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lummi island wine tasting may 27-29 artists studio tour weekend
Friday Breads (contact us to get on the pre-order list!)
Seeded Country Hearth – a nice rustic bread made with a blend of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and then loaded up with toasted hazelnuts, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. A great flavorful artisan bread – $5/loaf.
Buckwheat Walnut & Honey – yes another buckwheat bread. with a great earthiness from the buckwheat flour. This has a little less buckwheat than the last few breads I have done so it isn’t as dense, but it is still plenty flavorful. Toasted walnuts for texture and crunch and some honey for sweetness. A great bread for smoked salmon or cheese – $5/loaf.
Hamburger Buns – made with a blend of bread flour and freshly milled white whole wheat (so no one knows its in there), enriched with milk, butter and just a bit of sugar for a soft and flavorful bun, then topped with onions. These are always popular and I can only make a limited number so get your order in early – 4/$5.
Featured Artist
Our neighbor Anne Gibert is again our featured artist for Studio Tour. This show continues her ongoing theme of large canvases and bright light, this time focusing particularly on animals. Last year her showing of “Portraits of Lummi Island Women” drew lots of interest from the community. If the same logic applies, this year we should have visits from Island buffalo, cats, chickens, and foxes.
Also, please note that our usual Friday night Bread Madness will be expanded as an Opening Reception for the new show. Anne will be there to talk with you about the new work, and munchies will be provided in addition to the usual Friday Bread Tasting. Sorry, you still have to pay for your tasting…but since most of you who come on Fridays are Club Members anyway, it will still only cost you, you know…Chicken Feed!
Nana Bear and One Day Old Seriozha
As we mentioned last week, we planned to be in Sonoma for the birth of our one and only grandson. As it turned out, we had quite an uneventful week except for a lot of pretty good food and wine and mostly very nice weather (except the first couple of days when it got into the 90’s…!). But it wasn’t until early Tuesday morning– the day of my flight home– that we were awakened about dawn with the Birth Alarm.
By 7am we had taken Mama Bear to the well-organized Santa Rosa Hospital for delivery. Not much happened before I had to catch the plane to Seattle in mid-afternoon, leaving Pat to play the Nana. Just about the time I got home to Lummi, Seriozha (aka Donald Sergei- — his father’s and maternal grandfather’s first names) had left the womb and is now Here In the World. Pretty Magical how suddenly there is another person in the room, beamed in from Nothingness. Hard to comprehend. Smart as we humans are, we still haven’t figured out how to make Life happen from Scratch. Nope, have to keep using the same old starter recipe from before our most distant ancestors were born.
We toast you, Seriozha— may you live long in a world of Joy, Beauty, Kindness, and Wisdom!
The Don and Bernie Show
Will it happen? Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? But it was a nice touch of the DT (we’re all getting a bad case of the DT’s about now…) to suggest that it be a fundraiser for a Worthy Cause, and it is really hard to picture what such a debate would look like. Astonishingly, the DT has won the Republican nomination without ever uttering a single Fact or Policy, only Slogans and Put-Downs. He has not demonstrated advocacy “for” anything outside his own Media Image, while at the same time he has shown that he is against women, minorities, and Diplomacy As We Know It– all in the Vague Interest of “Making America Great Again.” Whatever that means.
The real question is what in the world would a Debate between Trump and an Opponent Champion actually look like? He has become the Republican Nominee over a many-months-long competitive “debate” process with a host of competing candidates, a dozen and a half Angels dancing on the Head of some Virtual Pin, vying to make their so-called Issues Relevant. And somehow from that process Trump has emerged as the Hope of the Right-Wing Sneetches, despite the fact that No One Actually Believes that he has any of the skills actually necessary to, you know, Run the World.
For more on this idea, check out this interesting interview from NPR today, in which a demography scholar points out that only about ten percent of eligible voters participate in primaries, and only about 10% of those actually have factual, rational reasons for voting as they do. Mostly Americans don’t pay a lot of attention to elections; the Presidential election of 2008 elicited a voter turnout of 57% of the eligible voter base, the highest turnout since 1968. The argument is that people generally have a laundry list of issues they are at least somewhat interested in, but when they latch onto a candidate they don’t look deeply. Rather, they hear something they like about a candidate and then just assume that candidate shares all of their beliefs and goals.
This week’s wine tasting
Anne Amie Amrita White ’14 Oregon $14
Palate-tickling blend of pinot blanc, viognier, and riesling; aromas of quince, Rainier cherry, and lemon; palate of strawberry, raspberry, and nectarine; good match for Asian spices.
Villa des Anges Rosé ’14 France $10
Spicy and focused on the nose, showing fresh citrus and red berry and a hint of white pepper. Dry and nervy on the palate, with refreshing bitter cherry and berry skin flavors.
Borsao Garnacha ’13 Spain $9
Expressive aromas of blackberry, licorice and and fruitcake aromas; Juicy, spicy and supple, sweet, red and dark berry flavors; finishes fresh, focused and nicely persistent.
Septima Malbec ’13 Argentina $9
Musky, ripe aromas of currants, leather, chocolate and espresso. Supple and generous flavors of sweet currant and tobacco flavors with a note of pepper, soft tannins and good length.
