lummi island wine tasting nov 5 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
Last week we were stranded off-island with our trailer down at Bayview State Park, planning to come back to open last Friday. However, the ferry broke down, and since we couldn’t come home, we stayed another night, uncertain when the ferry would return.
As luck would have it, we got to the ferry line a little after 2 pm, expecting a long line of cars. But as luck would have it, we arrived just as the first run of our trusty Whatcom Chief pulled in, and we were home by 2:30. We did open the wine shop, but had only two visitors.
Therefore, we will pour the same wine list as was scheduled for last week.
This week we will again offer indoor tastings on Friday and Saturday from 4-6 pm, with our familiar Covid requests:
— You must have completed a full Covid vaccination sequence to participate;
— We ask all to maintain mindful social distance from people outside your regular “neighborhood pods.”
Friday Bread
Each Sunday bread offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to the mailing list by Island Bakery. Orders returned by the 5 pm Tuesday deadline are baked and available for pickup each Friday at the wine shop from 4:00 – 5:30 pm. To get on the bread order mailing list, click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page and fill out the form.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which two different artisan breads and a pastry are selected each week.
This week’s deliveries:
Toasted Pecan & Flax Seed – This levain bread is different than most of the levain breads that I do as it is made with a starter that is fed with rye flour instead of wheat flour which creates 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 – Translated as “bread of the heath,” after a region in central Germany known for fields of red heather. This is a farmhouse bread from an aromatic, lighter sourdough made with whole grain rye. a rye-fed sourdough starter, fresh milled whole grain rye flour, and regular bread flour as well – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Morning Buns – Made with the same laminated dough as croissants. The dough is rolled out, spread with a filling of brown sugar, orange zest, butter and cinnamon, and rolled up and sliced before baking. – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Longship Lady Wolf Malbec ’18 Washington $25
Longship is a fairly new family-owned winery in Richland, in the heart of Washington wine country. Established in 2013, it has focused on producing big, hand-crafted, barrel-aged, red varietals like tempranillo, malbec, syrah, cabernet sauvignon, with at least 60% proportion aged for 18 months in new oak barrels.
The name “Longship,” and the adoption of the Viking Longship as the winery’s logo is a nod to the family’s Scandinavian heritage and the winery’s ongoing journey to produce some of the finest wines in the Pacific Northwest.
The Richland tasting room was added at the end of 2016, not just to feature their wines, but also, as is the case here at the Wine Gallery, to create a social space where friends can gather to relax in a convivial environment while sharing delicious handcrafted wine.
We took an immediate liking to the wine when we tasted it a couple of weeks ago. Chances are you will, too!
The Economics of the Heart: Reconsidering Nuclear Power
For the past several years we have been making relatively frequent trailer trips to Corvallis. That’s because Pat’s son Donald (himself a new papa) was attending OSU studying fermentation science. On those trips we have regularly stayed at the Benton County campground/ fairgrounds about five minutes away from their place. For a couple of years the park hosts were a couple in which he attended to the park, and she was involved in an interesting project at OSU with a company called NuScale. The goal of the project was nothing less than to develop the next generation of nuclear reactors, designed specifically to be SMR’s: small modular reactors, that could replace fossil fuel powered electric generation over the next few decades.
Just today, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Romanian Minister of Energy Virgil Popescu announced a new commercial partnership between NuScale Power and Nuclearelectrica that was signed earlier this week while meeting at the UN Conference on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow. The company’s SMR design is just completing a long process of becoming the first ever to be approved by the NRC. The deal with Romania is one of many international projects under development.
As the video above shows, on the production side, the new technology being developed by NuScale and its partners is more efficient and less expensive in both dollars and environmental risks than either earlier generations of nuclear reactors or current fossil fuel technology. At the same time it is abundantly clear that we are many decades away from any possibility to provide all our energy from non-polluting renewables. Deploying the next generation of nuclear power generation shows great potential for greatly reducing the former risks of nuclear power production and combating climate change by replacing the coal-fired power plants that are the primary consumers of fossil fuels.
