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.
Lummi Island Wine Tasting September 8 ’12 Drydock Weekend 1
Drydock
Okay folks, it’s here: Annual Drydock. The Whatcom Chief has steamed off to wherever she goes to get her bearings greased, her rust removed, her makeup tidied up. Walking along Island roads today we noticed an odd combination of somewhat contradictory feelings. One is a sense of Vacation, as if we have suddenly been transported to a new island retreat, a place that is strangely quiet. Passing cars are an oddity, and there is a curious sense of quiet. It’s very relaxing, very soothing.
On the other hand, despite the stunning sunny days we have been having lately, I’m sure you have all noticed the little nip of Fall in the air that can be felt on your skin even while the radiant heat of the Sun still feels a little hot. So these Drydock days are also a little reminiscent of summer vacation spots in New England after the seasonal crowd has gone back to the City for the winter– a little deserted, a little strange, a little unfamiliar.
This Drydock we have committed ourselves to staying on the island for the duration (no car on the mainland this year), and I notice it feels like a vacation of sorts, a time to let go of some old habits, try some new things, get some projects done, and, of course, have the occasional glass of wine while contemplating yet another spectacular sunset.
Special Events
For years now we have been repeating the same line, partially a joke and partially serious: “Our hours are Fridays 4-7, Saturdays 2-6, Anytime for Wine Emergencies.” And over the years we have gotten the occasional call from friends and neighbors that they have an imminent event and need a bottle of wine, could we possibly help? We like and appreciate these kinds of calls, so thanks to those of you who make the effort to let us fill your wine needs.
Along a similar line, the original sign we had made for the shop, the one that is not displayed continuously, shows our hours and then also says, “or by appointment.” Curiously, until today No One has ever taken us up on that. But yesterday I was in the garage gathering tools for a project when a young couple happened by on a little walk from their rental on the North end (about 4 miles, I think) who requested a special tasting, which we scheduled for this afternoon. They are Hadj and Vinnie (shown here with their friend Connie from Lopez I), a vivacious young couple staying at the Willows for a few days on the very first part of a year-long journey around the world (I am not making this up!) –– one part honeymoon, two parts completing MD training, and three parts it’s big world and what better time to explore it???!!!
So here they are with their long-time friend Connie (a Lopez Island neighbor) in the shop this afternoon for a “private tasting.” Not having done this before, it was a little challenging to set up, but it worked out beautifully– a treat for us and enjoyable for them. We wish them well in all their future endeavors, and look forward to their next visit.
Friday night
So sure, you are asking yourselves, all well and good, but what does it have to do with ME? Well, all you need to know is that we opened some pretty good wines for this special event and there are a few left, and we will pour them first for our Friday night visitors (today if you are subscribed to the blog). The wines include Lullaby sauvignon blanc (crisp and citric), Syncline roussanne (elegant and fleshy), and Lost River Syrah (dark cherry and satin).
I confess we did pour a fourth wine for the tasting, one that had been especially requested by our guests, the Feather cabernet sauvignon from Long Shadows. Suffice it to say that due to circumstances beyond our control this wine will not be available for tasting this weekend (these things just Disappear!) but we can say it was, um, “pretty good” and yes we have more in stock at $50/bottle. In case you don’t recall, Long Shadows is a kind of wine-making and marketing experiment from a guy named Allen Shoup, who headed Chateau Ste Michelle for many years. After he retired, he decided it would be interesting to bring some of the world’s best winemakers to Washington to make their wines here with Washington fruit. You can check the website (above) for details about the wines. All you need to know is that– how shall I put this—they are all elegant and pleasing, I like them a lot, and yes, we have various vintages of most of them in stock! (Read more about Long Shadows)
This weekend’s wines
For the past several years I have gone out to the shop on Thursday evenings, picked wines for the weekend, and found reviews of them to post here for you on Thursday nights. Right at the moment it occurs to me to wonder: does anyone actually care about tasting notes for the scheduled wines ..? Really, all you need to know is that we will pour at least four wines; it will cost you $5 for the whole tasting; and a good time will be had by all. If you feel strongly about knowing what we will be pouring, please post a comment or send a private email to let us know. Maybe we will post wines next week, maybe not. All you need to know for sure is that we have some very nice wines left over from our special Thursday tasting, and we will pour them for our first several visitors on Friday, September 7….!
