Lummi Island Wine Tasting Nov 17 ’12
Thanksgiving wine pairings
Choosing wines for a smorgasbordy feast like Thanksgiving or Christmas is tricky because of all the traditional rich fare that gets piled up on the same plate. It’s a lot to ask that one wine will work with that many flavors, spices, and fats. In a way, because of the variety, almost any wines will do, but some will definitely work better than others. I think the primary criterion is for the wine to have a nice, mouthwatering acidity. Beyond that, I personally like some fruity complexity that will complement the richness of the meal while maintaining an accompanying role.
Bubbles
A chilled glass of Italian Prosecco, Spanish Cava, or your favorite champagne is always a good choice with big, rich meals because of its light flavors, festive bubbles, and crisp acidity. And of course it’s always a celebration to start any meal with savory appetizers, a cheery toast, and a flute of fizz..!
Rosé
Similarly, although we usually think of rosé as a summer wine, its light flavors and bright acidity make it a good match for rich holiday fare as well. And although we have dismantled our summer Rosé Shrine, we still have a wide variety of dry rosés to chose from, from France, Italy, Spain, and right here in Washington. A minute ago I just poured some from a nearly empty bottle that has been sitting around for a week or two, and am surprised and happy to report that it tastes really good!
Riesling
Another delicious direction for a holiday dinner wine is a dry or slightly off-dry riesling. Good rieslings are not, as many fear, “sweet wines.” One of the lovely things about riesling is that whether it is bone-dry (i.e., no residual sugar at all), or has a little or even a lot of residual sugar, it is usually beautifully fragrant and fruity, and balanced with bright acidity that effectively cleans the palate of any lingering sweetness. Because of its combination of complex white fruit flavors (like pear, apple, peach, and pinepple), riesling pairs well with almost everything. For the same reasons, other German or Alsatian varietals to consider for Thanksgiving include an Austrian gruner veltliner, an Alsation pinot bianco, or a Washington gewurztraminer– all of which we have in stock! Read more about riesling
Roussanne and Grenache Blanc
Roussanne and Grenache Blanc are two of my current favorite white varietals; we tasted and enjoyed several during recent visits in southern France and also in Spain. To our delight, we have also found a number of delicious roussannes right here in Washington, and I only recently discovered that some vineyards in Washington are also trying out grenache blanc. That was pretty exciting since I had enjoyed the varietal so much last year, and felt that it was likely to become the Next Big Thing in white wine in America (we’ll see about that). Right now we have delicious Washington roussannes from Mt. Baker Vineyards and from Syncline, which also happens to make– wait for it– a grenache blanc with fruit from one of Washington’s premier vineyards, Boushey. These tend to be full-bodied white wines, soft and fruity, rich on the palate, yet still with enough crisp acidity to stand up to a full-flavored holiday dinner.
Pinot Noir
Another versatile favorite for the holidays is pinot noir, the grape made famous in America a few years ago in the movie “Sideways.” Pinot has many different faces, but all of them should work well (in different ways) with a big holiday dinner. California pinot tends to be big, ripe, rich, and fruity, with notes of both red and white fruits and berries. It should stand up well to turkey, gravy, and cranberry sauce. Oregon pinot can be big like California, but usually tends to be less fruit forward, more acidic, and more balanced, making it more food-friendly in general, while French burgundy is often the most acidic, but can vary wildly according to vintage and vineyard location.
This week’s wines
Calcu Rosé ’11 Chile $11
Unusual blend of malbec, syrah, and petite verdot; beautiful pale pink-arange color, crisp acidity, and nice minerality with notes of citrus and green apple. Not to mention, a really great label!
OS Riesling ’11 Washington $14
Here’s a nice video of winemaker Bill Owen talking about this riesling. A few years ago we had an earlier vintage with Thanksgiving dinner, and it was, if I may say so myself, a brilliant pairing!
Syncline Grenache Blanc ’11 Washington $22
A lovely wine that manages to combine a sense of rich earthiness with fine acidity, with fruit flavors of nectarine and green papaya.
W. H. Smith Maritime Pinot Noir ’09 California $35
While in Napa two weeks ago we got a great deal on one of our favorite California pinots, and had a case shipped up. It’s here, it’s delicious, and it’s $20 less than usual. Come check it out!
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.
2072 Granger Way