lummi island wine tasting sept 13 ’19
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Friday Breads
Note: This week will be the last Bread Friday until (gulp!) October 11th! Our baker will be away in the northern Baltics exploring bakeries and farms in search of new breads and pastries.
This week’s breads:
Flax seed currant Ciabatta – Made with a poolish that ferments some of the flour and water overnight before being mixed with the final ingredients which includes a nice mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat and rye flours. Loaded up with flax seeds and dried currants for a delicious bread. This bread is mixed with a lot of water that makes for a very slack dough so it can’t be weighed out and shaped like other bread, it is just cut into pieces. A really flavorful artisan loaf – $5/piece
Black Pepper Walnut- made with a nice mix of 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
Kouign Aman- 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 and baked in cupcake tins where all that sugar and butter caramelizes and makes for delicious, crunchy, delightful pastry. 2/$5
( Breads must be pre-ordered by Wednesday for pickup here at the wine shop at our Friday wine tasting, 4-6pm. Planning a visit to the Island? Email us to get on the mailing list!)
Château de Caraguilhes
Château de Caraguilhes is an organic winery in the Corbières wine region, where winemaking dates back some 2000 years when Greek traders introduced wine grapes to the region. The tradition continued for centuries in the Middle Ages under the stewardship of Cistercian monks at several abbeys in the region, including Abbaye de Fontfroide a few miles to the east. Caraguiles was one of their original estates.
In 1958, Algerian vintner and organic pioneer Lionel Faivre took over the vineyards. Over the next twenty years he became the first owner in the region to farm fully organically. In 2005, Pierre Gabison acquired the estate and continued to make the effort to produce uncompromising organic wines. The vineyard is plowed eight times annually, with manual weeding between vines. Located in the dry scrubland of northern Corbieres (reminiscent of eastern Washington), the vines are part of an arid ecosystem of grapevines where winds are a constant some 300 days a year.
Soil is largely of clay-limestone on rocky hillsides. Grape varietals include grenache, syrah, and carignan. Carignan from this region tends to be from old vines that bring deep color and aromas and flavors of garrigue with its beguiling notes of the sage, thyme, and oregano that grow amid the vines. This wine makes a great pairing with roast pork with prunes, grilled Toulouse sausage, cold meats, roast beef, grilled lamb… or maybe even just on its own!
We’re All Dinosaurs Now
We watched a NOVA piece the other night ( Day the Dinosaurs Died) about the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and 70% of species in existence in one spectacular event some 66 million years ago. If the event had not happened, WE would probably not have happened. The episode is called Day the Dinosaurs Died, and it chronicles a recent study based on core samples from the point in Yucatan where the asteroid crashed into the Earth.
The first thing you need to imagine is this asteroid not as a little chunk of rock, but as a Mountain-sized chunk some eight miles in diameter. The size of, say, Mt. Rainier. And imagine it striking the Yucatan coast at about a 30-degree angle at a speed of about 40,000 miles an hour. Calculations suggest it would have struck with the intensity of 100 million nuclear warheads.
The second thing is to take a moment to think about the Unlikeliness (we hope) of such an event. The same asteroid could have struck only a few places on Earth with such catastrophic results. Yes, it would have been Bad, Very Bad anyplace, but Life could have continued for many species that did not make it.
The third thing to ponder is what one movie some years ago called the Unbearable Lightness of Being: the remarkable fact that without this One Unlikely Event many species including us would never have existed. Not you, not me, none of it.
Now of course the World faces an equally Terrifying Crisis with the Climate Disruption We ourselves have set into motion. There is Much to Ponder…and much to be done.
Mar a Lago Update: Down to Business
Sometime in the 80’s I wrote a letter to the local newspaper editor about the Danger of Business Schools. As I recall, I observed that there was a new type of “school” that was becoming very popular. All the young people wanted to go to one. It was a place where uniforms were Required: a coat and tie. The tie in particular was Very Important.
