Lummi Island Wine Tasting November 9-11 ’12 Artists’ Studio Tour
A Toast to our Default Art
After we took down our great show from Labor Day weekend featuring works by Kathy, Gerry, and Ryan, we had, as usual, reverted to our default wine posters, which we really like. Most of them are from a series commissioned by Longoria Winery in Los Olivos. As we have mentioned at various times over the years, they produce a cab franc blend each year called “Blues Cuvee,” and every other year they commission an artist to paint yet another interpretation. So far we have liked them all. It’s really a great series, and we like how they look in the gallery.
Studio Tour Featured Artists
At the same time, we also love having different Island artists show their works at our place. It’s a great way to change the decor, tweak the atmosphere, provide a venue for local art, and meet new people. This weekend we have new watercolors from Meredith Moench and recent works by Brendan Dunn. We dropped by Meredith’s studio during Labor Day Studio Tour and fell in love with many of her new watercolors, which feature great light, color, and composition, and are happy to have many of those same works in the gallery this weekend. Sorry we don’t have photos of her new work to post here (remember…? our camera is kaputsky!). I am also sure most of you will remember Brendan’s vivid oil paintings of Hawaiian flowers that we showed last year, and we have more of those on display. I also found a picture of one of his newest works on his Facebook page (left) , and have already started lobbying to get it in the gallery before Thanksgiving…we’ll see! We are open Friday (4-7), Saturday (10-6), and Sunday (10-5) this weekend, so come on by, take a look, taste some wine, and hang out!
Blue Rodeo
As I write this tonight, I have turned on the radio here in the back room, at random, really, and got hooked into the music on CBC Radio 2, (somewhere around 92 FM), and have very much been enjoying the music while I write. When I first tuned in, I had no idea what I was listening to, but it turned out to be a 25-yr anniversary concert (I may have the number wrong) by a group I have never heard of (Okay, okay, I lead a sheltered life!) but whom I am sure Everyone else has been enjoying for, you know, decades. The group is “Blue Rodeo,” and their harmonies and acoustic music have a really nice sound, very reminiscent of the “late sixties-early seventies,” or in Old People parlance, “back when music was actually, you know, Music.” Anyway, chances are we can find them on Pandora and play them in the wine shop this weekend… Check them out
California Notes
Yesterday we returned from a week in Napa (see last week’s post). The fall colors are still developing, but definitely present, soft yellows, oranges, reds, and greens under a perfect deep blue autumn sky. During the day the temperature got up into the 70’s, sometimes close to 80 (yes, fellow Islanders, way too hot for the likes of us!), then dropping to 50’s at night. Grapes are now mostly harvested, and wineries are rich with the smell of fermentation. We did visit a few wineries (yum!) and several delightful restaurants, and in the process took in a lot of lovely scenery. I have to confess that if rent weren’t three to five times what it is here we might even think about moving there someday. That said, it is nice to be home, and we are looking forward to visiting with you all this weekend.
This week’s tasting:
Legoe Bay Viognier ’08 Washington $8
The new release of Lummi Island’s only winery’s flagship wine offers subtle floral and fruit notes with lots of fruit, great texture, and balanced acidity.
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.
Kiona cab-merlot ‘08 Washington $10
Rich, earthy, spicy, and crisp; good showing of Washington fruit at a real bargain price; great for sipping or with any meal.
Urban Ribera ’07 Spain 90pts $14
Deep purple in color with an inviting perfume of violets, Asian spices, black cherry, and blackberry, on the palate it is layered, plush, and intense
Lummi Island Wine Tasting November 2-3 ’12
A Bit of a Crowd
We are in the Napa Valley at the moment, but were in San Francisco for a couple of days before coming here yesterday. Many of you may know that last weekend the SF Giants won the World Series for the second time in three years, so on Wednesday there was a HUGE celebration parade, which started downtown near the Ferry Building at the end of Market Street at exactly the time we needed to be in the same place to catch BART to the Oakland airport to pick up a rental car. That meant that we converged with the million or so (yes, Really!) people coming into the city at the same point for the parade. The sidewalks were so crowded one couldn’t see the stairs down to the subway even from a few feet away. So it took about 20 minutes of wandering/pushing through the hordes of Giants ballcaps, jackets, sweatshirts, and costumes to find the BART entrance. It was all very, very festive, the beginning of an all-day party across the city…and from our perspective, a good time to leave town!