Lummi Island Wine Tasting September 1 ’12 Studio Tour
OMD, Drydock!… a brief rant
When I was a child, summer was Magical, seeming to last and last, challenging your ability to come up with things to do. Another bike ride to the ball field for a pickup game, a walk to the store for a soda, another novel from the library and maybe the latest serial in the (I am really dating myself here) Saturday Evening Post, the perfect magazine for summer.
So it is always a bit of a shock when Labor Day rolls around again, and I have the feeling, “Wait, wait, how can this be, I’m just getting ready to enjoy the summer!” But there you are, and here we are, and it is the end of August and the beginning of September, and on Lummi Island that means two things: Artists’ Studio Tour and annual Drydock for our ferry, the Whatcom Chief.
Only a few years ago Drydock wasn’t such a big deal. First, the boat wouldn’t leave service until the Sunday after Labor Day, giving Islanders and visitors a whole week to sort out their plans, travels, and cars to best coordinate their lives with the limitations of the passenger ferry. Now there is only One Day between Labor Day and the departure of the car ferry, which mashes together the Labor Day Weekend visitors with the ferry loads of people juggling their Island cars and Mainland cars to least disadvantage during drydock. As all Islanders know, this is now further complicated by the ever-shrinking parking capacity on the mainland. All I’m saying is that this time of year, this particular weekend on this particular Island, a lot of people have to be wondering…“What Are They Thinking???!!!!”
Studio Tour
Well the good news is that it’s time for another Studio Tour, and that means lots of visitors on the Island, and lots of great art from 10-6 on both Saturday and Sunday. This year there are 26 artists at 15 different venues. You can pick up a map with details at the Islander Store. We will be hosting three of the artists at the Gallery. If there is a theme that unites the styles of these three artists, it is something like “Just give me some random pieces of (cloth/junk/wood) and I (Kathy/Ryan/Gerry) will make something interesting out of them.” These are talented and creative people; please be sure to stop by and see their work! (click on images below for larger versions)
Kathy Elston returns after her very successful show on Memorial Day weekend with her mixed media
“fantasy dolls” that derive from her many years of textile exploration and her interests in myth, poetry, literature, and nature.
Ryan Wildstar returns with several new multimedia constructions that defy the traditional categories of art.
Gerry Schroeder fills out the ticket with an array of very creative woodcraft, including memory boxes, walking sticks, and weed pots (isn’t that redundant?).
September Wine Workshops: Sign up now!
Okay, given that it IS Drydock, and we would all like to find entertainment right here on the Island so we don’t have to deal with the passenger ferry and the parking and cetera, what CAN you do with your time? Well, one possibility is to sign up for one or more of Ryan’s Wine Tasting workshops. (see flyer for details). These workshops are modeled after the very popular series he did last fall, which many of you attended and enjoyed enough to take his wine tasting tour in France a few months ago: both educational and fun!
Domaine Moulinier
One of the highlights of our trip to France last fall, and for the group that went with Ryan in June, was a visit to Domaine Moulinier in St. Chinian. The winery is in its fifth and sixth generations with retiring winemaker Guy Moulinier (we had a great time trying to understand each other while he gave us a tour of the winery) and his son Stephane who now makes most of the wines. In the winery are astonishing displays of fossils and artifacts dug up in the past hundred years in their vineyards, including dinosaur eggs and bones and stone tools of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon hominids. Their collection rivals anything you would see in a museum, really amazing.
The important thing here is that we now have in stock a small amount of the Moulinier rose and their “Tradition” red wine. We hope to get more in the future; for now call or email to reserve some.
This week’s wines:
You wouldn’t think it would be that complicated to choose the wines for the weekend. However this year it is complicated by the fact that for the first time ever we are committed to staying on the Island for all of Drydock. We are not leaving a car on the mainland. We have no plan for what happens if we Really Have to Get To Town. Rather, we have stocked up on the necessities for Survival, including of course a great deal of wine to tide us all over.
Therefore, all I can tell you is that we will have our usual tasting format, generous sample pours of Four Wines for Five Bucks. These will include most likely a white wine, a rose, and two reds. If it is really hot, maybe more focus on white/rose, and if it is chilly, maybe more reds. So the wines may vary through the weekend depending on when you drop by. Sooo, now that I think about it, you might want to drop by a number of times!
2072 Granger Way