First, it put a Noose around your neck to remind you Never to tell the Truth. Second, it covered your Heart, so you were free to ignore your True Feelings. And Third, it covered your Belly Button, so you could completely forget that you are an actual Human Being. The letter did get published, and I did get a little Flak for it. But these days I believe it more than ever. Over the past fifty years Business Schools have Preached the Mantra of Appropriation, i.e., the Profit in appropriating things that had always been free and making them Proprietary.
For example, twenty years ago or so, you could turn on your TV and pick up signals (I am not making this up!) for Free. You could watch News, Sports, any network programming at all just by turning on your TV and dialing the channel. That all changed when TV went digital in the aughts, and the big media companies appropriated what had previously been your right to the Free Broadcast of publicly licensed television; now they own that right and we have to pay them for it. WTF?
Our household does pay for internet cable but not TV. Because of that, until tonight we have never been able to watch any of the Presidential Candidates’ Debates in the last few election cycles. Think about that: a “public debate” that excludes everyone who hasn’t paid a commercial enterprise for the privilege. In today’s world the Providers separate TV cable from Internet cable; the Cable Providers have appropriated your right to watch TV on public airways, and the Internet Providers have appropriated the right to go online at all. On the plus side, we did find a way to stream tonight’s Debate online, which only seems, you know, Appropriate for Public Business.
Similarly, here it is Football Season again, and we find ourselves searching for ways to stream the Seahawks online without a Cable Subscription. Talk about knocking your head against a Corporate Wall! While there are various services available, they all have loopholes. You can pay the NFL $100 to be allowed to watch games but only after they are over; you can pay several other providers to be able to watch some of the games but not all; or you can pay the NFL the big bucks for Live streaming of all the games. Or, you know, when you are worn down, you can just give up and subscribe to the cable.
Yup, it all started with the Fookin Business Schools, ‘n’ it’s been goin’ Downhill ever since. Bloody Shame. Let’s go taste some wine!
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 12,000 as of 6/10/19
This weekend’s wine tasting
Henry Natter Sancerre ’17 France $28
Mineral, slightly acidic, aromas of pineapple, lime and eucalyptus, a perfect match for the oyster bar; great depth of fruit and plenty of classic flinty character
Bieler Rosé ’17 France $17
Grenache-Syrah blend; soft and bright, with plenty of red-berry and currant flavors. Its fruitiness and balanced acidity make for an immediately attractive, easy wine.
Chateau de Caraguilhes Corbieres Rouge ’15 France $14
45% Syrah, 30% Grenache, 25% Carignan;concentrated aromas of black fruits and tapenade, with undertones of mint and pepper; silky on the palate with notes of pepper, blackberry and black olive; fresh and zesty, a lively, elegant wine.
Anciano 5-Yr Tempranillo Riserva ’12 Spain $11
Aromas of damp earth, mocha, tobacco, and black cherry. On the palate it is sweetly fruited, easy-going, and nicely balanced leading to a seamless, fruity finish.
Seghesio Zinfandel Angela’s Garden ’17 California $19
Aromas of wild blueberry, briary raspberry patch and baking spice give way to a palate of juicy, ripe blackberry and black plum. Soft tannins, a rich mouthfeel and focused acidity lead to a long finish.
lummi island wine tasting sept 6 ’19
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Friday Breads
Note: There will be bread for the next 2 Fridays, the 6th and 13th, followed by a (gulp!) 3-week gap before bread Friday returns on October 11th! Our baker will be off to Finland & Latvia exploring bakeries and farms in search of new breads and pastries.
This week’s breads:
Pear Buckwheat – The preferment in this bread is a poolish, made with 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 int he countryside. – $5/loaf
Traditional Croissants – Made with two preferments, a levain as well as prefermented dough – which is also known as old dough where a portion of the flour, water, salt and yeast is fermented overnight. The final dough is then made with more flour, butter, milk and sugar, laminated with more butter before being cut and shaped into traditional french croissants. – 2/$5
( breads must be pre-ordered by Wednesday for pickup here at the wine shop at our Friday wine tasting, 4-6pm. Planning a visit to the Island? Email us to get on the mailing list!)