El Camino de Santiago Benefit slide show
This Saturday night Bryan and Kathy Thurber will share their recent Pilgrimage adventure in Spain with an exciting program of food, culture, and slides at the Grange at 6 pm. The event is a benefit fund-raiser for the Island Library remodel project. We have donated Spanish wines for the event (so you know they’ll be good!), which will also feature an array of tapas prepared by a small army of volunteer chefs. Come join the fun, contribute your support to the project, and stay for slides and the Thurber’s lively presentation. Finally you get answers to all your questions about walking El Camino de Santiago!
A suggested donation of $10 per person to the Library Building Fund is requested… but feel free to give more! read more about the Pilgrimage route
This week’s tasting
Since we will still be here in Napa this weekend, Ryan will be choosing and pouring the wines for Friday and Saturday tastings. I did leave on the counter several bottles of a lovely French wine that we have enjoyed with you earlier this year, and it is possible that he might select it for this weekend. The wine comes from near the village of Cairanne in the southern Rhone, which we visited about a year ago.
Les Aphillanthes Cairanne l’Ancestrale ’09 France 93pts $23
From 100-year-old vines, this unfiltered blend of 90% Grenache and 10% Mourvedre is an extremely supple, full-bodied, opulent, irresistible wine that fills the olfactory senses with copious aromas of black cherries, black currants, forest floor, pepper, lavender and garrigue. It is a compellingly sexy, full-throttle, ancient vine Cotes du Rhone the likes of which are impossible to find anywhere else in the world.
Lummi Island Wine Tasting October 27 ’12
Hey! Bellingham Herald Article Makes Us Even More Famous!
A couple of weeks ago our friends Dan and Alex stopped by for what turned out to be most of the afternoon to chat about how the wine shop has been faring the last year or two. Dan (Radil) writes the weekly wine column in the Bellingham Herald, and he and Alex drop in from time to time to check up on us. Their too-occasional visits make for a festive time, and we always look forward to seeing them. (Of course those of you who visit regularly know that, hello, we always have a good time here, but that’s another story!). Suffice it to say that Dan’s article featuring us appeared this week! Numerous people have read it and told us it was a great article (Thanks, Dan!). I thought it would be easy to find online but unfortunately there is some weird delay between when the column appears in print and when it appears online. Bottom line: we haven’t seen it yet! Since we didn’t manage to get out and buy the edition of the paper in which it appeared, the next best option is this:
Free tasting this weekend for the first person (or couple) who presents us with a clipping of the original article!
Cameras
Several months ago our trusty little Canon Powershot S500 Digital ELPH that Pat bought ten years or so ago starting acting as though it had suffered some kind of stroke. This is a camera we have relied upon heavily in the wine shop to document our (and your!) activities on this blog over the past several years. The first symptoms were the appearance of horizontal bands in the photos. That went on intermittently for several months; sometimes pictures had the bands, but most of the time they were fine. A few weeks ago, however, the bands started appearing all the time, definitely a problem. That was quickly followed by an unresolvable seizure mode, in which the camera could not zero in and focus, but just kept trying anyway. It appears, therefore, that we need a new camera, and that’s why in the past few weeks I have been relying almost exclusively on public photos I find online to illustrate this weekly missive rather than the more familiar shots of People Having Fun in the wine shop!
