lummi island wine tasting aug 30-31 ’24
Hours, August 30-31 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Friday Bread This Week
Breton – Incorporates the flavors of the french Brittany region. Bread flour and fresh milled buckwheat and rye make for interesting flavor and the salt is set gris -the grey salt from the region that brings more mineral flavors to this bread. – $5/loaf
Spelt Levain – Spelt is an ancient grain that is a wheat. It has a nutty, slightly sweet flavor and has gluten but it isn’t as strong as the gluten in modern wheat. This bread is made with a culture that is used to create a levain before the final dough is mixed with traditional bread flour, spelt flour, fresh milled whole spelt and fresh milled whole rye. It is a great all around bread – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Brioche Tarts au Sucre – otherwise known as brioche sugar tarts. A rich brioche dough full of eggs and butter is rolled into a round tart and topped with more eggs, cream, butter and sugar. As always, quantities are limited, be sure to get your order in – 2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list at least two weeks before your visit.
This week’s Wine Tasting:
Lancyre Pic St. Loup Rosé ’20 France $15
Raspberry and pear aromas on the nose, with distinctive spicy, minty garrigue notes. Big, bold and firm on the palate, ending with a long, clean finish; pairs perfectly with hearty salads, grilled vegetables, kebabs, stuffed tomatoes or charcuterie.
Pomum Red ’19 Washington $17
This “second” wine of the winery showcases the range of varietal flavors found at Pomum’s Konnowac vineyards. This blend of 34% Petit Verdot, 32% Cab Sauv, 14% Merlot, 10% Cab Franc, and 10% Malbec was fermented in small one-ton fermenters and aged in French oak barrels for 20 months.
Toso Reserve Malbec ’21 Argentina $21
Dry, full-bodied and generous; richly layered with aromas and flavors of ripe blackberry, sous bois, and toasty oak, with firm, fine-grained tannins that go well with savory meats and sauces. Pair with savoury herbs, rich or spicy roasts or spicy dishes.
Economics of the Heart: Campaign for Freedom
from Michael Vadon’s flickr photostream
It feels as though our entire country– perhaps our entire World– has been holding its breath since about 1980. That’s when our country went for Reaganism, fueled by billions from the Heritage Foundation, launched its battle plan to wrest whatever scraps of wealth middle and lower middle class Americans had accumulated since the New Deal and transfer it to a handful of corporate billionaires and compliant Republican Senators and Representatives. .. “enough to more than double median income—enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year.”
When Reagan was ending his second term in 1988, young and ruthless Republican strategist Lee Atwater successfully dreamed up the infamous “Willie Horton Story“ to discredit Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis. It was enough to assure the victory of George HW Bush. The tactic was widely criticized for “crossing the line” of campaign etiquette. But it worked. It was the beginning of what became standard practice of Republican radio and television talk show hosts around the country telling non-stop lies about Democratic lawmakers.
That is the process which led inevitably to replacement of old-time Republicans with ego-driven poseurs from Gingrich & Co. to Dubya’s gang of neocons and their unilateral invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan shortly after taking office. Using the excuse of the September 11 hijacked aircraft attacks, they started a war that continues in some form even today. The casualties include :
- 6,951 US military
- 7,820 US contractors
- 109,154 national military & police
- 1,464 Allied military
- 255,000 civilians
- 112,000 opposition fighters
- 362 journalists
- 566 humanitarian/NGO workers
Half a million people died and vast amounts of infrastructure, ancient artifacts, cultural heritage, and natural habitat were destroyed. There is little to show for all this loss, suffering, and grief. All of these things followed from the ego-driven sense of entitlement of the Neocons. Even Colin Powell went along with the “weapons of mass destruction” ploy, which we believe he later regretted.
During the Obama years, while the Republicans were largely held at bay from 2008-2016, their Party was increasingly taken over by wealthy, white, “conservative-entitled” CINOS (Christians in Name Only) who felt increasingly ham-strung by Constitutional barriers.
