lummi island wine tasting aug 13 ’21
Please note: The wine shop will be closed next weekend (August 20-21). Bread pickup will happen as usual from 4-5:30, but there will be no wine tasting either Friday or Saturday. We regret any inconvenience.
Current Covid Protocols
Since the highly contagious Covid Delta variant has been infecting even vaccinated people, we have all been forced to assume that contact with anyone outside our immediate pod is a potential threat– and vice versa.
Weighing the various risks, we will be open this weekend as usual (Fri- Sat, 4-6 pm), but with several restrictions for participation.
- Indoor tasting: You must have completed a Covid vaccine sequence at least a month ago AND You must have had little or no unmasked contact with off-island groups in the past week.
- Outdoor tasting on the deck: You must have completed a Covid vaccine sequence at least a month ago, AND wear masks and maintain thoughtful social distancing
Friday Bread
Each Friday our friend Janice of Island Bakery delivers fresh bread ordered by email earlier in the week. Each Sunday she sends details on her offerings for the coming Friday to the email list. Orders must be returned to her by 5 pm on Tuesday. Subscribers typically receive the email with the the current week’s choices on Sunday, and have until 5pm Tuesday to get their orders in for pickup at the wine shop the following Friday from 4-5:30.
Over the years she has established a list of several dozen breads and pastries from which she selects two different artisan breads and a pastry each week. Over several years she has established a somewhat cyclical rotation through the recipes.
If you would like to be on the mailing list, click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page.
Wines of the Week: Antech Blanquette de Limoux and Antech ‘Emotion’ Cremant de Limoux Rosé
Antech has been making sparkling wines in the Limoux region of France for six generations. Its Blanquette de Limoux is made from Mauzac, the original varietal used for making sparkling wines in France, plus chardonnay and chenin blanc using practices developed in Limoux long before sparkling wine was ever made in the Champagne region.
In the Ancestral Method, the grapes are harvested by hand when almost overripe. Fermentation takes place at low temperature, until the juice reaches a modest alcohol content of 5%. The Ancestral Method then uses a second fermentation lasting several weeks, using only the residual sugars from the first fermentation until the wine reaches 6 or 7% alcohol.
This Blanquette offers an interesting and tasty example of this original style of French sparkling wine. The method and the use of the original grape mauzac yield a taste that symbolizes the terroir, traditions and history of Limoux. Its straw yellow color, twirling bubbles, and sparkling reflections are irresistible, and the palate is lively with notes of juicy apple and grape.
Emotion Cremant de Limoux Rosé uses the same ancestral method, but adds to the mauzac the more traditional French sparkling wine blend of Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, and Pinot Noir, matured on the lees for 18 months to add complexity and richness to the finished wine.
Economics of the Heart: Shadows of the Future
There’s a lot going on right now, a lot of unanticipated challenges, as the simplest things are becoming more and more complicated and starting to adhere to each other like a cloud of butterflies with sticky wings. Today has been a good illustration.
We are taking our trailer to Oregon next week to help the kids move from Corvallis to Portland. As we all know, moving is an exhausting experience. We are all pack rats of a sort, impulsively collecting and clinging to various shiny objects of momentary desire: a particular stone on a beach, an old photograph, a ball of string, and we don’t like to leave them behind.
We wanted to get ourselves Covid-tested before we go, so a few days ago we spent an hour or two online setting up appointments for tests at Northwest Labs drive-thru setup at the airport this afternoon (Thursday). We successfully navigated the always-unexpected delays of Ferry Refueling Day and only waited an hour to get across.
At the airport drive-thru we found that it had closed unexpectedly “due to air quality issues ” as two employees manning the station required emergency assistance. And while we sat there trying to figure out what to do next, we both noticed the intense heat surrounding us and permeating the car, as if the thousands of square feet of pavement had absorbed it all into a smothering furnace, creating an overwhelming desire to escape. A sobering experience.