Wine and Stars at Elqui Valley, Chile
We have all heard of the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, one of the driest, cloudless, and least inhabited places on Earth. Because of these conditions, it is home to about (I am Not Making This Up!) 70% of the World’s celestial observation infrastucture. One of our wines this weekend comes from this extraordinary place. Read more
The wine in question is the Mayu Pedro Ximenez, a simple name that deserves a fair amount of unpacking.
First, you may recognize the name “Pedro Ximenez” from Spanish dessert wines. Sometimes just called PX, it is an intensely sweet, dark, dessert sherry made by drying PX grapes to raisins before pressing them into a thick, black liquid. Typically, PX has too low an acidity to make palatable still wine, but this is obviously not the case with today’s offering. Btw, we have never before seen PX offered as a still white, so this one is quite an adventure!
There is considerable lore as to the origins of this grape. It may have originated in either the Canary Islands or Madeira and found its way to Germany where eventually a Spanish soldier named Pedro Ximen or perhaps a Catholic Cardinal named Ximenès brought the grape to Spain. Other scientific research suggests it may have originated in Andalusia and is related to the Arabic table grape Gibi, and dates back to Moorish rule. In any case, the grape is very susceptible to botrytis, the “Noble Rot” responsible for France’s premier dessert wine, sauternes, which partially explains its success in making dessert wines from sherry.
However, some believe it is yet another grape called Pedro Gimenez, which originated in Argentina, while others think it originated in Portugal (it is reminiscent of vinho verde...) You can take your own pick of origin stories, since there seems to be no authoritative standard.
Annual Drydock
Well, she’s an Old Boat by any standard (60 years!), and needs lots of attention, so every September she goes to Seattle for Annual Maintenance. For most of the past 20 years that has meant leaving for Drydock on the Wednesday after Labor Day. And that meant a Disharmonic Convergence of ferry traffic among: a) people escaping the Island to avoid dealing with the Passenger Boat altogether; b) visitors leaving after a brief stay; c) islanders parking a car to the mainland for occasional trips to town, to mention a few.
And That Meant several intense days of long ferry lines to get off the island. Under this new schedule we have had several days to prepare. The Last Run of the car ferry from the Island departs at 9:20am on Saturday morning, 9/7; the First Run of the passenger ferry is scheduled for 4pm.
We had a call today from a group coming to the Island for the weekend and wondering whether reservations would be necessary for Friday night. As Our People know, there are no reservations necessary during our regular hours, we just Shoehorn ’em in as best we can. However, we did have a lengthy conversation about the Meaning of Drydock to Visitors. This included the shuttle bus schedule, the Impossibility of getting a car off the Island when the car ferry is not in service, and the possibility of driving all their gear to the Island on Friday and taking the car back to park on the mainland on Saturday.
We hope to have our cars placed, groceries bought, and supplies laid in before opening the shop on Friday!
Mar a Lago Update: Economic Uninhabitability
Over the past year our own Governor and recent Presidential candidate Jay Inslee played a significant role in raising national consciousness of the grave perils of Climate Change by making it the central theme of his brief candidacy. And while he was not able to get enough traction with the Public and within the Democratic Party to bring about a Candidates’ Debate solely on the subject of Climate Change, he was a main reason that yesterday CNN held a national Town Hall, giving the ten remaining candidates a half-hour each to address the subject in a live forum.
Unlike the highly formatted Official Debates which rarely provide time for thoughtful discussion of he issues, these interviews and Q & A with the audience gave us a much clearer impression of each candidate’s climate policy orientation. So we thank Governor Inslee and CNN for making it happen. The discussions occurred against the catastrophic damages just inflicted by Category 5 Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas. All in all the CNN event was a Good Thing, emphasizing the stark differences between Democratic and Republican positions on the issue, with all of the candidates fielding tough questions from voters, and generally agreeing that Climate Change poses an Urgent Existential Threat to human survival. In the forty years since my own involvement in climate impact analysis, this is the Biggest Breakthrough in public awareness we have seen…forty years too late, but a Milestone nevertheless!