Led by arch-villain Leonard Leo, they burrowed into our Judicial system and systematically, over decades, installed billionaire-bought judges to significant Federal judicial positions, and brought forth a growing string of head-slapping Supreme Court decisions that robbed ordinary citizens of their Rights and gave themselves unlimited power to do WTFTW to anyone, anywhere, for any reason. You can read it all for yourself in their widely-publicized plan, Project 2025.
Which brings us to our present moment as Americans. In two months we will have perhaps the most important election of our lifetimes, and perhaps in our Nation’s history. What is different is that these Heritage people are Very Confident that they have thought of everything, hidden everything, and rigged everything to guarantee their victory. They have infiltrated state and county governments, occupied key positions, gerrymandered voting districts, dis-enrolled or made voting difficult for likely opposition voters, and lined appropriate pockets. They have had decades to get their ducks and decoys deployed, their booby traps set, their alibis air-tight, and their egos glowing with self-righteous Christian narcissism.
So this is a scary time and also a call for action on all our parts. One small example is from last weekend in the wine shop, when we got chatting with a young couple sitting at the bar writing brief notes and carefully sealing them in envelopes. They were part of an extensive Democratic Party program to turn out as many voters as possible in the coming election.
That’s something we can all do! Click here
lummi island wine tasting 8/23/24
Hours, August 23-24 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Found: sunglasses recently found across the street…and
readers left in shop some time ago…
Friday Bread This Week
Pain Meunier -aka “Miller’s Bread”— made with pre-fermented dough it contains all portions of the wheat berry: flour, fresh milled whole wheat, cracked wheat and wheat germ, always a favorite and a great all around bread. It makes the best toast! – $5/loaf
Sonnenblumenbrot – aka Sunflower Seed Bread– made with a pre-ferment that is a complete dough itself. It takes a portion of the flour, water, salt and yeast that ferments overnight before mixing the final dough, made with bread flour and freshly milled rye, then loaded up with toasted sunflower seeds and some barley malt syrup for sweetness. This is a typical German seed bread – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Traditional Croissants – Made with a levain as well as “old dough” where a portion of the flour, water, salt and yeast is fermented overnight. The final dough is made with more flour, butter, milk and sugar, & laminated with more butter before being cut and shaped into traditional French croissants. Quantities are definitely limited so if you want croissants this week be sure and get your order in early. 2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list at least a week before visiting!
This week’s Wine Tasting:
Mas des Bressades Rosé ’21 France $14
Bright and refreshing classic Rhone blend of grenache, syrah, and mourvèdre, with splashes of Carignan and Cinsault; nice flavor balance of bright red fruit, wild herbs, and a vibrant, spicy finish.
Lancyre Pic St Loup Vielles Vignes ’17 France $16
100 % malbec; unfolds with dark, enchanting notes of blackberry, grilled plum, and jammy raspberry with accents of orange peel, vanilla, and tobacco spice, finishing with balanced structure, plush texture, and a lengthy finish.
Idilico Graciano Reserva Snipes Mountain ’17 Washington $28
Best known as a blending grape with tempranillo; all by itself this graciano grown here in Washington offers jammy aromas of raspberry and blueberry, with cigar box and light spice accents; fermented two weeks on the skins and aged 15 mos. in small French barrels; inky color, wild aromatics, huge fruit, zesty acidity, and lingering finish.
Economics of the Heart: A Resurgence of Hope
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/8/6/us-election-2024-live-news-kamala-harris-running-mate
An article in Thursday’s NY Times shows several interesting graphs of the recent surge of donations to the Democratic Presidential campaign. There were small spikes after the Tweetster’s conviction for voter fraud in late May, and after the Biden-Trump “debate” in early July. But those blips were sharply eclipsed by the huge increase of 600,000 new donations in late July after Biden bowed out of the race and gave the nod to Harris. These new Harris donors average ten years younger (55) than Biden supporters (65), with large numbers of new voters between 25 and 50 now engaged.
In addition of course, young women across much of the country are deeply motivated to vote against those who have taken away their right to make private health decisions. In numerous states they have successfully blocked state legislation that interferes with those rights, and those efforts continue.
