lummi island wine tasting spring equinox ’21
(Some photos will enlarge when clicked)
Bread This Week
Kamut Levain – Kamut, aka khorasan wheat, is an ancient, protein-rich grain discovered in a cave in Iran in the 70’s that many people who can’t tolerate wheat find more digestible. This bread is made with a levain that is fermented overnight before being mixed with with bread flour and fresh milled whole kamut flour. It has a nutty, rich flavor and makes a golden color loaf. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
Barley & Rye w/ Pumpkin Seeds – Also made with a levain that is fermented overnight before adding fresh milled rye, barley and whole wheat flours. Some buttermilk makes for a tender crumb, honey for sweetness and toasted pumpkin seeds for flavor and texture. – $5/loaf
Traditional Croissants – Made from two preferments by adding more flour, butter, milk and sugar and laminating with more butter before being cut and shaped into traditional French croissants. 2/$5
Wine of the Week: La Vielle Ferme Rosé ’19
Well, here we are only a few days away from Spring Equinox ’21, and so far March has been true to reputation, a tangle of winter-winter-spring-winter-spring-spring. We are just now transitioning from being stuck in the “lows in the high thirties, highs in the low forties” toward the more soothing “highs in low fifties” forecasts. Yep, this is the time of year our wine palates start thinking, hmmm, almost time for rosé…!
La Vielle Ferme (“the Old Farm”) is a typical Provençal Rosé blend of Cinsault, Grenache, and Syrah. It is one of few still produced using the Saignée (“bleeding”) method where the first juice is bled off to become rosé while the remainder stays on the skins through fermentation and becomes red wine. Since 1967 La Vieille Ferme has been acknowledged as one of the best value wines in the world. The grapes are from high slopes, and provide a pleasing freshness and elegance. Fresh and aromatic nose with good balance between sweetness and acidity.
La Vielle Ferme Rosé ’19 France $10
Classic and tasty blend of grenache, syrah, and cinsault from northern Provence; fruity, dry, crisp, delicious, and smooth, at a bargain price!
Modest Reopening Coming Soon!!
Last week the CDC announced that people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 may safely gather with small groups from other households without wearing masks or physically distancing, even if some of those people have not yet had their shots! To which we can only say “Wow!” and “Really?”
Last week also coincided with the two-week anniversary of our having gotten the second Covid shot along lots of other Islanders. But before we can get too giddy about it we are surprised to encounter a part of ourselves that finds the whole concept of “social normalcy” puzzling, too vaguely remembered and abstract even to imagine. We tested it out last night at Mike and Diane’s, together with Anne and Jerry, (making average age in the group somewhere around 80!) for a great St. Patrick’s Day dinner, with great food and wine, and even hugs all around with a giddy sense of getting away with something naughty.
Things are changing fast and at the moment we are looking at limited reopening in April, indoors for those who have completed a Covid vaccine sequence, and (for starters, anyway) outdoors for those who have not. Looking forward to seeing you all again!
Economics Basics
However you look at it, social science in general and economics in particular are almost entirely constructed of metaphors. Last week we introduced a metaphor of the economy as a game in which players sitting at a table are all given an equal stake, and when the game begins they take in money from their right and pass it to the person on their left. At this first level we are interested in the motivations of the players, whose only decisions at this early stage as they take money coming from the right are to decide how much to keep, how much to pass on to the left, and how long to take about deciding.
Each player would try to maintain a balance based on perceived risk. What if the people upstream suddenly decide to stop passing money just after you, feeling light-hearted and generous, have just given everything away? The game could lock up at any time, so it is logical to want to maintain a little nest egg for insurance. Down the road, if enough players felt this way, it could create demand for someone to organize resources and know-how to make that happen. And you would think that would divert some of the finite flow of money passing from left to right, and the total flow rate would decrease, making everyone worse off.