To review, the main effect of increasing concentrations of “Greenhouse Gases” in the atmosphere (CO2, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, chloroflourocarbons, and water vapor) is to trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. A hotter atmosphere causes higher temperatures, more evaporation, more rainfall, more runoff, and more flooding than historic norms. It also means that the atmosphere has more kinetic energy, leading to more powerful storms with higher winds. Diverse ecosystems everywhere are increasingly stressed as the changing hydrological cycle makes established habitats less viable for many species.
In addition, since groundwater supplies on shorelines and islands to various degrees “float” like lenses on top of denser saltwater boundaries at shorelines, many wells near shores (as in the Bahamas) are already irreversibly saline. The list of impacts goes on and on; the point of this little discussion is that the Costs of Climate Change are not something that will happen sometime in the Future; they are Here Now. In the last dozen Years of Measurable Global Warming we have witnessed increasingly powerful wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and tornados directly caused by climate change destroy entire crops, forests, and communities. Certain regions will become Economically Uninhabitable long before they are Physically Uninhabitable.
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 12,000 as of 6/10/19
This weekend’s wine tasting
Mayu Pedro Ximenez ’18 Chile $10
In the mouth, this dry Pedro Ximénez from Elqui on the edge of the Atacama desert feels plump and medium in intensity, with notes of kiwi and flowering herb lead to a crisp dry palate with a mouthwatering finish.
La Croix Belle Caringole Rosé ’17 France $12
Syrah-Grenache blend; intense nose of rose petals and garrigue; palate of cherries and raspberries with notes of dried rosemary and thyme and a citrus accent on the crisp finish.
Fenocchio Langhe Nebbiolo ’17 Italy $21
10 days on the skins, 6 months in stainless steel, and 6 months in oak before bottling. Nose of black cherries, dark fruits and gentle dark florals. Palate of ripe black fruit; Attractive and plush, with silky mouthfeel and fine tannins.
Alain Jaume Clos Sixte Lirac ’15 France $25
Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre. Aromas of kirsch and wild blackberry; full on the palate, with notes of black currant and spice. Fleshy, elegant tannins with hints of licorice and vanilla on the finish.
Gutierrez-Colosia Sangre y Trabajadero Oloroso Spain $14
Nutty, rich aromas; light mahogany in color; almost sweet with creamy oak, roasted almonds, and spicy fruit liqueur notes; powerful, flavorful, and spirituous.
lummi island wine tasting aug 30 ’19 artists studio tour
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Friday Breads
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
Rye w/ Currants, Pumpkin Seeds & Cracked Coriander – Made with a levain that is made with rye instead of wheat flour, the final dough is about half bread flour and half freshly milled rye flour, some molasses for sweetness and pumpkin seeds, currants and cracked coriander seed make for an interesting flavor profile. Because of the high amount of rye this bread is generally a more compact loaf and is great with meats and cheese – $5/loaf
Rum Raisin Brioche: A delicious brioche dough full of eggs, butter and sugar. Filled with golden raisins and chunks of almond paste AND topped with a chocolate glaze before baking. Ooh la la! – 2/$5.
(note: breads must be pre-ordered by Wednesday for pickup here at the wine shop at our Friday wine tasting, 4-6pm. Planning a visit to the Island? Email us to get on the mailing list!)
Yummy Goodies!
Over the last few months we have been remiss in letting our stock of delicious artisan Chocolate dwindle and run out. So we have Good News: we have just brought in a new order of delicious Theo chocolate bars from their factory at the old Red Hook brewery on the shore of the ship canal in Fremont. They include dark chocolate peanut butter cups, two different milk chocolate bars, and four new dark chocolate bars.
In addition, of course, we hope to replenish our stock of the Deeply Delicious Dick Taylor chocolate very soon!
Since our recent trial run carrying Lummi Island Wild’s terrific sushi-grade albacore canned tuna was such a hit with so many of you, we have just brought in Two More Cases! If you have tasted it, you know it is Proof that all canned tuna is NOT created equal! And while the $7.50 price per can may seem high at first blush, it is truly Something Special!