The last few days have shown a clear contrast between the lackluster and unimaginative GOP convention and the engaged, motivated, joyful, and well-organized Democratic convention. These several days have felt tangibly buoyant, positive, and energized. Everyone involved seems to grinning, feeling the “Yes, we can!” hope arise as when Obama was elected in 2008.
These things feel especially nourishing because such moments have been so rare over the last eight years, with pro-Tweetster propaganda not only dominating online media and talk radio, but also often serving to tone down more liberal news outlets like NYT or WP with editorial innuendo, omission, or faint praise.
Our country seems to be waking up from the 70’s “Republican National Nightmare,” as Jerry Ford called it when he gave Nixon a full pardon for his crimes in the ’72 election, and getting appropriately motivated by Project 2025’s terrifying and explicitly documented plan to do away with Constitutional governance altogether. More and more voters are awakening to the domestic and international toxicity of today’s Maga Republicans.
In a very short time the Harris campaign has done a great job engaging our nation in a set of new possibilities for a positive future where everyone belongs and has the resources to thrive with dignity. Everything our nation has stood for for 250 years is at stake in the coming election, so every vote matters.
lummi island wine tasting aug 16-17 ’24
Hours, August 16-17 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Friday Bread This Week
Black Pepper Walnut- made with a nice mix of flours, bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A fair amount of black pepper and toasted walnuts give this bread great flavor with just a bit of peppery bite to it. Works well with all sorts of meats and cheese- $5/loaf
Four Seed Buttermilk – Includes all the elements of whole wheat, adding cracked wheat and bran in to the bread flour instead of milling whole wheat berries. It also has buttermilk and oil for a tender bread and a little tang, and finished with a bit of honey and sunflower, pumpkin, and sesame seeds and toasted millet – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Muffins – Four muffins/ $5… two each of: Cinnamon Streusel – Made with flour, sugar, eggs and butter with a brown sugar, butter, pecan and cinnamon filling swirled through the batter and then topped with a streusel made with more butter, brown sugar and pecans and as if that isn’t enough topped with a cream cheese glaze, and... Chocolate – Rich and delicious; chocolaty and incredibly moist to last a day or two. Made with all the things that muffins good: flour, brown sugar, sour cream and eggs; with plenty of chocolate chips stirred in and sprinkled on top!
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list at least a week before visiting!
This week’s Wine Tasting:
Idilico Albarino ’22 Washington $17
Fermented on the lees for four months, lightly cold stabilized, fined and filtered before bottling; nose of citrus and tropical fruit leads to luscious, crisp, and refreshing flavors. “Drink anytime the sun shines…”
Goose Ridge g3 Red ’20 Washington $17
Syrah-cab-merlot blend; supple ripe plum and blackberry notes with hints of spice, vanilla, black currant and Bing cherry. Nicely balanced with a lush, round mouth and a long, lingering finish.
Sineann Cabernet Sauvignon Lady Hawk ’21 Oregon $27
Classic Columbia Valley cab– dark, well-balanced, food friendly, and age-worthy. “We easily could have vineyard-designated any of the components of this Cabernet; we chose instead to blend it into this gorgeous wine. You will rarely experience a wine this good that costs this little!”
Economics of the Heart: The $War For $Everything Continues…
Costco’s Wine Monopoly / Davinci AI
We started this little wine business on a whim in 2005. We knew nothing about wine except that it was tasty and deeply interwoven in human history, geography, and customs. The more we learned and tasted, the more interesting it became. Every varietal, vineyard, culture, cuisine, and region has its own very long story. It’s been an interesting journey!
Fyi, one requires a different State license to sell wine as a producer, retailer, or wholesale distributor. The passage of the 21st Amendment to the Constitution in 1933 marked the end of Prohibition (and the extensive black markets it had spawned), and established the “3-tiered system” to provide predictable and stable rules for all the players in the industry. In our case, we are licensed as a “wine retail outlet.” Until 2011, Washington law provided that all retailers paid the same wholesale price for every wine purchased for resale.
That all came to a screeching halt in late 2011 when Washington State yielded to years of financial pressure from Costco by closing State Liquor stores and eliminating the 3-tier system which had been in place for 90 years. The fallout was immediate and has continued to this day. The State lost a valuable source of revenue; very large buyers like Costco got gigantic volume discount prices from producers and wholesalers, and countless small wine distributors we had worked with for years went out of business within the first year. Costco gained something of a monopoly on retail (and in some states, wholesale too).
