lummi island wine tasting mar 17 ’23
Winter Hours: 4-6 pm Fridays only
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Pear Buckwheat – Begins with an overnight poolish preferment mixed the next day with bread flour and fresh milled buckwheat; the preferment allows the dough to begin to develop before the addition of toasted walnuts and dried pears soaked in white wine. – $5/loaf
French Country Bread – A a rustic country loaf made with bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat, and and a bit of toasted wheat germ. After building the levain with a sourdough culture and mixing the final dough it gets a long cool overnight ferment in the refrigerator. This really allows the flavor to develop in this bread. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Chocolate Babka Rolls – A sweet pastry dough full of eggs, butter and sugar, rolled and spread with a chocolate filling, rolled up and cut into individual rolls that are placed in baking forms for baking and then brushed with sugar syrup after baking. – 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting:
Charles Krug Napa Valley Sauvignon Blanc ’20 Napa $15
Cold-soaked before pressing and cold-fermented on the skins to develop rich and nuanced aromas and flavors of grassy lime, tropical fruits, and lychee, with a crisp, lingering finish.
Bodega Garzon Tannat Reserve ’18 Uruguay $15
Opaque deep, dark red; opens with enticing, delicious aromas of very ripe, dark fruit and berries stewed in their own liqueur, with lingering notes of spice, herb, and licorice on the seamless finish.
Pomum Red ’16 Washington $18
Carefully made Bordeaux blend of cab, cab franc, malbec, petite verdot, and merlot; aromas of red fruit-leather and exotic spices; flavors of black cherry, cranberry, and garrigue.
Economics of the Heart: Lies, Damned lies, and ‘Regular and Routine’
photo courtesy beardoholic.com
The classic phrase was made famous by Mark Twain, though for which he credited Disraeli; but the actual coining of the phrase is lost in the mists and myths of history. Mr. Twain’s version was ‘There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.‘ (link). This story is told at some point in just about every statistics class everywhere for its suggestion that one can “massage” any statistical analysis to make it “prove” anything you want. Nowadays Fox News hosts don’t even bother with analysis, they just make it up as they go along. But politics aside, statistical analysis provides extremely useful information about groups of observations of any sort.
On our island front burner for some weeks now has been the recent ferry fare increase proposal unveiled at the January County Council Meeting by Public Works, and which is being rushed into law as quickly as possible with limited opportunity for input or reflective discussion. A central bone of contention between County officials and Island residents is that a primary reason for the fare increase is that Public Works has charged 55% of the $800,000 cost of a major infrastructure repair to ferry fare receipts as “regular and routine maintenance.” This practice is blatantly contrary to several elements of State and County law.
A few of us have been challenging this illegal assignment of $.8 million to the fare burden on the grounds that said repairs should properly be considered capital expenses because they add value and years of service to the structures in question. Indeed, the County has an annual contract with the State Dept of Transportation which specifically excludes such expenses from being classified as “ordinary maintenance.”
Many public and private entities have rules of thumb such as dollar limits to easily decide whether to account for a specific expense as capital improvement (adds value and service life) or as operations/maintenance expenses. The limit may vary depending on the size of the firm or agency, but around $10k is a common boundary. Under this standard definition, the $400k being charged to the fare box as “ordinary maintenance” is way, way, way out of line with convention.
Whatcom County has specific rules for ferry accounting laid out in County Code Chapter 10.34 In particular, 10.34.005B states:
B. “Operating cost” means all actual daily running expenses and all actual regular and routine maintenance and administrative expenses associated with the use and operation of all physical elements of the ferry system”
Curiously, this definition makes no mention of capital costs. Rather the central focus of the statute is on the intent of the words “regular and routine” to qualify an expense as a valid “operating cost.” So let’s take a look at common synonyms and antonyms of these words to get a bead on the main intention of this carefully chosen wording.
- synonyms of REGULAR: customary, periodic, recurrent
- synonyms of ROUTINE: everyday, normal, familiar
The feeling here is of calm waters, constancy, and predictability.