Curiously, however, it is more as if the energy in the system is increased and the entire flow moves faster from hand to hand around the circle. Well-being is not measured by the quantity of stuff in the system but by the rate of flow in the system. This is the whole point of a Keynesian stimulus. By putting more money in everyone’s hands, the rate at which money goes from hand to hand, from buyer to seller, from seller to supplier, from supplier to manufacturer, from manufacturer to worker increases and multiplies in effect each time it changes hands.
It is therefore our Duty to spend any stimulus money that comes our way. Its social benefit is to increase demand for services and stuff, which then trickles UP to demand for all the labor and resources necessary to make that stuff happen. Clearly the patriotic thing to do if and when you get a stimulus payment is to create demand by spending it!
lummi island wine tasting march 12 ’21
(Some photos will enlarge when clicked)
Bread This Week
Breton – Incorporates the flavors of the French Brittany region. Bread flour, fresh milled buckwheat groats. and rye berries make for interesting flavor and the salt is sel gris – the grey salt from the region that brings more mineral flavors to this bread. Goes great with meats and cheeses – $5/loaf
Whole Wheat Levain – Made with a sourdough starter that is built up over several days and fermented overnight in the refrigerator. The bread is made with the levain, bread flour, and about 25% fresh milled whole wheat. It has a ‘toothy’ crumb, great texture and flavor and a nice crisp crust.– $5/loaf
Brioche au Chocolate – A rich brioche dough made with plenty of butter, eggs and sugar, rolled out with pastry cream before sprinkling with dark chocolate. -2/$
Wine of the Week: UDACA Eloquente Dão Tinto ’18
In the 1940’s Portugal’s Prime Minister Salazar established rules that required wine production to be done only by regional cooperatives which would sell the wines to private merchants for distribution. Since 1966, UDACA has been a Portuguese wine cooperative in the Dão region of Portugal, located far enough inland in the northwest corner of the country to get some shelter from cold and rainy North Atlantic winters, while also getting hot, dry summer sun exposure for full vineyard ripening.
The coop has successfully centralized the production of Dão wines from nearly 60% of the region’s vineyards, located primarily in sandy, well-drained soils on a granite plateau 500-1500 ft. above sea level. and sheltered on three sides by granite mountain ranges. Unfortunately one downside of the coop organization was the lack of a competitive incentive to improve their wines until Portugal joined EU in 1979. read more
UDACA Eloquente Dao Tinto ’18 Portugal $9
Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Jaen, and Alfrocheiro Pret; rich and intense; a popular wine from the Dao region,
with clear ruby color, clean aromas of red and ripe fruits; soft, balanced flavor, and a lingering finish.
Normalcy on the Horizon…?
It is no secret that we and a large proportion of our “regulars” at the wine shop are retired. A big perk that comes with that much, um, experience is that many of us have already received our Covid vaccinations or soon will. And of course we have all been wondering, “When can we return to normal interaction with others who have had their shots?”
As if in response to millions of senior citizens rubbing magic lamps asking this same question, just in the last few days CDC announced that: People who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 may safely gather with small groups from other households without wearing masks or physically distancing, even if those people have not yet had their shots.
To which we can only say “Wow!” and “Really?” But then, before we can get giddy about it we are surprised to encounter a part of ourselves that finds the whole concept of “social normalcy” too abstract even to imagine.
Nevertheless at the moment we are looking at limited reopening in April for those who have completed one of the Covid vaccine sequences. Stay tuned!
The NEW New Deal
The first 30 years of the 20th century were the decades of the Robber Barons (and the Spanish flu!), which led to the Great Depression beginning in 1929. There were no safety nets. Banks had no reserves, and many went out of business within days, taking ordinary people’s savings with them. Companies went out of business overnight. People lost their jobs, lost their savings, lost their homes. It was a terrible time. Most of us who are now old have stories from our parents, who were young adults then, of how people pulled together, and those who could gave meals at the back door to those less fortunate, and those who couldn’t stood in soup lines if they could find one.