Btw, this is exactly the kind of market-disrupting distortion that antitrust legislation was designed to eliminate. By the late 1800’s John D. Rockefeller expanded his Standard Oil Company into some 40 subsidiary companies, making it “a maze of legal structures which made its workings virtually impervious to public investigation and understanding.” And perhaps more apropos to our particular case here in Washington, there is the equally famous A&P antitrust case. As the very first “supermarket,” it grew into the first chain of thousands of supermarkets, A&P monopolized the grocery business for many decades. It stifled competition through “tying agreements” with its suppliers, and generated extraordinary profits for its corporate owners. Even when broken up by the courts, it still formed the model for all the grocery chains that followed.
In similar fashion, over the next several years the new “Costco liquor laws” spawned an explosion of gigantic distributor-retailer warehouses with acres of floor space, and which now pay so much less under the new laws than small retailers like us that they can easily make a profit selling at our wholesale buying price. This concentration of market power is exactly what the Three-Tier system was designed to prevent. As most of you know, “The Islander,” our dear local General Store does virtually ALL of its wholesale buying at Costco. This is what market concentration is about, folks. Like the proverbial Company Store, its leverage forces wineries to give it massive discounts.
The Big Takeaway here is that Republicans have been grump-stipated for the almost 100 years by New Deal restrictions on competition-reducing market interference. The Costco Law is just one. Others include Citizens United and other Supreme Court decisions that have increasingly benefited a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals at the expense of the other 8 billion of us.
lummi island wine tasting aug 9-10 ’24
Hours, August 9-10 ’24
Friday 4-6 pm Saturday 3-5 pm
Both Saturday and Sunday owner-winemaker Tom Stangeland of Cloudlift Cellars in Seattle will be pouring five of his wines for this week’s tasting. Tom and wife Joanie have been celebrating their August wedding anniversary on Lummi Island for decades, and have become long-time friends many of you will remember. We have also helped out with crush and bottling at their winery.
Btw, Tom is also a long-time Craftsman furniture maker, and his meticulous attention to detail carries over into his wine-making. (btw, we have discovered that almost without exception, every top winemaker we have encountered is equal parts chemistry geek and artist (poet, musician, painter, chef…)
Cloudlift Lucy Rosé of Cab Franc ’23 Washington $19
Pale salmon in color, with aromas of fresh nectarine, citrus peel and strawberry; palate is dry, bright, and focused, with lively, mouthwatering citrus and minerality that extend the finish.
Cloudlift chardonnay ’22 Washington $28
Scents of honeysuckle, sweet lemon curd, and pear drift out of the glass. The rich palate brings a mouth watering acidity carrying flavors of crisp green apple and pear with a burst of lemon zest on the finish.
Cloudlift Ascent Cab Franc ’21 Washington $34
74% cab franc and 18% merlot with a bit of cab sauv and Petit Verdot; deep ruby color and a rich, smoky nose of raspberry, cherry, and plum with scents of rosebuds, brambles, tobacco, sage and pepper. The flavors follow the aromatics with notes of licorice, dark cocoa, French roast and scorched earth.
Cloudlift Zephyr ’15 Washington $34
Beautiful blend of 44% Syrah, 28% Mourvèdre, and 28% Grenache presents rich aromas and flavors of blueberry, huckleberry, orange peel, garrigue, raspberry, black pepper and sweet fruit flavors that linger like satin on the finish.
Cloudlift Halcyon Cabernet Sauvignon ’18 Washington $36
From Gamache and Elephant Mountain Vineyards; bold aromas of currants, anise, black cherry, and herbs lead to bright raspberry and dark cherry flavors and a bright, lingering finish.