In contrast, here are the common antonyms/opposites of each word:
- antonyms of REGULAR: infrequent, occasional, unexpected
- antonyms of ROUTINE: exceptional, extraordinary, uncommon
The feeling here is of choppy waters, tension, and stress.
The takeaway is that great care was taken in the wording of the statute to ensure stability and predictability. Think about it: You want to be able to set fares that will likely stay the same for some years at a time. You want both the expenses and the revenue to be predictable and consistent from year to year. The goal of this wording is to ensure system stability, with fares covering the day to day expenses of the system, and for out of the ordinary expenses to be absorbed the same way as road washouts, bridge failures, and fires: from general taxation.
Let’s be clear: the statute as currently written limits the annual fare burden to paying “regular and routine” administrative and operating costs to maintain the same transportation options here as everywhere else in the County. If the new Public Works Director is successful in changing the rules to allow charging the fare box for major capital upgrades — a clear violation of both State and County laws– rising fares will continue to push frequent commuters to the mainland to be replaced by retirees and telecommuters. Not a pretty picture, and not a sustainable model because it forces its best customers to move away. So there’s a lot at stake for our community.
Along those lines, for those of you who have not seen Janice’s very thorough posting to the County Council on these challenges, it is highly recommended reading for all Islanders, and you can read it here.
lummi island wine tasting mar 10 ’23
Current Hours: Open 4-6 pm Fridays
OOPS! Recent Billing Snafu…
A couple of weeks ago we noticed our checking account seemed to be standing still. Some inquiries revealed that none of the credit card sales in the shop since mid-October were showing up in our bank account. Inquiry revealed that our credit card machine (the one we have been at war with for about two years) had not been sending the charges to the various stakeholders as it is supposed to do every day. Thus we learned how to make that “batch closing” happen manually, and they now appear in your account.
The good news is that yes, we really did have some sales (see 5 ft printout at left); the bad news is that a bunch of you just got billed for purchases that happened weeks or even months ago, and are justifiably puzzled. Well, that’s the story, and yes, you really did make that purchase!
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Multi Grain Levain – – Made with a sourdough culture and a flavorful mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A nice mixture of flax, sesame sunflower and pumpkin seeds and some polenta add great flavor and crunch. And just a little honey for some sweetness. A great all around bread that is full of flavor – $5/loaf
Polenta Levain –– Also made with a levain, aka sourdough, from a starter fed and built up over several days, then mixed with bread flour and polenta in the final dough mix. This bread is a nice rustic loaf with great corn flavor. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Pain aux Raisin– Uses the same laminated dough as croissants. The dough is rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with a mix of golden raisins and dried cranberries soaked in sugar syrup. Rolled up and sliced before baking. – 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting: Small Vineyards Pre-Order Sampler
You wine shop old-timers know that once or twice a year we bring in a shipment of mostly Italian wines from a Seattle importer called Small Vineyards. Our orders usually follow a sit-down tasting at a local restaurant where we hear a story about each of the family wineries, wine makers, and the particular wines as we taste them, munch, chat. Yes, we think to ourselves... this is how wine tasting should be…relaxed, convivial, good wine, good food, good company!
As it turns out, the weather this year did not allow us to attend the Bellingham tasting. However, we hope to snag a bunch of bottles on Friday (if any are left) from earlier tastings in Skagit County. So if all goes well, we will have a selection to share with you on Friday afternoon! (see list)
Economics of the Heart: A Place to Call Home
https://www.hummingbirdsplus.org
Every living thing needs a home, a place where survival is at least possible. For most living creatures the conditions are quite narrowly defined for a habitat where they/we can at least survive long enough to reproduce, at best to thrive. As we mentioned last week, there have been numerous major extinction events in the fossil record, each one eradicating over 75% of existing species and turning the evolutionary clock back almost to zero numerous times. But life has managed to keep on ticking; pretty magical.
