Arrival: Pernes les Fontaines and Gordes
Our base for our first week in France was an apartment in Pernes les Fontaines, the “Town of Forty Fountains,” about 30 minutes southeast from Avignon. Since our first booking was with Untours, our second day we attended a brief orientation meeting in nearby L’Isle sur la Sorgue. We recommend Untours for occasional travelers like us who don’t want to be part of a tour, but do appreciate the support structure Untours provides, with local reference materials, being met at the airport, and having a local resource person available for advice. Their approach gives you a leg up on your new surroundings that makes arrival in a strange place relatively seamless.
In the afternoon we took the opportunity to drive into the Luberon, where we visited the old and somewhat strange Village des Bories, a cluster of very primitive stone stuctures, parts of which date back as far as the 7th century, with other elements as recent as the 18th century. If you click through the photos on the linked site, you can see that the building technique involved building walls that came toward each other at the top, until neither a “roof” nor an arch was necessary. Doorways were formed by resting a long enough stone across the two jambs.
From there it was a short drive to the hilltop town of Gordes, reminiscent of many of the hilltop towns of Tuscany.
See slide show for more. (to read the captions you will probably need to extend the slide display time).
Lummi Island Wine Tasting November 19 ’11
STUDIO TOUR STUDIO TOUR STUDIO TOUR STUDIO TOUR STUDIO TOUR
Last week was Winter artists’ Studio tour. Not “Winter Artists,” but “Winter Studio Tour.” Until a few years ago, this used to happen the first weekend in December. But because Winter –the real Winter, frozen and dark and gloomy– often makes an appearance around here in late November or early December, there were numerous occasions when no one bothered to come out. And so it came to pass that a few years ago the Winter tour was moved to the second weekend in November. Maybe a bit early for holiday shopping, but definitely more likely to have cordial weather.
Our artist, Anita Aparicio, was in the shop till early afternoon, and only a few people had visited, so she left. Oh, we thought, it’s Winter studio tour, and it is cold and gloomy, and probably no one will come by. Okay, we were wrong about that! A LOT of people came by, and we were busy until closing. Anita’s work will only be on display one more weekend, so please come by and take a look at her very interesting multimedia compositions. See last week’s post for pix of some of her work.
TRUFFLES TRUFFLES TRUFFLES TRUFFLES TRUFFLES TRUFFLES
We have fresh, delicious truffles for your Thanksgiving feast…while they last. Pumpkin Spice, with centers of Spanish white chocolate–dipped in deep, dark Vahlrona; and longtime customer favorite Salted Caramel–two kinds of dark chocolate sprinkled with pink Hawaii salt crystals. We’re gearing up for a bigger offering for Christmas but in the meantime, these are knockouts! At the Wine Gallery, Friday, 4-7, and Saturday 2-6. Or call Pat to reserve some, 758-2959.
SAILBOATS SAILBOATS SAILBOATS SAILBOATS SAILBOATS SAILBOATS
Each second Saturday in November we are taken by surprise late in the morning by the appearance of a fleet of sailboats heading north up Rosario Strait between Lummi and Orcas Islands. It’s the annual Round the County race (no, no, not Whatcom County, SAN JUAN County!), and even on a gloomy weekend like the last, it is colorful (I hope they were all bundled up out there!).
France France France France France France France France
In the next day or two we will be posting our first photos from our recent trip to France. We will send an email to our subscribers. (To subscribe to this blog, click on the orange icon above next to “Subscribe by email,” and then confirm the email you will get from Feedburner.) This is a photo of Gordes, a little hilltop town in the Luberon area of Provence. If you look (very closely!) just below and to the right of the church tower (with the cross) in the middle, you will see a little cafe atop a low turret…the perfect place for an afternoon pastisse!
Friday Friday Friday Friday Friday Friday Friday Friday
Friday night we are open as usual from 4-7 so you can stock up for the weekend. We will be pouring two of the samples we brought back from France, so stop by!
This week’s wines: for sure we will be pouring the following two Spanish “best buys” we just picked up tonight. And then tomorrow (Friday) some of our next Italian order will be delivered, but I don’t know yet which wines. As usual, though, there will be four for Saturday, including at least one white, and of course they will all be delicious!
Honoro Vera Garnacha ’10 Spain $10
Aromas of sage, thyme, and black cherry lead to a plush, succulent wine with layers of spicy fruit.
