon on a drifting, drydock Saturday chez nous. It wasn’t until they had been here quite awhile that we realized that he was (OMD!) Maxime Bilet, co-author with bazillionaire food experimenter/explorer Nathan Myhrvold of the “widely praised, six-volume, 2,400-page ‘cookbook’ Modernist Cuisine that reveals science-inspired techniques for preparing food that range from the otherworldly to the sublime. The authors and their 20-person team at The Cooking Lab have achieved astounding new flavors and textures by using tools such as water baths, homogenizers, centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids, emulsifiers, and enzymes. It is a work destined to reinvent cooking.”
All of this, I might add, has been accomplished just as Maxime has reached the ripe old age of…wait for it…30! He is a charming, unassuming young man of whom we could say “he is going places,” but of course he has already been some pretty amazing places, and it leaves this old guy baffled even to imagine what comes next. Hey, maybe he will be the next famous chef at the Willows when Blaine retires…you know, when he’s 30…!
Art Nouveau
At various times it seems the Universe has a Plan that just starts unfolding around you, and there’s not much to do but follow along as best you can. This seems to be one of those times with regard to our “gallery” function. For most of the past seven years we have enjoyed inviting various local artists to use our wall space (we get new decor and they get some level of exposure), and that has usually taken the form of one- or two-month shows. In between artists, we display our fall-back, default wine posters, mostly from a great series of annual Jazz posters from Longoria winery in Los Olivos (same place as movie Sideways), and named after a wine they do each year called “Blues Cuvée.”
In the last few weeks a couple of artists who have displayed their work here in the past have offered to leave pieces in our care as our new “default” pieces. So the good news is that we have some new (and old) works by Island artists Meredith Moench and Brendan Dunn for your (and our) viewing pleasure. I did try to take pictures of a few of them to post here, but as I mentioned last week, our camera is doing very weird things which make most of our recent pictures unusable. (The sunset photo above was just barely salvageable– you can see the strange horizontal bars if you click on the photo for the larger version).
So please do come on by this weekend: see the art, buy some rosé, schmooze a bit, lament the passing of another summer, and start celebrating next week’s return of the Whatcom Chief, our trust ferry.
This week’s tasting notes
Naia Naia ’10 Spain 89pts $14
100% Verdejo but with 12% of the wine fermented and aged in French oak. This fragrant, medium-bodied offering displays enticing aromatics of grapefruit, lime, and kiwi, a round, smooth-textured mouth-feel, and a crisp, refreshing acidity.
Celler Masroig Rosat ’09 Spain $8
A light, uncomplicated rosat we enjoyed in Spain a few months ago after visiting the wine cooperativa that makes it.
Honoro Vera Monastrell ’10 Spain $9
Tank aged 100% Monastrell. Its pleasing nose reveals notes of underbrush, mineral, and blueberry leading to a savory, spicy, nicely balanced medium-bodied wine.
Lost River Nooksack Redd ‘08 Washington $18
Our friends at Lost River make this special blend of cab, merlot, and cab franc to benefit the Nooksack River Salmon Enhancement Administration…a worthy cause, AND it’s DELICIOUS!
Lummi Island Wine Tasting September 15 ’12
Drydock projects
Drydock is a little like summer vacation for us retired folks. Even the wine shop is a bit self-tending this month: no wines to order and schlep, lots of folks away (both summer residents and a fair number of full-timers), and low expectations for Friday and Saturday turnout. Add to that beautiful clear weather, cool mornings and warm afternoons, and ahhh, life is good!
Drydock is also a good time to tackle some of those pesky projects that we expect to take a fair amount of time and effort, and which are therefore easy to postpone. (As the quip goes, “Ladies, if a man says he will fix it, he will; there’s no need to remind him every six months about it!”). The first project has been building the framework for a new deck in front of the house. When the ferry is back, we will add the decking. And if the good weather holds, maybe a little bubbly to christen it…! As one of our favorite cartoon characters would say,., “Well, Gromit, I guess that turned out about as well as could be expected…?”
Space Aliens visit wine shop !
Yes, it’s true, even eagle-beaked Aliens from the Bird Planet love our wines! Seriously, for some while now our little camera has been a little neurotic. For example, the picture above of the deck project has a bunch of horizontal lines in it (you might need to click on it for the larger version to see them). And recently several pictures from this camera have transformed their subjects into spacey Zombie Melts or Space Aliens (see left) — sure, entertaining, but not exactly what one is looking for in a photograph, eh…?