Studio Tour Artist Kim Obbink
Returning this weekend as our Studio Tour artist is Kim Obbink, showing her latest series of finely detailed drawings and paintings of island botanical and marine life subjects. If you missed last year’s show, you owe it to yourself to swing by and spend some time with these newest paintings.
Her work uses mostly watercolor and colored pencils to capture not only the visual details of each subject but also to project its feeling and energy. And as she pointed out while hanging the show, like Audobon’s birds, their beauty is of their husks, the bodies they leave behind. Ah, we organic beings are so fleeting…!
Do not miss it!
Mar a Lago Update: Fools, Damn Fools, and Methane
Abe Lincoln famously observed: “You can fool All of the people Some of the time, and Some of the people All of the time, but you Can’t fool All of the people All of the time.” Well said, well said! These lines have always held for us a certain humorous and sensible wisdom. Until, that is, Fox News and the Religious Right banded together in the 80’s to mount a non-stop 24/7 attack on all forms of Critical Thinking, a campaign that has only grown more virulent and flagrant over time.
Right Wing Media embraced a number of despicable and Un-American tactics including libelous accusations and personal attacks against Liberal politicians and thinkers, turning what had been the News Media into an Orwellian world of Newspeak, constantly inciting anger and resentment among the Gullible. Each day for thirty-odd years the Fox news cycle has set a theme which left-leaning comedians like Jon Stewart and Stephan Colbert would often satire by showing host after host using exactly the same phrase on all news shows through the entire broadcast day: the Pharoahs of Phake News.
In Orwell’s words, the language of Newspeak would over time “make all other modes of thought Impossible…” with the ultimate goal that “eventually Oldspeak would be forgotten and Heretical Thought would be Literally Unthinkable.” In other words, All of the People could be Fooled All of the Time! For years now we have seen Newspeak dribble down the chin of Darth McConnell and the Empty Minions who stand with him in every Photo Op like a Silent Greek Chorus not granted the Gifts of Original Thought or Speech. It has now become Abundantly Clear that somewhere around 40% of Americans are Proud to stand among those who are Fooled All of the Time. It’s a little like an old Sci Fi theme where the main character realizes at the end that Everyone but him is now an Alien…gulp!!
The Tweetster, it turns out, is the Current Product of all of this. Like Dubya before him, he was Chosen because, one might say of him, “not enough water to Float a Boat,” i.e., not enough There There to present an obstacle to Corporate Goals. On the other hand, his latest attempts to strike down EPA regulations on methane reduction have run into snags. The critical string of facts here is that: a) methane creates 80x more global warming per molecule than CO2: b) methane is largely a by-product of natural gas production; c) the Major Energy Companies are marketing natural gas as the “Clean Alternative” to oil and coal; d) the Majors Require that all leaks of methane be hunted down and eliminated; but e) smaller. regional oil and gas producers do not have the financials to clean up after themselves and want subsidies in the form of less regulation.
So curiously, in this case, long term environmental goals of the country and short term economic goals of the Majors are aligned, because natural gas is the logical transition fuel between the petroleum economy that is causing Global Warming and the renewable energy economy that we must develop as soon as possible. But at the same time, the smaller producers would prefer less regulation– i.e., they are not profitable enough to pay the environmental costs of their production and would prefer to pass those costs on to the public in the form of an increasingly uninhabitable planet.
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 12,000 as of 6/10/19
This weekend’s wine tasting
The first thing you should know is that longtime Friend of the Wine Shop, Importer and Distributor Tristan will be pouring selections from his portfolio on Saturday; see below. Below are our tasting wines for Friday. We will be open on Sunday this weekend from 1-5pm because of Studio Tour, and we shall see what we will be pouring then!
Domaine de l’Amauve La Daurèle, CdR Villages Séguret ’17 France $18
Grenache blanc, clairette, viognier, & ugni blanc; expressive nose of white fruits, mirabelle plum, and acacia honey; soft on the palate with lively citrus flavors…very Food Versatile!