Wrongo Dongo ’10 Spain $9
100% Monastrell cuvee made from Jumilla grapes. Fermented and aged in stainless steel, it offers up a fruity nose with plenty of spice and floral notes. Ripe and savory on the palate, it has enough structure to provide pleasure for another 3-4 years.
Lummi Island Artists’ Studio Tour & Wine Tasting Nov 12-13
ARTIST ARTIST ARTIST ARTIST ARTIST ARTIST ARTIST ARTIST
We are delighted to announce that our artist for the Studio Tour is Anita Aparicio, who does wonderful mixed media paintings. Each of her pieces has the nostalgiac feel of a scrapbook page, while at the same time juxtaposing unexpected images that build engaging tapestries of shapes and moods. Each of these paintings is centered around a Lummi Island scene. Come see if you can identify them!
NOTE: Anita is donating 30% of proceeds from art sales to the Lummi Island Heritage Trust!
WINES WINES WINES WINES WINES WINES WINES WINES WINES
It’s a little hard to predict EXACTLY what wines we will be offering for tasting this weekend. We will be joined by one of our importers, Tristan Ohms of Small Vineyards, the source of many of our lovely Italian wines. Now, however, he is branching out and will be pouring new selections from France and Spain. In particular he will be pouring at least two wines from our favorite winery visit in France, La Rocaliere. So Tristan will probably be pouring their rose and their red wines. We are waiting for him to get more of their delicious white blend, and are also working very hard to get him to import their two higher-end reds, listed on their website as “Ikebana” and “les Dentelles.” (OMG, they are SO good!) All of their wines share the common characteristics of balance, naturalness, integration, and elegance.
We tasted a lot of delicious wines on our trip to France, and these were our favorites. Sisters Melanie and Severine took over the winery from their father and are putting their own fingerprints on the wines. Melanie (left) runs the business, and Severine (right) is the winemaker; her style is to interfere as little as possible with the natural development of the wines. She uses no oak at all; the red wines are fermented and aged in cement tanks, which, as we learned in Italy, give the wines freedom from noise, vibration, and temperature variation, and this gives the wines a noticeable stability and integration. Each of her wines, while unique to itself, clearly is made by the same hand; this sense of a particular winemaker’s style is one of the most fascinating characteristics of wine, and this domaine has a definite and very appealing style.
La Rocaliere is located in the small Southern Rhone appellation of Lirac, which is just west of Avignon, and a bit SW of the famous Chateauneuf du Pape. All YOU need to know is that, despite the many problems we had with our vaguely neurotic GPS, “she” absolutely shone when it came to navigating the torturous route around/through Avignon to get to Lirac.
I think most of the other wines Tristan is delivering this weekend are Spanish wines, and may include any of:
Alta Vins Domus Pensi blanc
Martina Prieto Pariente verdejo
Giro Ribot Cava
San Ysidro Cepas de Zorro
Finca el tesso tempranillo
Pech Celeryan cuvee sixtine rouge
La Rocaliere Lirac
la Rocaliere Lirac rose
Even though I don’t know which wines we will pour, I can promise you that they will be good!
CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE
We have a fresh array of wonderful cheeses from Pleasant Valley, including Mutchli, Farmstead, Jalapeno, Provencal, Fines Herbes, and more, cut and pre-wrapped in handy 6 oz wedges. Yum! They are So Good!
THANKSGIVING THANKSGIVING THANKSGIVING THANKSGIVING THANKSGIVING THANKSGIVING
Here is your Heads Up that there are only two wine shopping weekends left before Thanksgiving! OMD! (ohmydog!) Sure, I know that a lot of you sneak out to Costco ( boo hiss now that Costco’s wine and liquor Initiative passed–impact will be HUGE) for your Volume wines but there are always a Select Few who are doing small gatherings and want Something Special. As usual, we recommend a selection of full-bodied white wines ( like roussanne) or pinot noir for the big Turkey dinner, and we have some great choices, that’s all I’m saying.
Y’all come by and see us now, heah…?
Lummi Island Wine Tasting Nov 5 ’11
INITIATIVE 1183 INITIATIVE 1183 INITIATIVE 1183 INITIATIVE 1183
Though we are a very minor player in the Washington wine industry, I do believe small wine shops like ours will be adversely affected if this initiative passes. At its most basic level, the entire purpose of the Initiative is to concentrate the wine and liquor business into a few very large and very profitable businesses like Costco and Walmart. It will give them an enormous advantage in negotiating prices from producers of wine and spirits. They will capture a large portion of the share of the market that currently goes to distributors and small retailers. They will be able to use volume leverage on their suppliers and their workers to drive competition out of business and keep wages at rock bottom.