Vignalta Colli Euganei Rosso Riserva ’09 Italy $21
Merlot and cabernet sauvignon from volcanic hills north of Venice. Rosso Riserva is a true and delicious expression of its terroir, nice balancing of fruit and tannins, softened with two years of oak barrel aging.
lummi island wine tasting spring equinox ’15
(note: some photos may click open to larger versions)
Bread Friday (sign up for preorder list! )
Pain Meunier: (“Miller’s Bread”), includes all parts of the wheat kernel, bread flour, whole wheat flour, cracked whole wheat and wheat germ. A great all around bread. – $5/loaf.
Dried Cherry, Walnut & Buckwheat: Bread flour, buckwheat flour, and some whole wheat, packed with dried cherries and walnuts. – $5/loaf.
Chocolate Babkas: Yummy sweet rolls rich with eggs and butter, then rolled out and spread with chocolate before baking. Limited supply, order early! – 2 for $5. .
Cucugnan
This weekend we are pouring another wine from Corbières– a red from Cucugnan, from the same winery as last week’s delicious white. So it seems appropriate to explore the region a little further, including of course the Cathars, who some people think were the first to bring Christianity to Europe in general, and to France in particular, as long ago as 50AD, pretty Early in the Christian Game. Supposedly their beliefs and practices were based directly on the original teachings of the historical Jesus.
Interestingly, the Cathars believed that Mary Magdalene and Jesus were married, and had come to Narbonne and Corbières while Mary Magdalene was pregnant with Jesus’ baby. No other Christian sects ever espoused this belief, which stemmed from historical accounts that their ancestors had actually met Mary Magdalene and Jesus, in this very region, back in the first century. Though the Cathars themselves didn’t appear in history until about 1000AD, they lived in Languedoc from the time of Jesus himself. Read more here.
Btw, Cucugnan was also the setting for a famous short story (Le Curé de Cucugnan) by the nineteenth century novelist Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897). The Priest has a dream in which he goes to Heaven and finds that “There are no more Cucugnanese here than there are fish-bones in a turkey.” Faced with Eternal Damnation, the Cucugnanese are supposedly compelled to clean up their act. Somehow that is harder to believe than that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were, you know, an Item…an idea that has a certain appeal, n’est-ce pas?
Raisin Taxes
http://www.libertynews.com/2013/07/seriously-farmer-faces-650000-fine-for-neglecting-to-surrender-raisins-to-government/
The idea for this paragraph emerged from a light-hearted conversation on yesterday’s dog walk, when this little pun occurred to us: “raisin taxes.” You know, the Tea Party people and the Libertarians and the Republicans and Fox News and the Billionaires are always going on about, you know, “Raisin Taxes.” So we thought we should jump in with our own concerns that sure, today maybe they tax raisins, but hey, we have to be ever vigilant or else pretty soon they will start taxing not just Raisins, but All grapes, and OMD, that could be a Disaster for the entire Wine Industry! Something like that.
So I just searched on “Raisin Taxes,” and as usual Truth is far stranger that anything we can make up. Yes, we all sort of know that historically, agricultural production has been subject to cycles of boom and bust, and that bumper crops can have the paradoxical effect of ruining farmers because the huge supply pushes prices toward zero. So since the ‘thirties, the federal government has had programs in place to support all kinds of crop prices through various techniques to keep prices above some minimum floor.
Therefore it shouldn’t have been a surprise (but it was!) to learn that under the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, the government continues to confiscate part of the annual national raisin crop to keep it off the market. A group called the Raisin Administrative Committee (I’m not making this up!) decides each year what portion of the raisin crop it must confiscate in order to keep the raisin market “orderly.” At present one of those raisin farmers (they’re almost all in California) has taken his case (he got into Trouble for not turning in his “excess” raisins for over ten years) to the Supreme Court. See more in this article in The Economist.
All Betz are off!
We are continuing our plan to pour one of our library of Betz wines at each tasting for awhile, and offering compelling incentives for you to take some home; see recent blogs for details. This week we are pouring the 2012 Besoleil. All you need to know is that 2012 was a fantastic vintage for much of Washington State, and as a result this year’s Besoleil earned a score of 94 points from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, its best score ever. I am a big fan of grenache, the dominant varietal in this blend, and have been a fan of this wine since it first appeared eight or nine years ago. Yes, it’s a little pricey, and yes, the pours will be smaller than usual.
But as always, of course, we will set up the pricing so the more you spend, the more you will be able to save!
See detailed tasting notes below.
This week’s tasting
Chateau Lamothe de Haut Bordeaux Blanc ’12 France $14
Bright and engaging, with fresh grapefruit and Meyer lemon pulp notes backed by a flash of straw on the open-knit finish. Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle.
Chateau Trillot Rouge ’12 France $16
Intense colour with deep purple highlights; Expressive nose exuding aromas of red fruit, redcurrant, blackcurrant and a hint of oak. Silky, well-structured tannins and great freshness.
Hightower Murray Syrah ’11 Washington $16
From legendary Red Mountain grapes; Ripe, rich and utterly enjoyable; lush red berry fruit followed by a complex, meaty mid-palate and a long finish.
Vignalta Colli Euganei Rosso Riserva ’09 Italy $21
Merlot and cabernet sauvignon from volcanic hills north of Venice. Rosso Riserva is a true and delicious expression of its terroir and a nice balance of fruit and tannins, softened with two years of oak barrel aging.
Betz Besoleil ’12 Washington 94pts $48
50% Grenache, 20% Cinsault, 15% Syrah and 15% Mourvedre aged all in neutral oak. Gorgeous on all accounts, with fantastic density and depth, richness, beautiful freshness and classic aromas and flavors of raspberry, black raspberry, pepper, herbs de Provence and flowers.
2072 Granger Way