lummi island wine tasting april 8 ’22
Covid Rules
We are again OPEN for wine tasting and sales both Friday and Saturday from 4-6 pm. Anyone with boosted vaccine status is welcome!
Bread Pickup This Week
Pain au Levain – Made with a nice mix of bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat and rye flours. After building the sourdough 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. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
Cinnamon Raisin – Fermented overnight with a poolish of bread and fresh milled rye flour before mixing with bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat as well as rolled oats. Some honey for sweetness, a little milk for a tender crumb and loaded with raisins and a healthy dose of cinnamon. The cinnamon is mixed into the dough and flavors the entire bread for a hearty rustic loaf. – $5/loaf
Traditional Croissants – Made with two preferments, a sourdough levain and a prefermented dough – aka “old dough” where a portion of the flour, water, salt and yeast is fermented overnight. The final dough is then made with more flour, butter, milk and sugar, laminated with more butter before being cut and shaped into traditional french croissants. 2/$5
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. The 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.
Mailing List Issues: The Saga Continues!
Still trying to get our mailing app to work (failed again last week) and due to that uncertainty, we are taking the precaution of emailing the link directly to our mailing list as well as trying to activate the RSS feeder.
Best case scenario is that you will receive the actual blog in one email, and a link to it in another at about the same time. Any other outcome means something didn’t work as it should. There are a lot of balls in the air right now, so please bear with us, thanks!
This Week’s $5 Tasting
MAN Vintners Chenin Blanc ’21 South Africa $11
Uses only the free-run juice to preserve a clean and natural character, refreshing acidity, and delicious ripe fruit flavors with vibrant aromas of quince, pear and pineapple. On the palate, fresh stonefruit and apple flavors are backed by refreshing acidity, minerality and a pleasing, rounded mouthfeel.
St. Francis Merlot ’17 California $15
A classic, rich, and soft merlot with aromas of cassis, plum, and dried currant that merge into layered flavors of dark berries, espresso bean, bittersweet chocolate with a note of spice.
Tre Donne D’Arc Langhe Rosso ’18 Italy $20
Blend of Barbera, Pinot Noir (Nero), Dolcetto, and the rare, highly aromatic grape Freisa; the Barbera and Pinot Noir are aged in oak, while the Dolcetto and Freisa are unoaked, lively, and fresh making a powerful, elegant wine with rich, moody fruit, bracing purity, and fascinating depth.
The Economics of the Heart: Freedom and Duty
https://constitutioncenter.org/images/uploads/cycler/washington456.jpg
Several editorial journalists have recently made reference to President George Washington’s Farewell Address in their comments on current political events. The address was written by Washington in late 1796, after two terms in office, with the assistance of Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Since 1893 the address has been read aloud in the Senate each year on Washington’s birthday. It is an impressive and inspiring document. Indeed, reading it makes it very clear that he did indeed have a fatherly dedication to the Constitution and deep concerns about the country’s future.
“This government, the offspring of our own choice,…adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.”
Washington was deeply concerned that the regional factionalism he saw in the newly formed country could lead to the establishment of political parties that might be more loyal to their own causes than to the nation’s. And, indeed, our history has been a constant struggle to extend the “blessings of liberty” to all, even as many factions have in fact used militant actions, disenfranchisement, political exclusion, and various levels of good ol’ boy American terrorism to keep “others” firmly under their heel.
Many of us who grew up in the Fifties lived in a peaceful post-WWII bubble of well-being. In New England the world seemed friendly and safe. It did indeed seem self-evident that everyone should share equally in those blessings. But as we grew older we learned that there were indeed factions whose well-being required that they maintain a sense of superiority and even physical dominance over some other group.
Washington was a keen observer of human nature. He and the others who put their lives and fortunes on the line to push off the oppressive rule of the English monarchy and to create this self-governed nation Really Believed in the people’s right to establish self-government. Washington eloquently described the implicit contradictions and challenges in trying to establish such a nation:
“But the Constitution which at any time exists, until changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.”
Right now our country feels much as it must have felt in the years leading up to the Civil War. Whether White Southerners actually believed Negros were inferior beings who deserved to be enslaved, or whether it was simply expedient to believe so will remain a moot question. Right now the rhetoric on the Republican mainstream table is familiarly self-aggrandizing, Constitution- undermining, and self-deceiving in its kaleidoscopic transformation of facts into lunatic dystopian fantasies, becoming more juvenile, self-centered, and “Do you really Believe that Sheet?” every day.