Next we drove to the nearby clinic that had set up the airport testing, and found a number of people with our same frustrations. One fellow got angry and threatening toward the clinic spokesperson, who had to duck in the door and get support. Very disturbing, we are all wound up so tight.
In the meantime, I got up at 3 am to look at the Perseid meteor shower, only to find the sky to hazy for viewing. That continued all day today beginning with an eerie red dawn and ending with a more eerie red crescent moonset due to the smoke of widespread wildfires, which are part of the smoke that makes the sunrise and moonset red, and makes us long for normality. And we know now that we are in a race with natural systems and a battle with each other to wake tf up, check our egos at the door, and get to work preserving precious Life on this tiny and isolated refuge we call, simply, Earth, our only Home.
And on top of it all, there is the continued dehumanization of interpersonal trade. As we do our best to navigate the churning waters of Covid and climate change, politics and power, wealth and despair, we have come to measure Progress by the length of time it takes to reach an actual human being when we have a problem with a website, a bank, a government agency, a merchant, a product, or a service…”please listen carefully, as our menu items may have changed…”
This week’s $5 tasting:
Antech ‘Emotion’ Cremant de Limoux Rosé ’18 France $15
Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc, Mauzac, and Pinot Noir; matured on the lees for 18 months to add complexity and richness.
Antech Blanquette de Limoux Reserve Blanc ’16 magnum France $32
Expresses the typicity, richness and roundness of the “Mauzac” grape variety and traditional method of the region. Pale yellow color with green reflections; fruity, round, and balanced, with aromas of green apple and white fruits.
Bocelli Sangiovese ’18 Italy $16
Bright, lush, and appealing; deliciously ripe and smoky, with notes of marasca cherry, granite, and rhubarb compote. Finish is long and dry, with admirable acidity that makes the palate taut and pleasing.
lummi island wine tasting august 6 ’21
Covid Notes: The Delta Dilemma
Just a week ago it became clear that the Corona virus Delta variant was on a rampage around the world. It is far more contagious than previous variants, such that infected people on average infect five others instead of one or two.
Even more worrisome, recent data confirmed that Delta can infect even vaccinated people, often with very mild symptoms or in many cases none at all. That has created a situation much like the beginning of Covid, when we had to assume that anyone outside our immediate pods was a potential threat.
Weighing the various risks, we will be open this weekend as usual, but with several requirements for participation in our wine tasting: You must have:
- completed a Covid vaccine sequence at least a month ago; AND
- had little or no unmasked contact with off-island groups in the past week.
Tasting will also be available outside, with masks and prudent social distancing requested.
Friday Bread for 8/6/21
Rosemary Olive Oil – made with 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 – Uses an overnight preferment before mixing the final dough. which is then mixed with bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat, rye, along with polenta cornmeal, flax, sunflower and sesame seeds for a nice bit of crunch and extra flavor. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Bear Claws! – Made with a Danish pastry dough rich in cream, eggs, sugar and butter. The dough is rolled out and spread with almond paste, powdered sugar, egg whites and just a bit of cinnamon to round out the flavor. Then, because bears love honey, topped with a honey glaze after baking! – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Marchetti Verdicchio di Castelli di Jesi Classico ’19 Italy $14
The Marche wine region reaches from the mountainous spine of Italy to the Adriatic. This weekend’s low yield Verdicchio is a hallmark of the varietal, with refreshing citrus fruits, playful acidity, and complex minerality. Made only with juice from a gentle half-press, it is precise and engaging.
Established in 1968 as a DOC of 18 hilly communes, the Verdicchio Classico, or Castelli di Jesi, region, is located some 35 kilometers inland from Ancona, an unusual wine region near the Adriatic coast where red grapes are grown close to the sea, and white grapes prefer to be slightly inland. The distinction of being “Classico” is a recognition that “this is what wine from this grape is meant to taste like.”
Wine history of the region dates back to the Romans and before, with some clay artifacts such as amphorae dating the region’s wine production back to the Iron Age. These days, the verdicchios from the region have developed a consistent quality and tasting profile that sets them apart.