It is bizarre that these days you can take photos with your camera, your phone, your computer, your Ipad (not to mention tiny spy cameras in the shape of little black helicopters in microscopic specks of dust!). Yet despite the ready availability of photographic technology, when I try to use one of these alternatives I find that there is always some other piece of hardware necessary to access the photos, which tends to make me a little grumpy. So the good news is that I can take pictures with the new dumb phone I bought last winter when my old one ran out of power, but of course I don’t have the special cable required to connect it to my computer. We do have an Ipad, which also takes pictures, and even a cable to connect it to an actual computer, but it is a little unwieldy to “point and shoot.” At the moment, based on the recommendation of one of our regulars visitors who happens to be a professional photographer (thanks, Jim!), I am leaning toward the new Canon Powershot G15 to replace our terminally ill camera. However, that is a little pricey, so we are still shopping. In the meantime, if you have a camera to recommend, let us know!
Napa
Next week we are off for a week or so to Napa wine country, visits with family and friends (maybe including a white-knuckle ride in The Kid’s Red Car…ah, the Napa lifestyle!), and possibly a bit of wine tasting, you never know. Never fear, Ryan will be here to attend to all of your wine needs during our travels, so the shop will be open as usual next Friday and Saturday, November 4 and 5, and we will be back the following weekend, which might be studio tour..? Anyway, there is something about vineyards, especially hillside vineyards, that always evokes in me a deep sense of calm, a soothing beauty, a long, restorative exhalation. Ahhhhh!
Last week
Even after all these years, it is still a surprise– not a complaint– to re-experience the seasonal slowdown our business takes in the Fall. So it was a bit of a surprise that last weekend, when we were special tasting of the new Betz releases of their Rhone blends, that we had so few visitors to share them with.
Despite the low numbers in attendance, I have to say that the quality of conversation and cameraderie reached a new qualitative high. So here is a special thanks to Mary Jane, Capella, and Judy O (this photo is from last Halloween with Capella, Leere, and Mary Jane…sorry no photos of Judy) on Friday night for a lengthy and enjoyable salon, and special thanks to Randy for wasting most of a perfectly good Saturday with us, including taking it upon herself to make sure everyone got several chances to taste the Betz wines…! and yes, folks, they were very, very good; imho, this very difficult 2010 Washington vintage more closely mimicked the climate of the southern Rhone, yielding more Old World-like wines with sharper varietal delineation and brighter acidity than usual. They may not earn the big ratings scores they have in the past, but I suspect that they may come closer to the ideal that winemaker extraordinaire Bob Betz has been continually striving toward.
This week’s tasting notes
Poet’s Leap Riesling ’11 Washington $18
Fragrant nose of mineral, lemon-lime, and floral notes leading to a vibrant, Kabinett-style, off-dry wine with pear and apricot flavors on the palate. Balanced by the excellent natural acidity of the vintage, it is likely to evolve for 1-2 years and drink well for another 6-8.
Underwood Pinot Noir ’11 Oregon $11
Notes of cranberries and red raspberries with hints of smoke and spice. The palate is filled with sweet raspberry fruit intertwined with warm cinnamon tones.
St. Francis Red Splash ’08 California $12
Lush with succulent ripe, red fruit flavors and spicy aromas. Full-bodied and versatile, RED pairs with a variety of foods for any occasion.
Cryptic Red ’10 California $18
Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, and Cabernet Sauvignon blend from lots of vineyards, yielding a big, jammy New World red blend brimming with brambly, intense, red berry flavors; inky, intense depth and color; and a silky mouth-filling finish: a hedonist’s delight.
Lummi Island Wine Tasting October 20 ’12
Sweetest- & Newscarriers- Day
October 22 was first celebrated (I am not making this up) as “Sweetest Day” in Cleveland in 1922, when philanthropic candy company employee Herbert Kingston wanted to bring a little joy into the lives of orphans, shut-ins, and others who were forgotten. With the help of friends, he began to distribute candy and small gifts to the underprivileged. On the first Sweetest Day, (90 years ago today) movie star Ann Pennington (leftmost) presented 2,200 no doubt very excited Cleveland newspaper boys with boxes of candy to express gratitude for their service to the public, while fellow actress Theda Bara (near left) distributed 10,000 boxes of candy to people in Cleveland hospitals. Like us, everyone probably wondered if these Silent Screen stars had, you know, actual Voices, and whether they were anything like what people expected!