Chat. Ste. Eulalie Rose ’18 France $ 13
A delightful dry rose with flavors of fresh raspberries, strawberries, and crisp redcurrant fruit with a hint of spice: an excellent match for grilled Mediterranean vegetables and lamb.
MAN Vintners Pinotage ’17 South Africa $11
Dark berries, plum and a smoke on the nose. Rustic yet silky and juicy, with wild cherry flavors, smooth tannins and well-controlled acidity. good intensity to the plum and mocha flavors.
Sant’ Antonio Monti Garbi Ripasso ’15 Italy $18
A gorgeous, expressive, tasty Valpolicella; floral notes give lift to the expressive, beautifully centered palate and a long, polished finish.
Shatter Grenache Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes ’17 France $19
From Old Vines in Roussillon’s black schist soil; nose of dark fruit with a hint of espresso; velvety texture with black currant, spice and cured meat flavors with a touch of coffee; firm structure, supple tannins, excellent acidity and overall balance.
Saturday wine tasting:
Jane Ventura Brut Rose Reserva 2016 - $11.89 Chateau de Caraguiles Corbierres Rose - $10.49 Domaine Frederick Sornin Beaujolais Blanc - $11.79 Castillo de Mendoza Vitaran Crianza- $9.79 Chateau Sicot Bordeaux Superieur - $10.49 Cervoles Garnatxa "Les Garrigues" - $13.99
lummi island wine tasting aug 23 ’19
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Friday Breads
Honey, Wheat, Lemon & Poppy seeds – Made with a poolish that ferments some of the flour, yeast and water, but none of the salt, overnight. This results in a very active pre-ferment which is mixed the next day with the final ingredients which includes a nice mix of bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. Some honey, poppy seeds and freshly grated lemon peel round out the flavors in this loaf. A great all around bread – $5/loaf.
Prairie Bread – Named for the ingredients that reflect all the goodness of the grains that grow on the prairie. Using regular bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat as well as oats, and cornmeal. And as if that wasn’t enough it is loaded up with poppy, flax, sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds with just a hint of brown sugar for a little sweetness. – $5/loaf
Bear Claws – Made with a danish pastry dough rich in cream, eggs, sugar and butter. The dough is rolled out and spread with a filing made 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. As always, quantities are limited, be sure to get your order in before you miss out– 2/$5
(note: breads must be pre-ordered by Wednesday for pickup here at the wine shop at our Friday wine tasting, 4-6pm. Planning a visit to the Island? Email us to get on the mailing list!)
Nit de les Garnatxas
In 2
012 we spent a week in the little Spanish town of Capçanes. It is located about two hours west of Barcelona and about an hour inland from Tarragona on the Mediterranean coast. It is also about 15 minutes south of the town of Falset, the gateway to the somewhat legendary Priorat wine region. The purpose of our visit was to attend the annual Priorat Wine Festival. Capçanes is actually located in the neighboring wine region of Montsant, which have their own gravitas.
A few weeks ago we poured you a wine called Mas Donis from Celler Capçanes, a regional wine cooperative located in Montsant. This week we are pouring another for you, a wine we are quite excited about because it evokes such pleasant memories of our time in Capçanes and the Priorat Wine Festival.
The wine festival opens on a Friday night each year with an event called, in the Catalan language, the Nit de les Garnatxes, (i.e., “Night of the Garnachas”) and it kicks off the the Festival in a Big Way. The event started at 11pm in the courtyard in front the winery, about a five minute walk from the house we were renting just up the hill. We had no idea what to expect, but were pleased it involved food like the thin slices of delicious Jamon that were being sliced in the courtyard along with lots of other savory goodies, which we enjoyed on our way to the winery entrance.