Verdicchio/ Malvasia blend using only free-run juice; pale straw color with green overtones; intense bouquet of citrus, lemon zest, and floral notes,with complex fruity character, and crisp, well-balanced palate.
Economics of the Heart: Tragedy of the Commons Revisited
A recent opinion piece in the New York Times by Farhad Manjoo caught our attention while browsing headline this week. Curiously, it also drew the attention of several amigos in a long-standing weekly discussion group. Like many of us right now, Manjou is worrying about whether human beings have the capacity to collaborate with each other in a profound enough way to reverse the existential damage we have done and continue to do that are rapidly destroying the ability of our Dear Planet Earth — our only Refuge– to support Life. At present the clearest path has bookies across the planet laying odds that we are all Toast, and it is too late to do anything about it.
Our one quibble with Manjoo is his dismissal of the importance of Garrett Hardin’s essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” published in the journal Science in1968. His basic premise has become the defining problem of common property resources in general: that individuals acting in reasonable self-interest will put more and more animals on common land until it can no longer sustain any.
This is not just a story of a few animals in a hypothetical situation. This is a general postulate about any situation where the exploitation of a resource has no functioning rationing system. When any resource is owned in common, it is in fact owned by no one, and the Rule of Capture applies; whoever gets it first “wins.” Unfortunately, it is always a Pyrrhic victory, because each user has the incentive to use up as much of the resource as possible as quickly as possible, when all would be better off conserving the resource by setting harvest limits and establishing a fair system for allocating exploitation shares.
Examples are legion, including:
- in fisheries, lack of regulation (e.g., licensing) leads to over-capitalization (too much gear chasing too few fish) and resource depletion;
- in the Rain Forest, clearing and burning of ancient trees destroy unique and precious habitat and their species for a few more acres of marginal farm or grazing land;
- In irrigation, arcane historic rules for allocation of water rights can preserve inefficient uses of scarce water resources that have many more valuable applications;
- Any human couple can reproduce indiscriminately without concern for the cost imposed on others and on the planet by the demand for resources to feed, clothe, and maintain an additional human being;
- Powerful individuals, corporations, and armies of highly paid lobbyists at all levels distort resource allocation decisions to maximize private benefits in ways that impose enormous costs on society as a whole.
Our discomfort with Manjoo’s article is that he poo-poos the Big Wisdom in Hardin’s metaphorical article on the innate human tendency to deplete any commonly owned resource to extinction. At present, everything we see around us confirms that we humans are destroying the ability of our planet to support life. No one’s God, or Prophet, or Belief, or Political Orientation, or other Rationalization of Entitlement is going to save us. Our only hope is to establish effective and mutually-agreed-upon rationing systems that provide for all.
And our point of agreement with Manjoo is, well, there is not a lot of evidence that Seven Billion humans are going to agree on a mutually beneficial global rationing system soon enough to save our Planet.
This week’s $5 tasting:
Adorada “Eau de California” Rosé ’16 California $14
Brilliant coral color with aromas of strawberries, red grapefruit, rose petal, and jasmine; palate of strawberry, orange zest and a touch of white pepper spice with bright acidity to balance the fruity creaminess. And all presented in a Very Fashionable Package!
Marchetti Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico ’19 Italy $14
Verdicchio/ Malvasia blend using only free-run juice; pale straw color with green overtones; intense bouquet of citrus, lemon zest, and floral notes,with complex fruity character, and crisp, well-balanced palate.
La Spinetta IL Nero di Casanova Sangiovese ’15 Italy $20
Intense ruby red color. Aromas of wild cherry, black currant spicy mint, and sweet plum, and a fruity, chewy, cherry palate with silky tannins and elegant richness.
lummi island wine tasting july 30 ’21
Covid Notes: New Restrictions in Place
We are still operating under reduced hours 4-6 pm Friday and Saturday for wine tasting and sales. However, given the surge of the thousand-times-more-contagious (no, we are NOT making this up) Delta variant in some parts of our state and across the country, and given the vulnerability of our many senior members, for the time being we will not be serving individuals who have not completed their Covid shot sequences.