So yeah, this stuff we are going through now is exactly what Papa George was afraid of.
Read Washington’s Farewell Address
lummi island wine tasting april 2 ’22
Covid Rules
We are again OPEN for wine tasting and sales this Saturday (4/2) from 4-6 pm. Anyone with boosted vaccine status is welcome!
Bread Returns!
Rosemary Olive Oil – Bread flour and freshly milled white whole wheat for additional flavor and texture. Fresh rosemary from the garden and olive oil to make for a nice tender crumb and a nice crisp crust. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
Multi Grain- Starts with a preferment of flour, water, salt & yeast. This allows a portion of the dough to begin the enzymatic activity and gluten development overnight in a cool environment. The next day it is mixed with bread, fresh milled whole wheat, rye, polenta cornmeal, flax, sunflower and sesame seeds for a nice bit of crunch and some extra flavor. – $5/loaf
Individual Cinnamon Rolls – Made with a rich sweet roll dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. The dough is rolled out, spread with pastry cream and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Then rolled up and sliced into individual rolls for baking. And boy are they delicious! – 2/$5.
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. The 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.
Mailing List Issues: The Saga Continues!
Still trying to get our mailing app to work (failed again last week) and due to that uncertainty, we are taking the precaution of emailing the link directly to our mailing list as well as trying to activate the RSS feeder.
Best case scenario is that you will receive the actual blog in one email, and a link to it in another at about the same time. Any other outcome means something didn’t work as it should. There are a lot of balls in the air right now, so please bear with us, thanks!
This Week’s $5 Tasting
Lunetta Prosecco Italy $14
Pale straw color with greenish reflections, and fine perlage; fragrant, with enticing aromas of apple and peach; refreshing, dry, and harmonious, with crisp fruit flavors and a clean finish.
La Quercia Montepulciano ’17 Italy $13
100% organic Montepulciano D’abruzzo; opens with aromas of sour cherry with a hint of new leather; ripe fruity palate exhibits juicy blackberry, raspberry and a hint of anise; easy drinking with soft tannins.
Shatter Grenache Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes ’19 France $19
From Old Vines in Roussillon’s black schist soil; nose of dark fruit with a hint of espresso; velvety texture with black currant, spice and cured meat flavors with a touch of coffee; firm structure, supple tannins, excellent acidity and overall balance.
The Economics of the Heart: Entitlement and Cruelty
Everyone knows the beginning scenes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, when primitive humanoid apes appear to have learned violence toward their own kind from the mysterious Monolith. The message of that scene, and to some degree the whole movie, seemed to be that this penchant for violence represented some kind of “progress” for the human race that ultimately led to space travel and communication with the Infinite. Really?…it’s some kind of Progress??
Throughout our history we humans have demonstrated a penchant for predatory tribal warfare over access to various desires and necessities: food, water, social status, mating, wealth, security, land, and political power, and the present is no different.
We Americans have certainly played our part in this dominance nonsense throughout our history. We have fought the English, Native Americans, Barbary Pirates, Mexico, Spain, Ourselves in the Civil War, Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and even invaded Grenada, for heaven’s sake! We have military bases all over the world. We are the only country ever to use atomic weapons, with horrific results. So we can recognize a certain cognitive dissonance in ourselves as we hold our breath and long for the fighting, wholesale murder, wanton destruction, and suffering to stop in Ukraine and across the world. We see the rise in tyrannical regimes in countries across the world, from Russia to China to Syria, Turkey, Iran, Venezuela, Hungary, Afghanistan, and more, and it feels deeply threatening.
Putin is bad enough with his unrelenting cruelty. But even more heart-breaking and gut-wrenching has been the mass desertion of the American Republican Party away from Constitutional values of inclusion and equal protection under law, and toward an authoritarian state with sharply limited individual freedoms for political opponents. Many Republican-controlled states have adopted actual punishments for those who do not subscribe wholeheartedly to their hypocritical, white, racist, selfish, entitled-by-birth, narcissistic, angry, and intolerant assertions of Entitlement to rule.
We keep glancing at our watches waiting for arrests, trials, and convictions for the hubris-fueled conspirators of the narrowly evaded attempt to overturn the 2020 Presidential election. Will justice prevail? Will our collective democratic values re-emerge in the electorate before next fall’s elections? Or will this global trend toward tyranny prevail?