That leaves us with one other caveat about nuclear energy. One way to describe it is to relate a conversation I had a couple of decades ago with a gentleman about the age I am now (today I turned 76!) , when we were sitting on his lovely boat a few slips away from my own old, barely afloat, and yet beautiful in her way sloop Windsong. I was admiring the finish on his exterior wood trim, and he told me it was a certain teak oil. After some discussion of all the high-tech finishes that were even then available, he said, “Now when someone is trying to sell me some high-tech finish, the first question I ask is, “Yup, sounds good…but How Do You Get it Off?” The Nuclear corollary is “Sounds good, but Whattaya do with the Waste?”
As it turns out, Finland has come up with a pretty good answer (sorry about the 15 sec of ads) to the very demanding nuclear waste disposal problem. As shown in the video, Finland has been constructing the world’s first Deep Geologic Waste Repository for spent nuclear fuel. The waste is packed into individual boron steel canisters which are then enclosed in individual corrosion-resistant copper canisters, inserted into individual holes in the billion-year-old bedrock, backfilled with bentonite clay, and sealed to lie inert for a Very, Very Long Time.
The evidence is overwhelming that our continued use of fossil fuels is 1) destroying the ability of our planet to support life, and 2) getting worse every minute. Back in the fifties or sixties, these things were the stuff of far-out science fiction fantasies. But in 2021 this is our Reality; our Darwinian Karma unfolding before our very eyes under the hands of all our fellow humans.
This week’s $5 tasting:
Planeta Segreta Il Bianco Sicily $14
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.
FontanaFredda Briccotondo Piemonte Barbera ’18 Italy $15
Nose of blackberries and plums, with hints of black pepper and cinnamon. Crisp and fresh on the palate with sweet, soft tannins, silky texture, and great fruit character.
Longship Lady Wolf Malbec ’18 Washington $25
100 % malbec; unfolds with dark, enchanting notes of blackberry, grilled plum, and jammy raspberry with accents of orange peel, vanilla, and tobacco spice, finishing with balanced structure, plush texture, and a lengthy finish.
lummi island wine tasting october 29 ’21
**** NOTE: As we go to press tonight we are camped in the trailer at Bayview State Park. We have learned that the ferry is out of service for repairs, so we have decided to stay another night here and will NOT be opening the wine shop on Friday, Oct 29. Hopefully the ferry will return to service and we can be home to open on Saturday.
Current Covid Protocols
Last Saturday offered a pleasant taste of the quiet, off-season, pubby days of close neighbors and familiar faces. Very low-key and nourishing!
This week we will again offer indoor tastings on Saturday from 4-6 pm, with our familiar Covid requests:
— You must have completed a full Covid vaccination sequence to participate;
— We ask all to maintain mindful social distance from people outside your regular “neighborhood pods.”
Friday Bread
Each Sunday bread offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to the mailing list by Island Bakery. Orders returned by the 5 pm Tuesday deadline are baked and available for pickup each Friday at the wine shop from 4:00 – 5:30 pm.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which two different artisan breads and a pastry are selected each week.
To get on the bread order mailing list, just click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page and fill out the form.
This week’s deliveries:
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…
Pumpkin Muffins- Made with pumpkin and all the familiar pumpkin pie spices. Topped with a streusel made with butter, brown sugar and pumpkin seeds not to mention then filled with a cream cheese filling. Yum! Caution: may be addictive! – 4/$5.
Wine of the Week: Longship Lady Wolf Malbec ’18 Washington $25
Longship is a fairly new family-owned winery in Richland, in the heart of Washington wine country. Established in 2013, it has focused on producing big, hand-crafted, barrel-aged, red varietals like tempranillo, malbec, syrah, cabernet sauvignon, with at least 60% proportion aged for 18 months in new oak barrels.
The name “Longship,” and the adoption of the Viking Longship as the winery’s logo is a nod to the family’s Scandinavian heritage and the winery’s ongoing journey to produce some of the finest wines in the Pacific Northwest.