The species that currently exist here on our dear Planet Earth have continually been able to find the sometimes very particular places which met their needs for food, water, air, temperature, light, darkness, and shelter as conditions slowly changed over eons. Obviously, and to our great good fortune, the conditions here on planet Earth have been life-friendly for an unimaginably long time. But as we mentioned last week, many of the mass extinctions on the planet were caused not by cataclysmic events like massive asteroid collisions, but by the slowly changing background conditions on the planet, including atmospheric composition, ocean temperatures and salinity, humidity, rainfall, habitat, climate, food, predation…you know, everything.
The slow and ever-evolving conditions at every point on Earth’s surface have ever moved niches around, causing some species to perish, others to gradually migrate or adapt. But this world we live in now is in a very different situation than any we have seen in the fossil record. The habitability of this world is changing because of what our own species has done to it in the lifetimes of us current elders. Barely an eye-blink in evolutionary time, it has been long enough for us to multiply from 2 billion to 8 billion and cause catastrophic damage to the balance of Nature that created us.
Every geographic point on the planet has an historical set of naturally changing conditions that determined what kinds of life it was able to support, how well, and for how long. Every place has a story of how it has fared so far in this new world and what it is doing. So our current fantasy is to look at particular places at random and see what we can learn.
to be continued…
lummi island wine tasting mar 3 ’23
Open 4-6 pm Fridays
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting:
Ryan Patrick Rock Island Chardonnay ’20 Washington $16
Aromas and flavors of wildflowers, crisp apples, honey, and cinnamon roll with a round, crisp, body and a graceful finish of sumac-spiced croutons.
Rubino Oltreme Susamaniello ’19 Italy $15
Fresh, fragrant notes of cherries, pomegranate, raspberries and ripe plum; fruity, round and minerally, with soft tannins and rich flavors; a versatile pairing with richer dishes.
Seven Hills Walla Walla Cabernet ’20 WA $32
Aromas of red cherries, black raspberry, and black tea, with hints of fresh herbs, cedar box, and earth; flavors of cherry, raspberry, dark chocolate, baking spice, and vanilla; medium bodied with plush texture, firm tannins, and balanced acidity.
Friday Bread Pickup This Week
Kamut Levain – Kamut, aka khorasan wheat, is an ancient, protein-rich grain discovered in a cave in Iran in the 70’s that many people who can’t tolerate wheat find more digestible. This bread is made with a levain that is fermented overnight before being mixed with with bread flour and fresh milled whole kamut flour. It has a nutty, rich flavor and makes a golden color loaf. – $5/loaf
Le Pave d’autrefois – which translates roughly as old paving stones. This is a ciabatta like bread with a lot of hydration so is simply divided into approximate squares – hence the paving stones name. Made with a mix of bread flour as well as fresh milled whole wheat, rye and buckwheat flours for a lot of hearty whole grain goodness. A great artisan bread -$5/loaf
…and pastry this week…
Gibassiers – A traditional french pastry from the south of France. Made with a delicious sweet dough full of milk, butter, eggs and olive oil. The addition of orange flower water, candied orange peel and anise seed bring great flavor to these pastries. After baking they are brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with more sugar. – 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Wine of the Week: Seven Hills Walla Walla Cabernet ’20 WA $25
Seven Hills winery founder and 4th generation regional farmer Casey McClellan began planting grape vines in Walla Walla in the early 80’s, making it one of the the first few wineries in the area, and setting the stage for the rapid development of the Washington State wine industry over the forty years since.
Seven Hills pioneered the planting of primary Bordeaux varietals merlot and cabernet sauvignon in the area, demonstrating that the soil and climate of the area were ideally suited for vineyards in general and these varietals in particular. The winery has forged long-standing relationships with many of the most prestigious vineyards in the region, including Ciel du Cheval and Klipsun at Red Mountain and McClellan and Summit View in Walla Walla. The wines have an established reputation for a quiet, reliable quality. You will like it!