In 1932, at the worst of it, FDR was elected President, launching a new era in American history, government, and economy. The New Deal addressed poverty with public employment programs like the CCC, and with the Social Security backstop for those who could not work even if there were jobs. It regulated the banking system and reorganized the Federal Reserve System to make it more responsible and resilient to financial perturbations.
The New Deal was based on the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes, which can be metaphorically described with a little parlor game in which a number of people sit around a table with equal piles of money. When the game begins, everyone takes some money out of their stack and passes it to the person on the left. They can pass as much or as little as they choose.
That process continues until the game is ended without warning by a referee. At that point everyone gets to keep whatever money is left in front of them. The actual game is a psychology experiment which teaches the players something about their altruist-miser spectrum.
But Keynes was focused on how important it was for all the money to stay in circulation. In the first few pages of any economics text, there is some kind of chart of Circular Flows. Individuals work for themselves or for others in exchange for wages, which they spend to buy goods and services from other individuals and businesses. Businesses pay people to work for them to produce goods and services that other people buy. The game keeps going as long as everyone keeps taking in and passing out money. When anyone starts hoarding the stream slows down, and everyone but the hoarders has less, resulting in a slowing of the whole stream of exchange. Eveyone benefits when the game continues, and everyone loses when it slows down.
The basic difference between Republicans and Democrats is that Republicans have convinced themselves that there is a way they can siphon money out of the system in such a way that the overall throughput will continue to increase. But in the forty years since Reaganism killed the New Deal once and for all, wealth has become densely concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of hoarding players. Worker incomes in real dollars have fallen continually. Spending cuts have gutted the public infrastructure which is necessary to keep the game going, and Republicans consider that a political victory.
We will continue this next week. The important takeaway for today is that the passage of the Covid Relief Bill is a major paradigm shift in US economic policy. After forty years of Reaganomics has gutted public infrastructure, thrown the poorest and most needy out of the lifeboat and under the bus, concentrated wealth in fewer and fewer hands, destroyed the environment, privatized more and more of the public sector (like prisons and military support facilities) into far more expensive and less effective operations, etc., etc., etc.
Whatever you want to call it, today marks the beginning of the New New Deal, the best thing that has happened in this country for a long, long time. It is something to be served with a bit of reverence and mindfully savored. MMMmmmmm!
lummi island wine tasting march 5 ’21
NOTE: We have been closed for wine tastings since March 2020. We currently anticipate opening for restricted tastings this Spring for those have completed an approved Covid vaccination sequence. Stay tuned!
(Some photos will enlarge when clicked)
Sorry, No Bread This Week! 😥
Expect next week’s menu email sometime this weekend. In the meantime, enjoy one of the loaves you have in your freezer!
Wine of the Week: Flying Trout Grenache Washington $17
The wine is named for and by Ashley Trout, its youthful and daring first winemaker. It is made from 100% Columbia Valley Grenache. She opened the winery began in the mid-2000’s, when she was spending February until May making wine in Mendoza, Argentina and the rest of the year in Walla Walla.
In 2010 she merged her winery with Tero Estates in Oregon, which built new facilities in Walla Walla. In 2016 Ms Trout moved on to other pursuits, and her brand stayed with Tero. Having recently lost its winemaker, it is in a two year process of closing down, and has bottled and is closing out its remaining barrels of FT Grenache.
We just brought in one case to try it out, and are trying hard to order a bunch more (stay tuned!) We admit a soft spot for grenache in general, and this is a pretty good one. For the unfamiliar, think of grenache as the feminine side of syrah; a little less forward, a little softer, a little more graceful, a little more enchanting.
Wine Emergencies…Who Ya Gonna Call?
While Covid continues to limit our movements and associations, we will continue to help you keep your wine shelves topped up. We know how it is…one minute your wine shelves are reassuringly stocked, and the very next day you reach for something and OMD, where did it all go?? It happens to all of us during these undifferentiated days and weeks of semi-quarantine.
But fear not, mis amigos! When a wine emergency strikes YOUR wine pantry, just click on the Order Wine link in the header above to browse our list of currently available wines with tasting notes and prices. When you have made your selections you can phone us with your order or email us using the Contact Us link above. We will confirm your order and make arrangements for pickup/delivery at your convenience. EZ-PZ!
