lummi island wine tasting september 10-11 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
The highly contagious Covid Delta variant continues to infect thousands of Americans, including vaccinated people, who may have no symptoms and no awareness if they/we are carriers. This creates a quandary about how to manage our social interactions.
For our part, because we put high values on both safety and being with “our people,” we have come up with this risk-benefit compromise for wine tasting this weekend:
- 1. Wine tasting this weekend will be Friday and Saturday from 4-6pm, outside on the deck;
- 2. You must have completed a full Covid vaccination protocol to participate;
- 3. Please maintain appropriate social distancing from people outside your regular “neighborhood pod.”
Friday Bread
Each Friday Island Bakery delivers fresh bread ordered by customer email earlier in the week. Each Sunday offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to entire list. Orders must be returned by 5 pm on Tuesday for pickup at the wine shop the following Friday from 4-5:30.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which are selected two different artisan breads and a pastry 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 pickup:
Sonnenblumenbrot – aka Sunflower Seed Bread; made with an overnight pre-ferment before mixing the final dough made with bread flour and freshly milled rye, then loaded up with toasted sunflower seeds and some barley malt syrup for sweetness. This is a typical German seed bread- $5/loaf
Pain Meunier –aka Miller’s Bread to honor the person who mills the wheat. Made with pre-fermented dough it contains all portions of the wheat berry: flour, fresh milled whole wheat, cracked wheat and wheat germ. Always a favorite and a great all around bread. It makes the best toast! – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Pain aux Raisin – made with 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 that have been soaked in sugar syrup. Rolled up and sliced before baking. These are my favorites! As always, quantities are limited, be sure to get your order in early – 2/$5
Wine of the Week: Greywacke Pinot Noir ’16 New Zealand $32
Most simply, Greywacke is a type of sandstone that has a lot of rock grain and fragments in it, kind of a lumpy batter that set up before it was completely stirred. It is often associated with continental shelves, and is believed to have formed by mudslides along the shelf. Greywacke is made up of dull-colored sandy rocks that are mostly grey, brown, yellow, or black which can occur in thick or thin beds, and which bear some similarity to formations of “Chuckanut sandstone” that we see on our own shores here on Lummi Island and around the San Juan Islands.
Last year we learned that many of the formations at the Aiston Preserve (recently acquired for restoration and preservation by the Lummi Island Heritage Trust) and much of the southern half of Lummi Island contain significant deposits of greywacke. These formations are about 150 million years old, and overlay basalt and chert from an even older ancient sea floor.
Greywacke is also a major part of the geological structure of New Zealand, and just a couple of years ago we learned there is a NZ winery of the same name. We have been stocking their sauvignon blanc and pinot noir for a couple of years now, and so far it has been universally satisfying. The rocky soil gives the wines a complex minerality with aromas and flavors of dark fruit and nuances of cedar, earth, and smoke.
Winemaker Kevin Judd was the longtime winemaker at the consistently highly regarded Cloudy Bay winery before starting his own winery at Greywacke in 2008. It’s good! (read more)
The Economics of the Heart: Remembering 9/11
This weekend is the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in New York. Like very few dates in our collective national history– including the 1918 Armistice ending WWI (11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month), the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 that marked our entry into WWII, and JFK’s assassination in November 1963, we all remember where we were when we first heard the news.
Pat and I were just waking up on our sailboat, tied to a mooring at Clark Island, about three miles west of and in sight of our house on Lummi Island. While we were making tea and fixing breakfast we turned on the radio. It took a several minutes of puzzled listening before the news began to sink in, and I heard myself exclaiming “OMG, we’re at War!” But it would never become clear with whom we were at war, or why, or what to do about it, if anything.
About noon we sailed a few miles north to anchor at Sucia Island, a very popular boating destination in the San Juans. In mid-afternoon a small skiff motored around the many boats at anchor to announce a gathering on the island for a memorial to the day’s events. There were maybe fifty people there, gathered in a large circle. There were several American flags, which seemed strange. Several people spoke. We remember a pervasive mix of shock and sadness…but already strangely contaminated with angry vengeance. What began as a gesture of solidarity felt dissonant and insensitive.
Over the next few days there were, eerily, no sounds of airplanes in the sky. All flights had been grounded to their nearest airports, many in Canada, where generous householders took stranded passengers into their homes for the better part of a week. From around the globe came an outpouring of heartfelt compassion from our fellow humans. For a few days it felt as if our entire country was being cradled and embraced by the whole world. It was beautiful and deeply moving.