This day also commemorates the hiring of the very first newspaper carrier; on September 10, 1833, Benjamin Day, publisher of The New York Sun, hired 10 year old Barney Flaherty to sell papers for his penny press. “The only job requirement, was that he had to show that he could throw a newspaper into the bushes.” (really??…the bushes?)
It seems likely that Kingston and the actresses were aware that the day was already designated as Newspaper Carriers’ Day; or maybe it was just a coincidence (you think???) that on the first “Sweetest Day,” special effort was made to honor the carriers with candy. Personally, I think “Sweetest Day” was a pretty bad choice of names, good intentions notwithstanding… Nowadays, few kids deliver papers anymore except in small towns; it’s mostly adults who get up early and deliver them by car; but the “Carrier Day” tradition lives. Ah, yes, another memory from a simpler time…
Carmenere
Carmenere is a wine grape that originated in France but died out there a century ago, caused either by “coulure,” and the vine’s defensive response to prolonged wet and dark conditions (ummm, probably not a good choice for planting around here…), or perhaps by phylloxera, which decimated French vineyards. For whichever reason, carmenere disappeared from the world in the nineteenth century, only to be rediscovered– and this is the exciting part- within the last decade or two, mainly in Chile, where it had been grown for over a hundred years under the mistaken impression that it was a clone of Merlot. Over the years we have carried several carmeneres, and we have enjoyed them all. Softer than merlot, mellower than malbec, wines from this varietal occupy a unique and satisfying niche between the Big Tannic Guns of the Bordeaux varietals (cab, merlot, malbec, cab franc) and the softer “wines of the sun” of the South (grenache, syrah, mourvedre). We will be pouring one this weekend; come check it out! more history of Carmenere
Betz Family Winery Fall Releases
Twice a year we head down to Woodinville to pick up new releases from Betz. In the winter they release their Bordeaux-style blends (based on cabernet sauvignon and merlot), and in the fall they release their Rhone-style blends (based on syrah, grenache, and mourvedre). This year their release party was the first weekend after Labor Day, or as it is usually known around here, the first weekend of Drydock. So we missed the release party, and finally made it to Woodinville to pick up the wines this week. We don’t usually pour these wines at tastings, but since we haven’t tried them yet, we will pour a couple of them this weekend. The good news is that these are world class wines made here in Washington; the bad news is that these are $40-$50 wines, so the tasting will be$10 this week instead of the usual $5. The way the math works out, if we monitor pours very carefully, we might break even on the tasting, and we will all get to taste a couple of exceptional wines.
Here’s a short video of winemaker Bob Betz talking about the 2010 vintage
This week’s tasting
Fleur Chardonnay ’08 California $10
From vineyards in the hills along California’s North Coast combining opulent fruit with wonderful richness and brilliant color; aromas of apricots, honeysuckle and Comice pear. Aging in neutral French oak on the lees gives the wine a creamy, soft texture and a wonderful richness.
La Joya Carmenere ’10 Chile $11
Nicely toasty, with a coffee edge framing the black currant, plum and tobacco notes, which push through on the finish.
Betz Grenache Bésoleil ’10 Washington $39
Mourvedre, Cinsault and Syrah each complement the dominant black raspberry notes of Boushey vineyard Grenache, creating aromatic layering and palate impression of cream, white pepper, lavender blossom and toasted earth. Silky and full on entry, the mid palate expands while still remaining plump and supple.
Betz Syrah La Serenne ’10 Washington $49
Impenetrable black color of classic Boushey vineyard Syrah leads to distinctive and seductive aromas of smoky, candied blackberry that gives way to notes of licorice, iron, roasted earth and meat. Despite the cooler vintage conditions, there a full, rich, almost powerful overall impression, the velvet hammer, the gloved fist: plush, silky and yet jam packed with character.
2072 Granger Way