ALSO, we are in the process of restocking some favorites and adding some new wines to our list, including several new Portuguese wines. Hope to get the list updated soon!
Solid Foundations
We have had new Leadership in our country for a modest six weeks, and already everything feels very different. And in a Deeply Relieving way.
Metaphorically it’s like when the interrogators finally stop firing the retina-burning light into your eyes screaming “VERE VER YOU ON ZE NIGHT OF..?”). Or when the water-boarders finally take the hose and washcloth off your face; or when the Dentist finally stops drilling and starts filling. We can all feel it…a deeply healing (but not yet trusted) sense of Quiet and Relief after five Very Long years of This.
These are good things, welcome things. But we have grown skeptical and wary of optimism. It is one thing to have intellectual disagreements with our neighbors over values and ideology. It is quite another to be forced to take up arms to defend ourselves against fellow countrymen who no longer believe in our founding principles. The fundamental glue that holds any country together is a mutual will among its citizens to support a common set of values and rules. Right now in our country millions of people are now expressing a strong preference for racial, economic, and social autocracy over plural democracy. This is the essence of Trumpism, and the longer it endures, the more divided we will become.
We are on the verge of a new Civil War in our country. Every day it becomes clear that the Republican Party has become the New American Fascist Party, committed to White Domination over people of color and their white egalitarian sympathizers, and an increasing concentration of wealth into the hands of hateful and paranoid billionaires. Almost without exception, Republican Senators and Representatives are now touting Trumpism over the old Republicanism. Already the majority of Congressional Republicans have closed ranks around the idea that the only way to save the country is by not increasing the minimum wage, not providing extended relief packages for Covid-unemployed, not combating climate change, and not negotiating with Democrats on anything of substance.
So things are kinda quiet right now, but conditions remain rife for more violence.
lummi island wine tasting feb 26 ’21
click on photos for larger images
Bread This Week
Le Pave d’autrefois – which translates roughly as old paving stones. This is a ciabatta like bread with a lot of hydration so is simply divided into approximate squares – hence the paving stones name. Made with a mix of bread flour as well as fresh milled whole wheat, rye and buckwheat flours for a lot of hearty whole grain goodness. A great artisan bread -$5/loaf
Black Pepper Walnut- made with bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and rye. A fair amount of black pepper and toasted walnuts give this bread great flavor with just a bit of peppery bite to it. Would go well with all sorts of meats and cheese – $5/loaf
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 soaked in sugar syrup. Rolled up and sliced before baking. – 2/$5
Wines of the Week: Six Wines from Portugal
One of our members has long been lobbying for us to carry more Portuguese wines. Over the last month or two we have tasted and brought in a half dozen very tasty red wines that provide a delicious introduction to a wine tradition that dates back to Roman times. As a group despite modernization of viniculture and enology, these wines still represent faithfully the traditional characteristics of their subregions, in this case the cooler, Atlantic influenced Douro and Dao regions, and the drier and hotter Alentejo region bordering Spain.
Vila Nova Douro Red ’18 Portugal $12
Touriga Nacional, Tempranillo, Touriga Franca; dark ruby color with jammy notes of ripe blueberry and blackberry with crisp accents and a seamless, well-balanced finish with silky tannins.
Quinta Do Vallado Douro Red ’14 Portugal $16
Blend of Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional,Tinta Roriz, Sousão; Lovely, floral black cherry and blackcurrant fruit; supple yet structured with notes of epper, meat and a lovely herbal twist.
Vicente Faria Gloria Douro Reserva ’16 Portugal $16
40% Tinta Roriz, 30% Touriga Nacional & 30% Touriga Franca; Juicy and delicious blend with aromas of fleshy black plum and blackberries; aged in oak barrels, full-bodied and smooth.