In addition, over the past few weeks we have been seeing larger groups of first-time visitors as families and friends gather together from far and wide to celebrate our new collective freedom to associate. Such visiting groups are welcome for service outside on the deck only if all present have completed their full shot sequence.
Covid is a deadly disease that is completely indifferent to our political beliefs and preferences. Our collective responsibility is to protect our neighbors by protecting ourselves. Thanks for honoring our boundaries.
Friday Bread This Week
Toasted Pecan & Flax Seed – Made with a starter fed with rye flour instead of wheat flour, for a different flavor profile. The final dough is made with bread flour as well as fresh milled whole wheat. Toasted pecans, flax seeds and honey all add up for a very flavorful bread – $5/loaf.
Heidebrot – which roughly translates to “bread of the heath.” This is a farmhouse bread, an aromatic, lighter sourdough made with whole grain rye, made with a rye-fed sourdough starter along with substantial fresh milled whole grain rye flour and regular bread flour. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Kouign Aman with Cream Cheese filling : Made with the same traditional laminated french pastry used for croissants. Has both a little levain for the sourdough flavor as well as some pre-fermented dough to help build strength. When rolling out however, instead of using flour to prevent sticking, sugar is used. The dough is cut into squares, placed in cupcake tins then filled with a cream cheese filling. It’s as if a cheese danish and croissant were in a car wreck! – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Kerloo Majestic GSM ’17 Washington $24
Kerloo Cellars was started on a shoestring in 2007 by beginning winemaker Ryan Crane after studying enology at Walla Walla CC and apprenticing at Forgeron and Va Piano. His interest has always been to produce wines that told of their place of origin (terroir) through all of one’s senses…a vaguely spiritual quest, perhaps, or just a desire to make us all smile. To this end he contracts with growers for fruit from specific blocks of their vineyards that he calculates will help him achieve his broader goal:
“to build a portfolio of wines that made you feel something versus just taste something.”
This week’s featured wine is his version of the popular Rhone blend of syrah, grenache, and mourvedre, now Americanized to “GSM” on many labels. His Old World approach to showcasing place of origin even extends to foot-stomping the whole grape clusters before fermention. Yeah, it’s pretty good, we have been fans for some years now. 🙂
74% Grenache, 21% Mourvedre, 5% Syrah; smoky-meaty nose of blackberry cobbler and dusty terrain, with a soft, seductive mouthfeel, and red and dark fruit with shades of pipe tobacco and leather.
Thimbleberries
Thimbleberries are something of a local curiosity here on the island, growing in thick banks alongside our roads, often alongside salmonberries, another Northwest native. According to Wikipedia they are, like other raspberries, not a true berry, but instead an aggregate fruit of numerous drupelets around a central core. The drupelets may be carefully removed separately from the core when picked, leaving a hollow fruit which bears a resemblance to a thimble, perhaps giving the plant its name.
We often find wines with flavors reminiscent of thimbleberries, definitely raspberry-like, but somehow brighter and more acidic, and often with a sort of dusty quality (probably from dirt blown onto them by passing cars!). For the past week we have been harvesting little handfuls of them on our dog walks, as this year seems to be delivering a bumper crop. Each day we pick the ripe (i.e., bright red) ones we can reach and eat them on the spot.
Look for them along roads, driveways, or the edges of fields. The leaves are quite large, with a maple leaf shape. And yes, they are a perfect match for the many dry rosés we have in stock right now!
Economics of the Heart: Wake-Up Call
Some people sleep more soundly than others. They can be hard to wake up. The alarm has to be louder, the barking dog more insistent, the bucket of cold water even colder. Even those who have chosen to live in denial of inconvenient truths might eventually wake up to climate change when things get bad enough. Since that will almost certainly happen too late to matter, our only hope for Life to endure on out Dear Planet Earth is for the rest of us to commit ourselves to making it happen with or without them. We have maybe ten years to start making things better faster than we are making them worse.