The Richland tasting room was added at the end of 2016, not just to feature their wines, but also, as is the case here at the Wine Gallery, to create a social space where friends can gather to relax in a convivial environment while sharing delicious handcrafted wine.
We took an immediate liking to the wine when we tasted it a couple of weeks ago. Chances are you will, too!
The Economics of the Heart: Oil is the New Tobacco
“Climate scientists are now as certain that the burning of fossil fuels causes global warming as public health experts are sure that smoking tobacco causes cancer.” —
The House Committee on Oversight has recently begun questioning energy company executives about the disinformation they have been spreading for decades to minimize the threats of climate change from the burning of the fossil fuels they produce and we all have used.
In 1980 I was involved in a project at Battelle Labs exploring the potential economic impacts of anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change. Though this was very early in the game exploring climate change, there were already several sophisticated climate models sounding the alarm. My portion of the study looked at the likely impacts on marine fisheries, and identified many areas of concern we have been observing right here in our own marine environment and habitat.
Broadly speaking, though the atmosphere is one gigantic element of an intricately interdependent global system, even the pioneering models in the seventies were sophisticated enough to include the interactive thermodynamic relationships among the distributions of global atmospheric temperatures, wind patterns, evaporation, rainfall, ocean temperatures, circulation patterns, and salinity, as well as an intricate array of positive and negative feedback loops that could slow down or accelerate global warming.
The article also highlights obvious parallels between the multi-decades battle between government and Big Tobacco and the current battle to fully expose and end Big Energy’s multi-decade PR campaign to discredit climate change as a global existential threat. Tobacco kept regulation at bay for decades, and Big Energy has presented an even more impenetrable barrier to reducing carbon emissions.
As the beginning quote above suggests, most humans on the planet have seen and experienced the effects of climate change in their own geographical settings. Broad swaths of the planet are drying up, burning, flooding, and starving. Millions of species are in danger of extinction. Billions of human beings will be increasingly competing for dwindling water supplies, arable land, and livable climates.
And right here in our own country many politicians of both parties still seem to believe that ignoring climate change is somehow “better for the economy.”
Old-time science fiction writer Harlan Ellison captured our growing sense of frustration and doom when he titled one of his classic stories, ” I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream!”
This week’s $5 tasting:
Planeta Segreta Il Bianco Sicily $14
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.
FontanaFredda Briccotondo Piemonte Barbera ’18 Italy $15
Nose of blackberries and plums, with hints of black pepper and cinnamon. Crisp and fresh on the palate with sweet, soft tannins, silky texture, and great fruit character.
Longship Lady Wolf Malbec ’18 Washington $25
100 % malbec; unfolds with dark, enchanting notes of blackberry, grilled plum, and jammy raspberry with accents of orange peel, vanilla, and tobacco spice, finishing with balanced structure, plush texture, and a lengthy finish.
lummi island wine tasting oct 22 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
Looks like a rainy/windy weekend ahead. This past Friday we had a small group of regulars hang out a bit after bread pickup…enough for a sense of community without triggering Covid anxiety. Nice!
Last Saturday was a taste of the quiet off-season pubby days of close neighbors and familiar faces. Very low-key.
This week we will again offer indoor tastings on both Friday and Saturday from 4-6 pm, with our familiar Covid requests:
— You must have completed a full Covid vaccination sequence to participate;
— We ask all to maintain mindful social distance from people outside your regular “neighborhood pods.”
Friday Bread
Each Sunday bread offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to the mailing list by Island Bakery. Orders returned by the 5 pm Tuesday deadline are baked and available for pickup each Friday at the wine shop from 4:00 – 5:30 pm.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which two different artisan breads and a pastry are selected each week.
If you would like to be on the bread order mailing list, click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page and fill out the form.
This week’s deliveries:
Pan de Cioccolate – This delicious chocolate artisan bread is NOT a dessert pastry. Rather it is a rich chocolate bread made with a levain, bread flour, and fresh milled rye flour, honey for sweetness, vanilla and plenty of dark chocolate. Makes GREAT toast and even better French toast! – $5/loaf.