At the same time, Dubya, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and the Neocons fully embraced the flag-waving vengefulness we had first felt out at Sucia Island the afternoon of 9/11. It was a call to anger and to arms. How DARE they! Whoever they were, we should “Bomb them back to the Stone Age.” And indeed, full of Hubris and Outrage, we invaded Afghanistan on a stated quest to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, the likely mastermind of the hijackings, and then Iraq, ostensibly because of nonexistent WMD’s.
In those days there was a particularly moving piece in the NY Times by writer Kim Stafford which has stuck with me all these years. “When I turned from the TV images the morning of September 11, 2001, to call my mother, she told me, ‘I’m watching the news. Everyone is saying this is just like Pearl Harbor, but I feel it’s really our Hiroshima. Now we’re part of the suffering of the world.’ (read more)
As we all know, our national political response to 9/11 was to use it as an excuse to invade two countries and expend trillions of dollars and twenty years chasing phantom enemies in remote and impoverished lands in yet another futile proxy war of counterinsurgency. We disgraced our values with the cruelties of Guantanamo, Abu Graib, Extreme Rendition, enhanced interrogations, the excesses of Blackwater, hundreds of thousands killed, and millions of fleeing refugees.
“When will we ever learn?….when will we Ever Learn?”
So on this painful anniversary many will look for something honorable in our national values and intentions over the last twenty years. Tonight’s sad and futile feeling about all of that is best summed up in an ironic old Maine story that goes something like this:
A young man is driving his sporty car (spohty cah) too fast on a country road to avoid hitting a cow. Feeling sheepish, he walks back to look over the cow as the farmer (fahmah) walks up to assess the damage. “Well,” says the kid, hopefully, “looks like she’s all right!” To which the farmer spits on the ground and says, “Well, sonny, I’ll tell ya…if y’ think y’ done ‘er any good, I’ll be glad to pay y’ for it.”
This week’s $5 tasting:
Crios de Susana Balbo Torrontes ’19 Argentina $11
Highly perfumed aromas of lemon drop, grapefruit, white flowers, peppermint and white pepper. Supple, pliant and easygoing, with citrus, herbal and floral flavors joined by a hint of licorice.
Corvidae Lenore Syrah 2018 Washington $12
Displays rich notes of blueberry, boysenberry, red currant, and plum, mouthwatering acidity, balanced tannin structure and layers of bright bramble fruit, finishing with hints of chocolate and raspberry.
Greywacke Pinot Noir ’16 New Zealand $32
Delicious aromas of juicy blackberries, blueberries and strawberry jam, with suggestions of black olives, cedar and a hint of lavender. Finely structured palate shows red and black fruit with earthy, smoky nuances.
lummi island wine tasting sept 3-4 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
The highly contagious Covid Delta variant continues to infect thousands of Americans, including vaccinated people, who may have no symptoms and no awareness if they/we are carriers. This creates a quandary about how to manage our social interactions.
For our part, because we put high values on both safety and being with “our people,” we have come up with this risk-benefit compromise for wine tasting this weekend:
- 1. Wine tasting this weekend will be Friday and Saturday from 4-6pm, outside on the deck;
- 2. You must have completed a full Covid vaccination protocol to participate;
- 3. Please maintain appropriate social distancing from people outside your regular “neighborhood pod.”
Friday Bread
Each Friday Island Bakery delivers fresh bread ordered by customer email earlier in the week. Each Sunday offerings for the coming Friday are emailed to entire list. Orders must be returned by 5 pm on Tuesday for pickup at the wine shop the following Friday from 4-5:30.
Over the years the bakery has established a rotating list of several dozen breads and pastries from which are selected two different artisan breads and a pastry 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 pickup:
Sweet Corn & Dried Cranberry – Made with polenta and bread flour, then enriched with milk, butter and honey for a soft and tender crumb, then loaded up with dried cranberries. Has great corn flavor but is not a traditional quick cornbread. A delicious bread that makes great toast – $5/loaf
Barley, Whole Wheat, & Rye Levain – A levain bread where the sourdough culture is built over several days and allowed to ferment before the final dough is mixed. Made with bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat, barley and rye flours. A hearty whole grain bread that is a great all around bread – $5/loaf
Chocolate Muffins – Rich and delicious, everything you have always wanted in a chocolate muffin. Great chocolate flavor and an incredibly moist muffin. Chocolate muffins can often be dry, particularly the next day, these aren’t those muffins! Made with all the things that muffins good: flour, brown sugar, sour cream and eggs; with plenty of chocolate chips stirred in and sprinkled on top – 4/$5
Wine of the Week: Gamache Boulder Red ’17
In 1982 Roger and Bob Gamache brought a family farming heritage to Washington and planted the Gamache vineyard near the White Bluffs in Columbia Valley under the guidance of Washington wine pioneer Walter Clore. Twenty years later they began making wine under their own label. From their years as vintners they had established symbiotic working relationships with other top vintners in the area that gave them access to the highly sought-after fruit from the iconic Ciel du Cheval vineyard on Red Mountain and Champoux vineyard in Horse Heaven Hills.