There is some good news, though…Wine helps in times like these!
lummi island wine tasting march 25 ’22
Open At Last!!
Based on today’s updated Covid data, case rates across all age groups in our county are now essentially Zero…!
Don’t know about you, but when we take even a moment to think about that, we find a mixture of elation, disbelief, relief, and sadness. It’s been a Very Long two years, and we are not the same as we were before. In most of the developed world, we can begin what is likely to be a long healing process as we turn our collective attention to vaccinating the vast population of the less developed world.
For those of you here on the Island, we are again OPEN for wine tasting and sales this Saturday (3/26) from 4-6 pm. Anyone with boosted vaccine status is welcome; please bring vax card.
There is NO BREAD PICKUP this week as our baker is away attending NCAA women’s college basketball playoffs. However, weekly bread pickup will return to the wine shop next Friday, April Fool’s Day.
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. The 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 needed for pickup the following Friday.
Mailing List Issues: The Continuing Saga
This week our little saga continues as we try a new approach to mailing out our weekly post. This week we are trying out some new software that might or might not take care of the problem. And due to that uncertainty, we are taking the precaution of emailing the link directly to our mailing list as well as trying to activate the RSS feeder.
Best case scenario is that you will receive the actual blog in one email, and a link to it in another at about the same time. Any other outcome means something didn’t work as it should.
After all, it should be clear to everyone at this point that it Really Is a Jungle out there, so we need to lower expectations and take a long view.
This Week’s $5 Tasting
Planeta Segreta Il Bianco Sicily $14
50% Grecanico, 30% Chardonnay, 10% Viognier, 10% Fiano. Clear yellow with greenish hints; engaging aromas of citrus and flowers and hints of peach, papaya and chamomile. Balanced and refined, with a lingering and refreshing finish.
Jordanov Vranec ’15 Macedonia $12
Aromas of ripe berries with notes of clove, nutmeg and cardamom. In the mouth it is full bodied with ripe dark fruit and hints of herbs with a noticeable dark chocolate edge on the well-structured finish. Enjoy with cheese, beef, lamb dishes or grilled sausage.
Rasa Occam’s Razor Red Columbia Valley ’18 Washington $22
Bouquet of blackberry and cassis, with nuances of spice, leather, vanilla, and espresso. Full-bodied palate shows suave tannins with rich notes of dark berries, black cherry, and vanilla with hints of cigar, chocolate, cedar, and spice.
The Economics of the Heart: Power and Cruelty
It can get confusing being human. As primates, social hierarchy is our natural milieu, leading us to gather in tribes, to engage in all manner of competition with each other for food, mates, status, and group approval. This is a game we are all involved with and all play with varying degrees of ambition, dedication, and inner need.
We have an ongoing fascination with our curious situation as primates, having instincts of both herd animals (safety in numbers) and predators (strength, deception, ambush, murder). Some of us just want to be left alone to graze and forage, and some crave to control who gets to graze where. It is interesting (and disturbing!) that our entire world in the past few years has been so hugely influenced by two such men, both textbook Authoritarians, narcissistic and psychopathic, with no allegiance to principle or truth. Like the “confidence men” of the 1950’s TV series Racket Squad, they are masters of “patting you on the back with one hand and picking your pocket with the other.”
Such people are not “leaders” in the familiar sense of inspiring others to follow or serve a common purpose. Because they are pathological, they can only feel safe when they hold such complete Authority that no one can ever hurt them…again.
Putin’s sadistic assault on Ukraine is a sad business all around, and it is impossible to accept that it offers any strategic or tactical value to the Russian nation. It is all about the emotional security of this one little man who happens to hold terrifying power for destruction and no apparent moral boundaries on its use. Below are some thought-provoking excerpts from a piece by Dominic Lawson of the Daily Mail which caught our eye:
- Putin is an absolute ruler — which is very much in the Russian tradition. Hence the old joke (sort of) that Russia is ‘an autocracy tempered by assassination’.
- ‘Government in Russia, like most of Russian business, is dominated by gangsterism.’
- ‘After Putin began his unspeakably cruel and bloody assault on independent Ukraine and its people, the Russian novelist Vladimir Sorokin wrote: ‘For Putin, life itself has always been a special operation…From the black order of the KGB, he learned not only contempt for ‘normal people’, but also [its] main principle: not a single word of truth…’
- ‘With this war, Putin has crossed a line. The mask is off.’
lummi island wine tasting march 19 ’22
Yes, We ARE Open…!