Levain w/ Dried Cherries and Pecans – Made from an overnight levain sourdough starter. This allows the fermentation process to start and the gluten to start developing. The final dough is made with the levain, bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and then loaded up with dried cherries and toasted pecans. A nice rustic loaf that goes well with meats and cheese – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Black Sesame & Candied Lemon Brioche: A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with fresh lemon zest and candied lemon and as if that wasn’t enough, topped with a black sesame streusel before baking…Good, they be!! – 2/$5
Wine of the Week:
This week we return to an old favorite wine from a favorite Washington winemaker, Javier Alfonso of Pomum Cellars in Woodinville. The Pomum label now has its own estate vineyard, Konnowac Vineyard located at 1100 ft elevation in the northwest corner of the Rattlesnake Hills AVA in the Yakima Valley, which provides fruit for most of the French varietals.
In addition, because Javier grew up in the Ribero del Duero region of Spain, he also makes a number of Spanish wines under the Idilico label, and he often refers to tempranillo as simply tinto, as if it was understood that “red wine” is just another way of saying tempranillo. All his wines therefore display his preference for highly drinkable wines with rich, evolving, and lingering flavors, silky tannic depth and length, and a Muse that beckons “hey, Amigo, un vaso mas!”
This weekend we are pouring his Idilico garnacha, a lovely and engaging wine that definitely displays its winemaker’s fingerprints.
The Economics of the Heart: The Rising Costs of Ego
In the last few days the news cycle has presented us with a with several subtle harbingers of Our Future with regard to climate change and the very real threat of economic extinction of human civilization and millions of living species.
“We assess that climate change will increasingly exacerbate risks to US national security interests as the physical impacts increase and geopolitical tensions mount.”
- Our National Intelligence agencies have just released a report outlining how the accelerating impacts of climate change will be increasing a broad array of security threats to the United States, and by implication, to civilization itself as many countries face desertification, devastating wildfires, and economic collapse. We are already seeing the beginnings of mass migrations from failing economies from North Africa to Europe, from Afghanistan to neighboring countries, and to the US from Central America. These will get worse at an increasing rate determined by how quickly and how much, if at all, we humans are able to cut our carbon footprints on our World.
“The Freedom to Vote Act is therefore able to counteract some of these state Republican measures in a way that the For the People Act, introduced back in January, does not.” -The Nation
2. Waking up yesterday morning I had this image: 74 million Democrats and their US Senators are all on board a gigantic plane that has been flying around DC for months preparing to land. That’s because shortly after takeoff, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema took over the cockpit and locked the door. Early on we thought they wanted some concessions, and that if we gave them they would land the plane safely, and we would all go about our lives in a better world for what they had done.
After the first month we were still anxious to please them and also anxious about not pleasing them. After the second month, when the menu was down to soggy crackers and recycled urine-water, we started getting grumpy. Now, after four months, and we are all pooping in the aisles and kids are whimpering, we gag on their political sadism and take their threats seriously. Now we see that that they will crash our plane into the Beating Heart of Mother Earth if we don’t let them strangle Mother Earth more slowly over the next couple of decades.
All of which is to say, probably easier just to write them bigger checks for their votes than Big Coal can offer Manchin or Big Pharma can offer Sinema. Seems like the best choice all around, let’s do it!
“There is no middle ground between the arsonist and the firefighter. ” – Democracy Docket
3. Yesterday’s “demonstration vote” on the simple matter of bringing the new Freedom To Vote Act to the Senate floor for mere discussion, while not surprising, is still deeply disturbing. Majority Leader Schumer brought the bill to the Senate floor partially as a demonstration to Sen. Manchin, who months ago had promised to bring at least 11 Republican votes in favor of such a bill. Instead, not even one Republican Senator would even vote to allow discussion of the bill. Schumer voted against his own bill so that it could be brought back to the floor at a later date.