Quinto do Vallado 10 yr Tawny Port Portugal $29
Rich, fresh, and velvety aromas of dry fruits, praline, and orange confit with a note of tobacco on the very persistent and complex finish.
Eloquente Dao Tinto ’18 Portugal $9
Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Jaen, and Alfrocheiro Pret; rich and intense, a popular wine from the Dao region with clear ruby color, and clean aroma of red and ripe fruits; soft, balanced flavor with a long finish.
Carmim Reguengos Alentejo Tinto ’18 Portugal $9
Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional, Tinta Roriz, Sousão; Fresh, supple, and structured, with lovely black cherry and blackcurrant fruit with notes of pepper, meat, and a lovely herbal twist.
Wine Emergencies…Who Ya Gonna Call?
While Covid continues to limit our movements and associations, we will continue to help you keep your wine shelves topped up. We know how it is…one minute your wine shelves are reassuringly stocked, and the very next day you reach for something and OMD, where did it all go?? It happens to all of us during these undifferentiated days and weeks of semi-quarantine.
But fear not, mis amigos! When a wine emergency strikes YOUR wine pantry, just click on the Order Wine link in the header above to browse our list of currently available wines with tasting notes and prices. When you have made your selections you can phone us with your order or email us using the Contact Us link above. We will confirm your order and make arrangements for pickup/delivery at your convenience. EZ-PZ!
ALSO, we are in the process of restocking some favorites and adding some new wines to our list, including several new Portuguese wines. Hope to get the list updated soon!
Making Elections Fair Again
We read an interesting article this morning discussing several reforms that could protect our elections from the power of extremist politics and candidates. The past four years in general and the past three months in particular have shown stunningly the relative ease with which our institutions can be undermined by Authoritarian cabals.
In view of the increasing political appeal of to the now-dominant Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, the article makes a persuasive case for the need to reform: 1) the Presidential nomination process; 2) the Party Primary process; 3) Replacing legislative gerrymandering with balanced redistricting, and 4) Campaign finance reform.
Reforming the Nominating Process Toward Moderate Candidates
Several decades ago the standard nominating arena was the Party Convention, in which the week-long process of horse-trading generally led to balanced compromises; the more radical a candidate, the less likely to survive the winnowing. Over recent decades the process has shifted more toward primaries, which favor more polarizing candidates who make it to office on small pluralities, not majorities. Ranked-choice voting would bring more of the old convention format leveling by including each voter’s first and second choices when picking the overall winner, making the election behave more like the compromises of the old Convention Method.
Reforming Primaries
In many states, candidates who lose in primaries cannot then run as independents in the same election. Allowing such candidates to run under third-party flags would be another balancing force for competition in the primary process along with ranked-choice voting.
Reform Gerrymandering
In recent decades, State House gerrymandering decisions have succeeded in allowing the party in legislative control in a state to design Congressional districts that effectively maintain their party’s legislative control of a disproportionate share of Congressional seats in the state by manipulating the number of constituents a seat represents in each district.
Reforming Campaign Finance Rules
In general, recent legal decisions on campaign financing lean toward more political narrowing of viewpoints compared to public financing. On the one hand, small donors are more politically motivated than large donors. Various formulas for providing additional public funding proportional to cash raised by small donations raise questions about whether this would increase or decrease polarization.
These ideas are a lot to think about. In addition to all of that, at some point we have to ask the question, “Why are these reforms even necessary? And when we explore that question, we see that there is an implicit assumption that politicians will tell the truth about their positions on issues and voters will vote for the candidate who best represents their values. But since “free speech” in media has come to mean “lying with impunity,” facts themselves have ceased to have common acceptance across political divides.
In the ideal world politicians would adjust their platforms to appeal to enough of their target constituencies to gain a majority of voters. But that’s not what Republicans do. They don’t compete for votes with appeals to logic. They compete for votes by making it harder for their likely opponents to register to vote, to cast ballots, and to have their votes counted. So while we believe the above rules are good ideas, we are left with the Quandary of our Moment in Time: how to tell Truth from Lies.
2072 Granger Way