All vineyards are not created equal, and great fruit is the necessary ingredient for great wine. Therefore it is not surprising that Gamache wines are highly regarded, including our “wine of the week” Boulder Red.
Sadly, Gamache brothers Bob and Roger sold their 180-acre Basin City vineyard to Sagemoor vineyards in 2016, and have just sold the winery as well, making this their close-out vintage. Read more
The Economics of the Heart: Democracy vs. Corporate Feudalism
The basic idea of medieval Feudalism begins with the concentration of wealth (the ownership of income-producing assets) into the hands of a small number of established families. In exchange for a loyalty oath, the owner-lord grants his sub-lords ownership rights over specific fiefdoms and their inhabitants, with the implicit understanding that they will do whatever is necessary to generate the ongoing income stream necessary to maintain the lord’s standing army. This interdependent relationship between lord and vassal lies at the heart of feudalism. The lord has all the power, and the vassals live at the mercy, whim, and pleasure of the lord. Like overseers in the Confederate feudalism of the Old South, they have their own lines to toe.
Feudalism runs on a hierarchy of power, with the most valuable lands and positions given to the most valued vassals, who have their own sub-vassals, and so on. Each fiefdom depends on system of mutual benefit and obligation among the powerful, living in relative privilege over a larger underclass of subsistence workers.
The feudal model has many parallels to today’s rapidly emerging global economic system, which we could aptly name Corporate Feudalism. A handful of individual billionaires and global corporation CEO’s sit at the heads of global financial empires. Their personal and corporate wealth continues to grow exponentially even as vast areas of the planet become increasingly uninhabitable. Consumption of their products is burying our Planet in single use plastic bottles and toxic chemicals. Authoritarian politicians across the globe (including nearly all of the American Republican Party), like the feudal lords they imagine themselves to be, vie to exploit their lands and their people for a piece of the action.
This dystopian vision was captured powerfully in the classic 1975 film Rollerball, set in a world where sovereign nations had become secondary to a handful of Global Corporations. Jonathan is the star athlete who has grown too powerful and corporate bigwig Bartholomew wants him to retire. The most memorable scene has this dialogue, where Bartholomew is played by John Houseman with his precise and deliberate British accent.
Bartholomew : Jonathan, let’s think this through together. You know how the game serves us. It’s a definite social purpose. Nations are bankrupt. Gone. None of that tribal warfare anymore. Even the Corporate Wars are a thing of the past.
Jonathan E. : I know that, I just…
Bartholomew : Now, we have the Majors and their executives. Transport. Food. Communication. Housing. Luxury. Energy. A few of us making decisions on a global basis for a common good.
Jonathan E. : The (Rollerball) team is a unit that plays with certain rhythms…
Bartholomew : So does an executive team, Jonathan. Now, everyone has all the comforts. You know that. No poverty. No sickness. No needs and many luxuries – which you enjoy – just as if you were in the Executive Class. Corporate society takes care of Everything. And all it asks of anyone…all it’s Ever asked of anyone… is NOT TO INTERFERE with management decisions. (!)
Since the 2021 election we have watched the constantly deteriorating rationality in both the leadership and the followers of the Republican Party. They have become obsessed with their sense of Entitlement to Power, and have drunk Way too much of their own Victimhood Kool-aid over the last six months.
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!
Montinore Borealis White Oregon $15
Aromas of orange blossom, honeydew, guava and kiwi; sumptuous flavors of stone fruit, Meyer lemon and juicy pear drizzled with caramel.
Gamache Boulder Red ’17 Washington $16
Malbec 42%, Syrah 23%, Merlot 23%, Cabernet Franc 8%, Cabernet Sauvignon 4%. “Smooth and luscious with heady aromas of dark fruit, loamy earth, vanilla and cedar, and compelling flavors of black cherry, plum and dark berries mingled with graham, vanilla and spice. Refined tannins add depth to the full-bodied finish.”
lummi island wine tasting aug 27-28 ’21
Current Covid Protocols
The highly contagious Covid Delta variant continues to infect thousands of Americans, including vaccinated people, who may have no symptoms and no awareness if they/we are carriers. This creates a quandary about how to manage our social interactions.