A brief review of #2 above highlights Mr. Manchin’s central role in this week’s musing. In truth it is turning out that a technical majority of one or two votes in the House or the Senate is a Stalemate, and it is an astonishing political achievement that the new administration has brought it as far as they have.
Don’t know about you, but another article we read this week by Charles Blow in the NYT convinced us that as desirable as many of the goals of proposed legislation are for promoting the general welfare of our entire national family and its long term future, we have come to believe that at this moment in our history, our first priority must be to do whatever is necessary to establish and preserve the right of all citizens to vote and have their votes count equally. Even if we don’t get all we want, it will take longer for Republicans to take it all away. Again.
We are engaged in two wars, on different fronts but against the same enemy, our own human nature. All of our history is based on internecine warfare over everything more than one of us desires. Right now our entire planet lies on the chopping block. Like Joe Manchin it is ambivalent about human survival; to Gaia it’s just another play, another curtain, a brief intermission.
This week’s $5 tasting:
Folie a Deux Pinot Gris ’18 Sonoma $14
Guava, pineapple and lemon-lime flavors make for a fleshy, brightly layered expression of the varietal, both soft on the palate and crisp on the palate.
Los Arraez Lagares Spain $
60/40 Monastrell- Cab blend from Valencia; deep and dark aromas of juicy, ripe dark plums leading to palate that dances around flavors of plum and prune with notes of coffee and chocolate.
Idilico Garnacha ’14 Washington $18
Moderately saturated, showing flavors of cherry, strawberry, game and licorice, with flint and rock notes on the inviting nose. Graceful, pliant and sweet with a lingering, firm, ripely tannic finish.
lummi island wine tasting oct 15-16 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
Looks like a rainy/windy weekend ahead. This past Friday we had a small group of regulars hang out a bit after bread pickup…enough for a sense of community without triggering Covid anxiety.
Saturday interesting in that it marked the first time in our 15-year history that we had about several parties totaling about a dozen guests, and none of our familiar Island residents. However, one family group from California has owned a cabin near the cafe for about a hundred years, with lots of stories and memories.
We will again offer indoor tastings on both Friday and Saturday from 4-6 pm, with our familiar Covid rules:
— You must have completed a full Covid vaccination sequence to participate;
— We ask all to maintain mindful social distance from people outside your regular “neighborhood pods.”
Friday Bread
Each Sunday bread offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to the mailing list by Island Bakery. Orders returned by the 5 pm Tuesday deadline are baked and available for pickup each Friday at the wine shop from 4:00 – 5:30 pm.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which two different artisan breads and a pastry are selected each week.
If you would like to be on the bread order mailing list, click on the Contact Us link at the top of the page and fill out the form.
This week’s deliveries:
Barley & Rye w/ Pumpkin Seeds – Made with a levain that is fermented overnight before the final dough is mixed with a nice mix of bread flour and fresh milled rye, barley and whole wheat flours. Some buttermilk makes for a tender crumb, honey for sweetness and toasted pumpkin seeds add to the flavor and texture. A really flavorful artisan loaf – $5/loaf
Kamut Levain – Kamut, also known as khorasan wheat, is an ancient grain that has more protein than conventional wheat. Some people who can’t tolerate wheat find kamut to be more digestible. The 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. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Chocolate Babka Rolls – A sweet pastry dough rolled with a chocolate filling and cut into individual rolls, baked in baking forms and brushed with sugar syrup. Good, they be!! – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Chateau du Donjon “Grande Tradition” Minervois ’16
Back in October 2011, driving north from Carcasonne, we tracked down an old winery called Chateau Donjon, in the somewhat rustic region of Minervois. It was located in an old castle-and-former-monastery dating back to the 12th century, and less than 30 minutes from Carcasonne. We had been carrying these wines for several years, enjoying their reliable quality and modest prices, the two most important characteristics of wines we prefer to carry.