At present, distribution of wine is highly regulated in Washington State, in a “three-tiered” system. Wine producers and distributors must post prices every month, and every wholesale buyer pays the same price. The reason you can buy wine at low prices at Costco is because their sales volume is so high that they do just fine with a 10-12% markup. If they get the additional break of being able to buy from producers at a much lower price than, say, we can, a lot of small wine retailers will go the way of the dodo.
it’s the Volume, folks!
A hundred years ago or so, the kinds of arrangements this initiative proposes were abolished by antitrust legislation; companies like A&P and Standard Oil were broken up because these “tying agreements” they were able to make with their suppliers to guarantee them the lowest prices, were declared illegal because they reduced competition in the market. Fast forward to today, and we have a government (and an uninformed, gullible electorate) that thinks the Big Box Stores are the Good Guys and regulators are the Bad Guys– my, they ARE good at selling things, aren’t they? Thirty years of deregulation have made the rich very, very rich while everyone else has had to struggle just to stay even.
My general rule is that I vote against any Initiative supported by Big Business, because I know in my gut it is not good for me, (and not good for puppies or children, either!). These guys already have a big enough piece of the pie, and I really don’t want to give them any more of mine than they already have. So I’m voting NO, and encourage all of you who support small neighborhood businesses to do the same. (sorry to be so wordy!)
CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE CHEESE
We were off the island today and stopped by Pleasant Valley Dairy to load up on cheese. So we have a fresh array of their wonderful goudas, including Mutchli, Farmstead, jalapeno, provencal, fines herbes, and more, cut and pre-wrapped in handy 6 oz wedges. Yum!
HOME AGAIN HOME AGAIN HOME AGAIN HOME AGAIN HOME AGAIN
There was something about our trip to France last month, something I can’t put my finger on, that tapped into and nearly drained some kind of tank I didn’t know I had or needed. Hard to describe. I think it has something to do with the roundabouts that were EVERYWHERE in France, so that going anywhere over, say, 20 kilometers away was going to involve maybe 30 roundabouts, with a decision at every one about which exit to take out of it.
Seriously, there is something strangely exhausting about that, and it is very, very different from how roads are organized here, where the more major the road you are on, the less often you have to stop, slow down, or make any navigation decisions. Here you are in the beautiful French countryside, and you just want to relax and enjoy it, but every few minutes you are in another roundabout wondering which exit to take…it adds up to a completely French sort of tension, definitely not something we experienced in Italy. I’m sure this theme will unfold more as time goes on, of how our various cultures can make people crazy.
In defense of French roundabouts, however, I will say that the signage on them is much better planned than some here. As you approach the roundabout, there is a “roundabout sign” (left) that tells you what is ahead…good idea, huh…?
FRIDAY NIGHT FRIDAY NIGHT FRIDAY NIGHT FRIDAY NIGHT
We did bring back a few wines from France, some of which may not be available to us here. Over the next few Friday nights we will be pouring the occasional sample for the Faithful who drop by, a little taste of the Old World style…
Revelers from last week!
This week’s wines:
Novelty Hill Chardonnay Stillwater Creek 09 Washington 91pts $17
Smooth and round, with a spicy, creamy blanket wrapping around a deftly balanced core of pear and citrus flavors that extend into the graceful finish.
Castellare di Tonda Chianti ‘08 Italy $10
A pretty good value in Chianti– one that has a lot of fruit and charm for the price. Try this, and ask yourself if you don’t need a case around for quick pasta dinners!
Fernandez Dehesa la Granja ‘04 Spain $17
Toasty and smoky notes frame a core of plum and earth flavors in this austere red, which has chewy tannins and a smoky, cedary finish. 100% Tempranillo.
Delille Doyenne Metier Rouge 08 Washington $30
51% grenache, 32% mourvedre, 17% syrah. Exhibits classic Grenache nose of strawberry leaf, white pepper, deep black cherry, vanilla and graham cracker cinnamon, followed by intense flavors of white rainier cherries and raspberries folded into a creamy texture on the palate. It is juicy, hedonistic and luscious and should remain so for many years to come.
2072 Granger Way