Inside the
winery was an even bigger crowd spilling across several large chambers lined with tables dispensing wine and more goodies– like the Chocolate Fountain under which, fondue-like, one could bathe pieces of fresh fruit and other goodies…yum, yum, yum! And (have patience, we ARE meandering toward a Point…). In the Main Hall, by day probably the haunt of barrel-hauling forklifts, was a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd ebbing and flowing around a number of wine-pouring stations. Each one offered its current garnatxa for our tasting pleasure. Hence…the Night of the Garnatxes! Who Knew?
But that wasn’t All, not by a long shot! Oh, no, at some point we found a narrow flight of stairs that went down a couple of flights to a second floor, and even a third floor, where the spaces were smaller, and where there was even more wine, food, live music, and art.
The Big Takeaway here is that this weekend we are pouring the most recent of one of the specially made wines for the Nit de les Garnatxes by the winery where we attended the event back in aught-Twelve. The grapes were grown in the famous licorella slate soil of the region, and are a good example of the mineral-rich character of the wines of the area.
Last Week of Constance’s Paintings Show
Reminder that Constance will be taking down her show this weekend. Lots of us know her as our longtime Yoga teacher. I first met her and husband Terry decades ago at Art Fairs when I was a potter and they were doing interesting traditional fabric dying techniques. This is a side of her most of us have not seen before, and we encourage you to visit!
Mar a Lago Update: Recurring Nightmare
It can’t be Pleasant being the Tweetster. He rarely looks or sounds Happy. And it must be a Strange Burden to be living your Dream of being Constantly in the Global Spotlight, but Never Feeling you get the Emotional Nourishment you somehow thought it would provide, kind of an Existential Hell. There is a name for this kind of Hell: “the Nourishment Barrier.”
Every child experiences moments of disappointment and disillusionment. The essence of these experiences is realizing, at some point early in our lives, something we Really want is not going to be there for us, and it is Painful and we cry. We struggle to make meaning of the event; and often blame ourselves for some unknown inadequacy: it is Our Fault because somehow we weren’t Good Enough. After enough of these experiences, the Child starts believing s/he will never get what s/he needs (safety, attention, affection, or approval), and in response the Child develops a Behavioral Strategy to minimize the pain of this belief.
In broad strokes we know the Tweetster’s childhood history, and we can see that he craves constant attention and approval. But here he is the most powerful and well-known human being on the Planet, yet cannot get enough Approval to feel Okay inside. Sure, that’s how politics works, but there is also a “Dumb Cycle” here, driven by an inability to take in approval and affection when offered because it would be even more painful to have it yanked away just as you were starting to enjoy it.
Tonight the wires are humming with commentary about what many are calling a major T-Meltdown over the past week, as indicated by increases in daily Tweets per minute, a growing inability to retreat from photo op press banter, and an increasingly incoherent message. Candidates and financial interests are starting to materialize who might oppose him within his own party, something unthinkable until a few days ago. He’s gotta be Feel’in’ da Heat, huh…?
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 12,000 as of 6/10/19
This week’s wine tasting
Quinta de Aveleda Vinho Verde ’17 Portugal $10
Loureiro, Trajadura and Alvarinho blend; apples, lemons and a touch of ripe pear fill the palate. It is an off-dry very young white wine, refreshing and crisp with a mineral aftertaste.
Chat. Ste. Eulalie Rose ’18 France $ 13
A delightful dry rose with flavors of fresh raspberries, strawberries, and crisp redcurrant fruit with a hint of spice: an excellent match for grilled Mediterranean vegetables and lamb.
MAN Vintners Pinotage ’17 South Africa $11
Dark berries, plum and a smoke on the nose. Rustic yet silky and juicy, with wild cherry flavors, smooth tannins and well-controlled acidity. good intensity to the plum and mocha flavors.
Avignonesi Rosso de Montepulciano ’15 Italy $14
Perfumed aromas of red berries, violets, cinnamon, and almond flower. Juicy and bright, with precise strawberry and redcurrant flavors and lively acidity.
Nit de les Garnatxes Slate ’16 Spain $21
100% grenache from legendary licorella soil, with plenty of desert flower and wild herb aromas and elegantly dry tannins make for a really complex wine with a high minerality and balsamic aromas.
2072 Granger Way