For our part, because we put high values on both safety and being with “our people,” we have come up with this compromise for wine tasting this weekend.
- Wine tasting this weekend will be Friday only from 4-6pm, and it will be outside on the deck, next to the bread pickup table.
- You must have completed a full Covid vaccination protocol.
- You must maintain appropriate social distancing from people outside your regular “neighborhood pod.”
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.
Wine of the Week: Zenato ‘Alanera’ Rosso Veronese ’18
Italy makes a very desirable and expensive wine called amarone. It is made from a blend of Corvina, Rondinella, and Corvinone in the wine region of Valpolicella. It is made from selected grapes that are dried for up to four months into juicy raisins before pressing, resulting in a concentrated, sumptuous, and delicious wine with very low yield.
After the amarone is drawn, the remaining must is used many more times with juice from valpolicella grapes to make ripasso. Each time fresh juice is ‘passed over’ the must, it gains body, flavor, and character. Ripasso is sometimes called “the poor man’s Amarone.”
The Zenato Alanera is another relative of amarone. It is essentially a ripasso with small amounts of cabernet sauvignon and merlot to add tannic structure, though the grapes were dried less than two months before extraction from the skins instead of four. The result is a modestly priced wine with compelling complexity, texture, and flavor, great with a hearty dinner, a good book, or even a few puffs on a really good cigar in a comfy chair by the fireplace.
tasting notes:
Dark, inky color; rich and focused nose, with ripe berries, dusty oak and a precise note of waxy vanilla bean. On the palate delivers extracted flavors of cherries, strawberry, clay and even a hint of crushed mint. Soft tannins, rounded finish.
Economics of the Heart: Property Rights and Economic Efficiency
A large part of the philosophical divide between the American Left and the American Right is a result of the ambiguity of property rights across a wide range of human interactions. The most divisive cases arise when the activities of one party impose costs or injuries on another party, and the law has not specified whether people have the right to injure without consequence or the right to be free from injury without compensation.
A considerable amount of economic theory has wrestled with these issues for a very long time. Should smokers pay for the right to smoke, or should non-smokers pay them to stop? Should polluters repair their environmental damages, or should communities pay polluters to stop?
We have witnessed the decades of Big Tobacco’s resistance even to acknowledge the lethality of long-term use of their products; the Auto Industry’s resistance to safety regulations; the Energy Industry’s denial of the reality of Global Warming; paint manufacturers’ denials that lead additives cause severe mental and physical damage…the list goes on and on and on.
In the fifty years since Earth Day, there has been a growing body of evidence and specific legal determinations that one party may not take actions that measurably damage another party without compensation. Sadly, there has been no general finding in law or even philosophy that lays out broadly applicable criteria defining when one person’s right to violate another person’s environmental quality hits the barrier of that other person’s right not to be violated. The current political game is that every single claim of harm will demand years of costly legal battles.
The global Covid pandemic has now brought us to perhaps our most head-scratching, “wtf”-ing, and “are you Serious”-ing responses to date. That is, millions of Americans are claiming a sovereign right NOT to get a vaccine that will not only protect them from a highly contagious and potentially fatal disease, but perhaps MORE IMPORTANTLY, will protect everyone around them as well.
As social animals, we all operate on two channels at the same time. The “Me” channel is concerned only with my name, independence, values, whims, needs, desires, and willfulness, while the “Unity” channel is concerned with the bigger picture of our names, interdependencies, survival, values, rules, and responsibilities.
While there are many people with variously compromised systems that should not get the vaccine, for everyone else, because our personal decisions have community.. and even Global…consequences, it is our collective and individual duty and social responsibility to suit up and play team ball…Please!
This week’s $5 tasting:
Casal Garcia Vinho Verde Rosé Portugal $10
Fruity notes of raspberries and strawberries on the well balanced acidity and the youthful, nouveau-beaujolais-like freshness which makes white vinho verde a perfect match for warm afternoons and fresh summer fare.
Pascual Toso Chardonnay ’17 Argentina $14
Aromas of ripe green apple, pineapple and mango. The palate is fresh, with great acidity, ending with a slight toasty hint on a lingering finish.
Zenato ‘Alanera’ Rosso Veronese ’18 Italy $17
Dark, inky color; rich and focused nose, with ripe berries, dusty oak and a precise note of waxy vanilla bean. On the palate delivers extracted flavors of cherries, strawberry, clay and even a hint of crushed mint. Soft tannins, rounded finish.
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.
2072 Granger Way