Based on today’s updated Covid data, over the past two weeks new cases across all age groups have continued to drop in every subregion of our County. This improves our confidence about the relaxing of state-mandated mask mandates across most of our region. Our fingers remain crossed as we hope the trend continues.
All YOU need to know is that we are again OPEN for wine tasting and sales this Saturday (3/19) from 4-6 pm. Anyone with boosted vaccine status is welcome; please bring vax card.
The wine shop will remain closed on Fridays until weekly bread pickup returns to the shop, possibly within the next few weeks. In the meantime bread pickup will continue be in Janice’s driveway from 4-5:30 pm this Friday (3/18). We understand she will be away next weekend (3/25) and possibly return bread pickup to the wine shop on (of course!) April Fools’ Day. Stay tuned!
To get on the bread list, click on the “contact us” link above and fill out the form. 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 needed for pickup the following Friday.
Mailing List Issues: The Continuing Saga
Last week our emailed blog post link notification seemed to reach lots of you by Friday morning as desired. Still, we are still checking files to make sure we have everyone on the list who wants to be, as well as finding the easiest way to send the post itself rather than just the link.
This Week’s $5 Tasting
Chapoutier Belleruche Blanc ’20 France $14
Delicious blend of grenache blanc and roussanne; fragrant and perfumed with a light, grilled-lemon note over ripe melon with a lingering palate of rich white peach.
Saviah The Jack Syrah ’18 Washington $15
85% Syrah, 10% Grenache, 5% Mourvèdre; Appealing aromas and flavors of red and black fruit, violets, olives, anise, and meat, with a velvety, pleasing texture.
Mollydooker “The Boxer” Shiraz ’18 Australia $28
Inky black-red hue; intoxicating scents of black plum, licorice and blackberry, toasty oak, fennel, and pepper; voluptuous, large scaled, and lavishly rich palate saturated in spicy black plum, licorice and blackberry that finishes with lingering notes of toasty oak, fennel, black pepper, polished tannins and a long, liqueur-like finish.
Justino Fanal Madeira Rainwater $22 Portugal $22
This Madeira is a medium dry blend of Verdelho and Tinta Negra aged for five years, lighter in body and sweetness than full Madeira, making it an excellent pairing with lighter fare like salads and spicy foods.
The Economics of the Heart: Unity and Organicity
Much of our national coinage bears the motto “E Pluribus Unum, a Latin phrase meaning “Out of Many, One.” The obvious interpretation is that our country started as a group of individual entities with diverse characteristics that came together in unity for a common purpose. But it has an even deeper meaning in how we as individual beings relate to each other and to the world.
As social animals, sometimes we assert our individual interests as separate organisms with private motivations (Organicity), and sometimes we join with others in support of group values and goals we share and support in common (Unity). As primates we have the characteristics and instincts of both predators and herd animals. One minute we get along with the flow around us, and the next we feel attacked and mobilize for war. Like Russia and Ukraine. Like Mom and Dad in the kitchen after dinner. Like the guy you inadvertently cut off at the traffic circle. It’s as if our radar is constantly scanning for threats, and we can jump from one role to another in the blink of an eye. (That’s why some of us think Open Carry is a Really, Really Bad Idea. But that’s another conversation…)
Upon reflection, it becomes clear that this emotional chameleonism must be a pretty primitive fight or flight instinct in our DNA. It also begs the suggestion that some people are more comfortable being herd animals, and some are more comfortable being predators. We all know people who are only okay if they are In Charge, some only if no one is in charge, and some who really don’t care. But at some level a deep need to be in charge suggests weakness, not strength. It also suggests a limited ability to adapt to changing circumstances, to value others as equals, and to be generous of spirit. The wolf pack can carve one caribou from the herd, and the leader gets to eat first, but most of the herd gets away for the moment.
Before us at this moment we have the deeply disturbing spectacle of Vladimir vs. Volodymyr in Ukraine, one the obvious predator attacking solely to dominate, and the other an obvious herd animal mobilizing to defend. Herd animals do, after all, have their defensive tools, whether great horns, speed and agility, cleverness, or resolve. Most of our species is on the side of Unity at the moment. If we’re lucky, that might be enough to stop the horrors we now see every day.
We all hope so. We all fear not. The world is at a major crossroad, with a madman controlling our destiny.
Take a break this Saturday and come by the wine shop. Good wine and good friends are always a comfort!
2072 Granger Way