The recent record-breaking heat wave here in the Pacific Northwest, across the Great Plains, and even surging Northward into the Canadian Arctic should have been enough of a shock to grab everyone’s attention. For several days, it got much hotter in many places than it had never been before. Climate change may already be taking off the training gloves, and we are totally not ready for it.
We clever humans find ourselves suddenly out of charted territory. Our models of the Future have of necessity been based on observations of the Past, and the Past is a very long time. But we have no records to show us how oceans and atmosphere will respond to the rapid warming we humans have unleashed. How will the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica respond to a warming atmosphere and warming oceans? How can living ecosystems survive rapidly changing temperatures and patterns of water distribution?
A couple of recent articles in the Washington Post expand on two very important aspects of global warming that have been predicted but seldom discussed. The first explores the practical issue of how we can use passive cooling methods and materials to cool our homes and workplaces without energy-intensive air conditioning. It offers many encouraging and interesting suggestions.
The second article explores our human biological limits to heat adaptation. Using the metaphor of wet bulb vs. dry bulb temperature, the authors give a clear description of the limits of human heat endurance, beginning with the limitations of our perspiration/evaporative cooling under conditions of high temperature combined with high humidity. As we read it we found ourselves reminiscing about the complex water-preserving culture, ritual, and technology of the desert-dwelling Fremen in Frank Herbert’s iconic novel Dune.
The history of hunter-gatherer societies is centered around a somewhat spiritual concept of sustainability, in which there is a constant awareness of the fragility of abundance and the need to hold reserves against unfavorable futures. Today’s human economy has separated production and consumption so thoroughly that we have lost the precious awareness of ancient hunter-gatherers to remain prepared for periods of scarcity.
This week’s $5 tasting:
Bargemone Provence Rose ’20 France $14
Beautiful pale pink, with bright, mineral-dusted aromas of pink grapefruit and dried red berries. Light and racy on the palate, with tangy citrus and redcurrant flavors. Finishes brisk and dry, with good lingering spiciness and length.
Conundrum White ’15 California $17
Blend of Chardonnay, Sauv Blanc, Viognier, and Muscat Canelli. Nose of citrus orchard in bloom. Tastes sweet without being cloying, showing fig, apricot, exotic spice and melon flavors. Ends clean, crisp, and pure.
Kerloo Majestic Syrah/Grenache ’18 Washington $24
74% Grenache, 21% Mourvedre and 5% Syrah; smoky-meaty nose of blackberry cobbler and dusty terrain, with a soft, seductive mouthfeel, and red and dark fruit with shades of pipe tobacco and leather.
lummi island wine tasting july 23 ’21
Current Hours: Friday & Saturday 4-6pm
We are still operating under reduced hours 4-6pm Friday and Saturday for wine tasting and sales. Covid vaccinations are required for admission upstairs in the tasting room, but unvaccinated guests are welcome to enjoy wine tasting outside on our entry deck.
Friday Bread This Week
Pear Buckwheat – Made with a a poolish pre-ferment of bread flour, water and a bit of yeast and fermented overnight. Mixed the next day with bread flour and fresh milled buckwheat. Since buckwheat has no gluten using the preferment allows the dough to begin to develop before the final mix. The addition of toasted walnuts and dried pears soaked in white wine makes for a really flavorful bread – $5/loaf
French Country Bread – A levain bread made with mostly 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. Not a refined city baguette, but a rustic loaf that you would find in the countryside. A great all around bread –$5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Gibassiers – A traditional french pastry that incorporates the flavors 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. Ooh La La a delightful pastry to go along with your morning coffee or tea. – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Ad Lucem Elaina Red ’16 Oregon $18
For those of you who never took Latin (it has turned out to be surprisingly useful over the years), the rough translation of “Ad Lucem” is “Toward the Light.” Its label is one of several used by Oregon wine industry pioneer Jerry Owen of Lady Hill winery, who was a founding partner in the well-respected Owen Roe winery in 1999 and numerous other wine ventures.