Tasting notes: Aromas of red cherries, black raspberry, and black tea, with hints of fresh herbs, cedar box, and earth; flavors of cherry, raspberry, dark chocolate, baking spice, and vanilla; medium bodied with plush texture, firm tannins, and balanced acidity.
Economics of the Heart: Looming Scarcities
In a recent book (2020), David Wallace-Wells (see video ) effectively lays out the stakes in humanity’s coy little dance around the profound existential threat posed by climate change. As we have discussed in this blog many times over the years, the world has clearly seen this coming for nearly fifty years and has done precious little to change its ways.
However, Wallace provides a pretty effective wake-up call that puts the problem into clear perspective with several compelling facts we now know for certain:
1. There have been at least five mass extinctions on our dear Planet Earth:
- 450 million yrs ago– 86% of species gone
- 380 million yrs ago– 75 % of species gone
- 280 million yrs ago– 96% of species gone!
- 230 million yrs ago– 75% of species gone
- 70 million yrs ago– 75% of species gone (dinosaurs)
These numbers are sobering and scary. What makes them even more scary is that:
2. All but the last extinction were the result of climate change.
The worst one was produced by a two-step greenhouse gas buildup that first raised global temperature by 5 deg C. ( 9 deg. F.) which warming in turn triggered massive releases of methane from the ground which made it even worse, and which very few species survived. A similar scenario could happen again if the icecaps melt completely and the tundra starts off-gassing methane from entombed remains of long-ago frozen animals.
3. More than half the carbon added to our atmosphere since the dawn of civilization has been emitted just since 1990, even though we have known the risks for nearly fifty years. We are speeding blithely along to more than four degrees C. of warming by the end of THIS Century! According to some estimates, that would render vast regions of the world uninhabitable because of direct heat, desertification, and, paradoxically, catastrophic flooding and landslides.
To this point climate change has already brought enough record-breaking forest fires, hurricanes, floods, landslides, and tornadoes to have left few outright climate change deniers getting much traction with their arguments, and we have seen some signs of progress in the development and deployment of carbon-neutral energy production. But a lot of lives depend on how soon we can start bringing CO2 levels back down. Right this very moment millions of people across the world are already suffering from lack of food, water, shelter, and work.
As resources dwindle and more and more places become economically uninhabitable, competition for basic necessities is intersecting with increased numbers of failed and failing states with collapsing economies and infrastructure, powerless or lawless governments, and runaway inflation. And it only takes one climate disaster in an area to make it economically uninhabitable for more than a handful of people.
Millions of people across the planet will be seeking new locations as the number of habitable areas decreases and the moats protecting the habitable ones get increasingly impossible to cross.
lummi island wine tasting feb 24 ’23
Hours this weekend: Open 3:30- 5:30 pm Friday Only
NOTE: Next week we will go back to our usual Friday hours of 4-6pm! And since it is still wintry (below freezing this week), and since we have been enjoying having the day off on Saturdays for while, we are not planning to open on Saturday for at least mid-February.
Covid (and a bunch of other winter bugs) are still around, more contagious than ever, but far less threatening for the vaccinated, masks are welcome but optional. These days we each get to manage the space around us in our own way. Please stay mindful of the risks, thanks.
Friday Bread This Week
Whole Wheat Levain – Made with a sourdough starter built up over several days before a levain is made and fermented overnight to start fermentation and gluten development. The bread is made with levain and bread flour and about 25% fresh milled whole wheat for a ‘toothy’ crumb, great texture and flavor and a nice crisp crust. – $5/loaf
Semolina w/ Fennel & Raisins – A levain bread made with bread flour, semolina and some fresh milled whole wheat. A little butter for a tender crumb and fennel seeds and golden raisins round out the flavors. These flavors go really well with meats and cheese, but it also makes pretty darn good toast – $5/loaf
…and pastry this week…
Brioche Suisse- A rich brioche dough made with plenty of butter, eggs and sugar, rolled out and spread with pastry cream before sprinkling with dark chocolate. The dough is folded over all that delicious filling and cut into individual pieces. 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Wine of the Week: Eola Hills Barrel Select Reserve Pinot Noir ’19 Oregon $27
Eola Hills winery was something of a pioneer in the Oregon pinot noir explosion. Founded in the mid-80’s, the new owners did much of the grunt work themselves, becoming both grape farmers and winemakers. Now, forty years later the company farms over 300 acres and makes 80,000 cases of wine a year…you know, another American “success” story: what begins as a creative dream rooted in land, family, nature, nurture, art and culture can go in all kinds of directions.