As it turned out, we arrived around mid-day on a Sunday, and knocked on the Door (which was ajar) (remember, this building is essentially a huge medieval castle, with a huge door like an old Cathedral!). As there was no answer, we were heading back to the car when the door opened and we met Jean Panis, the owner-winemaker, whose family had been making wine there for five hundred (we are not making this up!) years! Though the place was officially closed, he gave us a very brief tour and tasting in what must be one of the oldest rooms we have ever been in. Might have been a dungeon, or prayer room, or who-knows-what back in the 12th century.
The whole interaction took less than a half hour, yet felt like a very kind gift. Indeed, after we had left and were driving away, M. Panis came jogging across the street with a bottle of wine for us. Charmant, n’est-ce pas? All you need to know is that the wine he gave us is one we have carried for many years, and of which we have just restocked the most recent vintage. It tastes like Real Wine, and some of us are quite fond of it!
Chateau du Donjon “Grande Tradition” Minervois 2016 France $15
Powerful primary aromas of ripe black fruit and hints of strawberry/raspberry. Very dense on the palate, with black fruit and red cherry flavors. Firm, structured and exceptionally rich.
The Economics of the Heart: Questions of Value
The value of something to us as individuals is its ability to satisfy our wide-ranging needs. As Maslow pointed out, to feel okay with our lives we humans must satisfy physical needs for safety, security, and predictability as well as social needs for affection, attention, and approval. Life is an ongoing process of making the best choices we can to survive and thrive, as constrained by our own budgets in our local political economy.
The cost of something to us is the alternative benefit that we must forgo to get it. When we spend our time or money on something, we are signalling, at least for that moment, that we prefer it to any of the available alternatives. Sometimes we are very satisfied with the outcomes of our decisions, and sometimes not so much, especially if our means are limited. Whatever decisions we make both limit and create the conditions for our next decision. Or, as Jung suggested, as far as Republicans are concerned, the Collapse of Civilization they are Hell-bent on causing will “appear in their lives as Fate.”
Since the dawn of human civilization, many cultures have appeared, thrived for a time, and disappeared or dissolved into another. This theme was examined in depth by scientist and author Jared Diamond in his book Collapse. With our nation and our planet facing unprecedented stress from climate change, massive population pressure on increasingly fragile resources, and disturbing signs of environmental, cultural, and political upheaval around the globe, his research offers some potent observations worth our sober consideration.
Historically, Diamond found several consistent historical factors in the economic collapse of civilizations:
- Top five: Climate change, war, collapse of essential trade, environmental degradation, and the society’s ability to respond to these stresses;
- Population exceeding the practicable carrying capacity of the environment;
- The ability to use long-term planning to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions before problems reached crisis proportions;
- The courage to adapt values to changing circumstances.
If there is one consistent theme slithering in the rising tide of Authoritarianism across our country and across the globe, it is the ongoing descent from open democratic structures into feudal dictatorships. The mindset that led Easter Islanders to cut down their last remaining trees and make habitation there no longer possible is the same “anti-science” mindset Trumpian Republicans (i.e., most of ’em) are using to deny the existential threat of climate change, the election results of 2020, and the treasonous nature of the January 6 occupation of the National Capitol.
Now, here in America, an entire generation of Republicans, with their collective denial of the warnings of the best Science our species has developed about how things work, has set its sights on “permanent” control of the United States Government, even as they do their utmost to insure that, as with Rapa Nui, they blow us all up with their own Hubris-infested Petard.
This week’s $5 tasting:
Duck Pond Pinot Gris ’19 Oregon $13
Clean, fleshy pear aromas and flavors make for an appealing white wine, lightly spiced and bright on the finish with hints of freshly picked green herbs.
Cana’s Feast Bricco Red ’18 Washington $16
Ripe raspberry, boysenberry and cocoa on the nose. Full flavors of cherry, brown sugar, and coffee serve as a base for more subtle mineral and iron nuances. Generous acidity and tannic structure support a long, round finish.
Chateau du Donjon “ Tradition” Minervois ’16 France $15
Powerful primary aromas of ripe black fruit and hints of strawberry/raspberry. Very dense on the palate, with black fruit and red cherry flavors. Firm, structured and exceptionally rich.
2072 Granger Way