Friday Bread This Week
Buckwheat Rye – Fresh milled buckwheat and rye flours are soaked for several hours without yeast in a method known as an autolyse. As buckwheat has no gluten and rye little, the autolyse allows the grain to start the fermenting process before the final mix, which is then fermented overnight in the refrigerator. The buckwheat/ rye soaker is then mixed with bread flour, salt and yeast and a bit of honey.– $5/loaf
Whole Grain Spelt Sweet Levain – similar to a bread I sampled in Latvia it is made with a levain, also known as sourdough, freshly milled whole wheat and whole spelt before mixing with bread flour as well as a nice combination of dried apricots, golden raisins, slivered almonds and both sunflower and flax seeds. Chock full of flavor! $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Bear Claws! – Made with a danish pastry dough rich in cream, eggs, sugar and butter. The dough is rolled out and spread with a filing made with almond paste, powdered sugar, egg whites and just a bit of cinnamon to round out the flavor. Then, because bears love honey, topped with a honey glaze after baking. As always, quantities are limited, be sure to get your order in before you miss out- –2/$5
Island Bakery has developed a rotation cycle of several dozen breads and pastries. Each Sunday Janice emails the week’s bread offering to her mailing list. Orders received before 5 pm Tuesday will be available for pickup at the wine shop each Friday from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. Go to Contact us to get on the bread email list at least a week before visiting!
Economics of the Heart: An Appealing Ferry Tale …
PHOTO courtesy incatcrowther.com
Ongoing discoveries and developments in our ferry replacement process have brought us to a multi-dimensional crossroads where what signs we have all point in different directions, and there is a growing concern both here on the island and in County government that the 34-car vessel on the drawing board is neither achievable nor desirable.
There are a lot of moving parts, including:
1. COVID related cost inflation, as reflected in the marine repair and construction price index began a steep climb about two years ago, substantially reducing the buying power of our grant so much that our various grants and subsidies are no longer adequate to pay the new higher price tags for the 34-car vessel and necessary infrastructure updates.
2. County officials are already talking about discontinuing vehicle service to the island altogether, and blaming nit-picky, penny-pinching islanders for the problem.
3. Washington State Ferries is one of the largest ferry systems on the planet, serving all of Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands. Four car ferries are operated by County governments: Skagit, Whatcom, Wahkiakum, and Pierce. The first two serve small populations of rural residents and related commercial and government service providers getting back and forth from the mainland. Wahkiakum is a small ferry operating across the lower Columbia a bit east of Astoria. And Pierce provides ferry services in the densely populated urban environment of South Puget Sound.
One important takeaway is that Whatcom and Skagit Counties are operating complex systems and schedules like the State Ferry system, but without the tax base and extensive financial resources necessary to meet the rising costs of these services. Indeed, it not a coincidence that both Skagit and Whatcom Counties are “in the same boat” with inadequate financial resources to cover replacement of a vessel and its worn-out infrastructure,.In addition, smaller local governments also face growing demands on local infrastructure from climate-related destruction, homelessness, and addiction. These growing imbalances clearly require ongoing renegotiation with the State and the Feds for financial assistance.
As discussed recently with our State Senator Sharon Shewmake, we need to push forward with USDOT and with WSDOT about additional financial support, beginning with an inflation adjustment to our federal and state grants. We also should explore the feasibility of modifying the vessel plan to a smaller, more affordable, and more climate-friendly vessel…which leads us to…
A New Idea…
Boat Design. While browsing for information on lighter, more efficient ferry designs, we ran into this website. The vessel, Nairana, was built in Australia for a two-mile ferry passage between Bruny Island and the Tasmanian mainland. The vessel has an efficient aluminum “catamaran” style hull, and is powered by four Ro-Pax electric motors, which can all be rotated to provide thrust in the same direction at the same time. The design is state of the art and compatible with our goals of energy efficiency and performance, as well as stimulating our local economy, because…
Vessel Construction. Coincidentally, we have an aluminum shipbuilding company right here in Bellingham that is interested in exploring the project, and preliminary indications are that it is feasible to scale the vessel size down to maybe a 24-car (?) boat to meet budget and design constraints, not to mention…
Vessel Power. And as another coincidence, Echandia, a Swedish startup making batteries and electronics to power maritime vessels, opened a manufacturing and sales facility in nearby Marysville just a few days ago— its first site in North America!
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