Any ideas on what is going on and how to correct it would be welcome. After all, this little camera has been faithfully chronicling events at the wine shop for years now, and we would like to keep it going. “Takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” as John Cameron Swayze used to say about Timex watches after dropping one from the Empire State Building, or running over one with a Sherman tank, or boiling one in oil, or feeding it to a python and retrieving it from python doo-doo (OMD…do pythons DO doo-doo???) see old Timex ad
Italian Olive Oil
No matter how, um, mature one gets, one is always (I love how use of the “this has nothing to do with me” third person ‘one’ means we can be talking about anyone…), it is always difficult to say, “Sorry… I know absolutely NOTHING about that!” Yet when it comes to olive oil, that’s pretty much where many of us live. Two years ago we were in Tuscany for three weeks; a year ago we were in France for three weeks; and this Spring we were in Spain for three weeks (yes, travel is definitely one of the perks of being retired!) . Each country is famous for both their wines and their olive oils; we have learned a lot about the wines of each country, or at least some regions of each, but somehow we haven’t really acquired much ability to distinguish one national style of olive oil from another, even though many wineries also make olive oil.
Maybe that just means that all olive oil is good, and who cares where it comes from? More likely, as with any kind of education, we just don’t have enough experience to be able to make the subtle distinctions among different olive oils. What we have learned is that in Tuscany, they like their olive oil young and fresh, maybe even a little “green,” and with a “bite” that you can feel in your throat when you swallow.
For a couple of years we have carried olive oil from one of our favorite Italian wineries, Perazzeta, which is located just south of the Montalcino wine region. Even though we know little about olive oil, we are impressed with the fact that these winery olive oil labels tell when (to the month) the olives were picked (and pressed). This is not something we Americans think about: how long has it been since this olive oil was made?
A few months ago we bought a bunch of wine from an importer who specializes in Italian wines (with a name like Giuseppe he is definitely Italian), and he also introduced us to another very small Italian production family olive oil, which we will be tasting this weekend: Gemma. His suggestion for tasting olive oil is to stick a finger into a dish of it, then use the finger to rub it around the palm of your other hand to warm it, then mindfully smell and then lick your hand (discreetly, discreetly!) to get a good sense of the aroma and flavor of the oil. Come on by and try it…and sure, it’s okay if you wash your hands first!
Case sale and Wine Club Musings
We have some good news and some bad news, and we’re not sure which is which. One of the “newses” is that the $99 case sale has turned out to be an unsustainable, “break-even” arrangement. Therefore it will be discontinued, effective immediately, which raises the question: What will replace it?
The short answer is, “we don’t know!”
However, we are clear that we need to win more of your wine purchasing dollars. We know that many of our regular supporters and a LOT of our resident non-supporters buy most of their wine from Costco, Trader Joe’s, the gas station or Trolls under a Bridge, with the result that our volume is too small to compete with any of them. After numerous discussions, we are perhaps starting to get a sense of our ( I really hate this term) ….Business Plan.
What we know so far is that we very much need to earn a greater percentage of your wine-buying dollar than we currently enjoy. And since we certainly can’t stock every wine on the market, that means that we need to be able to acquire your favorite wines for you at unrefusable prices. What we need to know next is what wines you buy Elsewhere, and what needs to happen before you would prefer to get them from us instead.
So let’s talk about that over the next few weeks!
This week’s tasting: (the madness continues: four hefty pours for only $5!):
Altarocca Arcosesto Orvieto ’10 Italy $14
A crisp, clean, fragrant white wine (grechetto, procanico, malvasia), bright and sunny with minerally notes of flowers, citrus, and dried fruits.
Pierre Usseglio Cotes du Rhône Rosé ’11 France $18
Grenache 80%, Cinsault 20%. Only 3,000 bottles of this gorgeous and special rosé are produced from the direct press method. Elegant and velvet of texture, this refreshing, stylish rosé has pretty strawberry and almond aromas, some notes of garden herbs and a clean, smooth finish. A very classy rosé.
Bodegas Ateca Garnacha de Fuego ’10 Spain $10
100% old-vine (65-85 years of age) Garnacha. A glass-coating opaque purple color, it offers up aromas of pure black cherries and violets. Dense on the palate and remarkably rich for its humble price, this great value over-delivers big-time.
Lost River Cabernet Sauvignon ’07 Washington WS 91 pts $22
Supple, refined and expressive, built around a core of black cherry, currant and floral flavors that expand gently on the long, harmonious finish. Shows deft balance and doesn’t flag as the finish lingers. Best from 2014 through 2019.
2072 Granger Way