The Lady Hill Winery is across the road from Champoeg State Park in the northern Willamette Valley in Oregon, where his ancestors settled in 1850. We have made it something of a habit to visit the winery whenever we bivouac at this very pleasant State Park, and have found it a welcome destination with delicious wines and enjoyable conversations. Before Covid Jerry offered to drive up here some weekend and pour some of his wines for all of us, and we will keep trying to make that happen.
Ad Lucem is Lady Hill’s label for Rhone blends (any wines containing Grenache, Syrah, or Mourvedre), while Bordeaux reds (Cab Sauv, Cab Franc, Merlot, Malbec) bear the Lady Hill label, and rosés carry a Procedo label. Therefore, our featured wine this week is a blend of the three main Rhone varietals that has been making people smile for generations.
The Economics of the Heart: Lemming Lessons
The popular myth is that from time to time entire populations of little rodents called lemmings commit mass suicide by throwing themselves en masse off high cliffs into unsurvivable Northern Oceans. In reality, lemmings do indeed migrate in large numbers, particularly when their numbers strain the available food supply. And while that may involve swimming rivers, lakes, or ocean shorelines, they are very good swimmers.
Lemmings are creatures of the North. In winter, they create extensive networks of tunnels under snow and ice fields. Some winters, temperatures and humidity create ideal circumstances for them to thrive between the land and snow cover, and their numbers (mammals being what we are) can increase rapidly, triggering their instinct for some large subgroups to migrate in search of more favorable circumstances.
We old-timers – you know, So Old we took Latin in high school- were born into a world of about 2.5 billion human beings. Seven decades later, we live in a world with three times as many human beings, some 7.8 billion souls. Like lemmings, we all consume, eliminate, and reproduce. And like lemmings, when we have consumed, eliminated, and reproduced a place into economic uninhabitability, we migrate to where the grass is still green. That’s what living organisms do.
In just the last couple of months, we have had some alarming messages from our Planet that it’s time to send a big chunk of us on a migration for more space and more resources…but of course there is nowhere else for us to go. These alarms have included our region’s recent record-breaking heat wave; the increasing intensity of winds, rains, and flooding; the warming of ocean surface temperatures and slowing of climate-stabilizing currents like the Gulf Stream; the melting of polar icecaps; and the now-ongoing likelihood of extinction of millions of species. And if that isn’t scary enough, in a very short period of time these changes will become Irreversible.
Like lemmings, we have been very successful at blithely consuming the resources around us and enjoying an extraordinary 100-year population boom. Like lemmings we have expanded our exploitation of resources to meet our increasing numbers and frivolous desires. Unlike lemmings, we have done it on a scale which has created gigantic negative feedback loops which are eroding the Earth’s capacity to support Life of any kind for any species for very much longer.
In the midst of this very real Existential Crisis, we are baffled that so many of our fellow humans are mocking and ignoring these dangers and squandering the little time we have left in the name of extravagant political power.
This week’s $5 tasting:
Saint Nabor Gris de Gris Rose ’16 France $10
Bouquet of red fruit and honeysuckle with linden-tree nuances; light, crisp and easy drinking, with palate of wild strawberries and blueberries with mineral nuances.
Charles Krug Napa Valley Chardonnay ’17 Napa $18
The cool, foggy North Bay/Carneros region delivers a nice balance of acidity and ripeness, evoked nicely by barrel fermentation and sur lie aging, producing aromas of tropical fruit and citrus blossom with flavors of peach and pear.
Lady Hill Ad Lucem Elaina Red ’16 Washington $17
Grenache, syrah, mourvedre blend; aromas of toast, dark fruits and berries, and grilled meat that expand into mouth-watering rich flavors and crisp acidity on the palate.
2072 Granger Way