It’s hard to say if or when a growing wine operation transitions from being an artisan, hands-on winery that fulfills someone’s artistic dream into a major commercial player, or what, if anything, is lost or gained in the process. But that kind of success does suggest they have been doing something right…right?!
This “barrel select” reserve pinot is a blend of the best barrels (yes, there is barrel variation in each vintage) from several different vineyards, taking a shot at “the best of the best.”
Last week we tasted pinot gris from Ponzi, another Oregon pioneer winery that has done very well over the years. So both have played significant roles in the evolution of Oregon viniculture that put Oregon pinot noir on the global map.
See notes below
Economics of the Heart: When The Lines Stop Crossing
Economists are fond of graphs. Everyone has encountered the standard blackboard sketch of a “Demand Curve.” It has price on the vertical axis, and quantity sold at each price on the horizontal axis. With a little manipulation, it is a versatile tool to describe a lot of human behavior. The primary takeaway, of course, is that when the price of something rises, less of it will be bought/sold, and that will have cascading effects throughout an economy.
On the supply side, it is broadly true that in the short term, producers have a very limited ability to increase production when demand increases. This was clearly seen as global demand for all kinds of stuff started climbing as Covid vaccines became available and commerce began ratcheting up after a long quarantine. Our little demand and supply curves were quite handy at explaining how that led to worldwide inflation as suppliers of key resources in short supply (like international shipping) made astronomical profits, not because their costs went up, but because the sudden increase in demand for shipping far exceeded short-term supply– the classic path to coveted “windfall” profits.
Covid was just one warning signal about how the interdependence of the global economy makes everyone vulnerable to social, environmental, geologic, and political instability. All of these things are getting worse at an increasing rate, driven by two powerful forces that we humans have caused and continue to make worse: global warming and overpopulation.
Over forty years ago I worked on a research project exploring the economic impacts of global warming on world fisheries. My main takeaway from that project was that all living systems are deeply interconnected to each other through the global environment: sun, wind, rain, plants, animals, seasons. It is deeply sobering that we ‘Boomers’ were born into a world of some 2 billion people. In just our own short lifetimes we have now seen the recent birth of the eight billionth living human being on our planet. Our population has increased four-fold; we are everywhere, and we have not been kind to our planet.
Broadly speaking, there are two pathways to saving our planet and its life-giving web of interdependence over the long term: massive cooperation or massive conflict. Democracies lean toward the first, through cooperation and shared values. Autocracies lean toward the second, through exclusion and hierarchy. That really means that democracies have a cooperative chance for survival. But it’s hard to see how autocracy is compatible with an effective sense of interdependence…
to be continued…
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting
Marques de Caceres Rioja Red Blend Organica ’21 Spain $18
75% Tempranillo, 25% Graciano; we all loved this wine when Judy poured samples of it three weeks ago, and found it a bit disappointing when we poured it at our tasting. So third time is the charm, right? How do we really feel about it?!
Eola Hills ‘Patriot Red’ Oregon $22
Zinfandel, Sangiovese, Merlot, & Pinot Noir from Oregon, Washington, & California. Intense aromas of fruitiness lead to a soft, smooth palate with flavors of red berry jam. All you need to know is it’s pretty tasty!
Eola Hills Barrel Select Reserve Pinot Noir ’19 Oregon $27
From best barrels from the 2019 harvest; classic, Burgundian-style pinot, with nose of fresh raspberries, earth, wet autumn leaves, and a silky palate of cherry and strawberry with a lingering cranberry tartness on the finish.
2072 Granger Way