lummi island wine tasting june 7-8 ’19
Friday Breads This Week
Poolish Ale – Tthe preferment here is a poolish, made with bread flour, a bit of yeast and a nice ale beer for the liquid and fermented overnight. Mixed the next day with bread flour and fresh milled whole wheat. This makes a great all around bread with a nice crisp crust – $5/loaf
Buckwheat Walnut & Honey – a flavorful artisan bread made with a poolish, fresh milled buckwheat and bread flour. Buckwheat is not a grain it is actually a seed and closer in the plant family to rhubarb and sorrel than to wheat and contains no gluten. Though this bread is not gluten free as it is also includes bread flour made from wheat. Buckwheat has an earthy flavor that in this bread is balanced with a little honey. Some toasted walnuts add a nice crunch. – $5/loaf
Traditional Croissants – Made with two preferments; 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
Nice Wine, Nice Bottle
Gavi is a famous white wine region in Piedmont, Italy, surrounding the city of the same name, hence the wine is called “Gavi di Gavi.” Since the 17th century, Cortese has been the grape behind the Gavi di Gavi. It is mostly grown around the city of Alessandria and the Monferrato hills, and is known for its bracing acidity and ability to retain freshness, even when grown in hot environments. Apple, peach and honeydew flavors are commonly associated with it, often showing lime, almond, and light herbal or grassy aromas.The wines are best enjoyed young and go well with Asiago and Parmesan cheeses and seafood.
Cortese has been grown in the southeastern part of Piedmont for centuries, as mentioned in documents that date back to the beginning of the 17th Century. It has long been considered Piedmont’s finest white variety and is often credited as introducing the world to Italian white wine. Nowadays, however, it faces growing competition from Arneis (which we poured for you a few weeks ago), and Moscato d’Asti.
And as if that weren’t enough, the wine comes in a lovely bottle designed to mimic the blown-glass bottles used in the region hundreds of years ago!
Mar a Lago Update: The Finger Pointing at the Moon
There is an old Teaching: “Do not mistake the Finger pointing at the Moon for the Moon Itself.” Its message is a Warning to remember that the Idea of Anything is is not the Actuality. Ideas are best when taken with a few grains of salt. The Moon is the Moon. A Finger is a Finger. Mind is a Metaphorical Soup, or perhaps an inspiration for a drawing.
We human beings are fond of labels. When we Name something, there is a sense of mental relaxation in reaching a conclusion, and thus being liberated from the tension of wondering and not knowing. Modern News Media use the power of this tension to keep us engaged and tuned in to an endless parade of things we ought to worry about and Follow lest we should Miss Something.
For some many weeks now there has been a concerted effort across the news media to get a Democratic member of the House of Representatives to put an Official Impeachment Label on their various investigations. It is obviously a political Hot Button. Naming it an Impeachment Inquiry would open the Floodgates of “See?? It’s a Witch Hunt, folks, a Witch Hunt…just more Fake News…!”
At the same time numerous Federal and State level investigations into the Administration could have major implications for the ongoing investigations in Congress. Just yesterday Speaker Pelosi was quoted as saying in a closed meeting that she didn’t want to see the Tweetster impeached; she wants to see him in Jail. Well, we just want to see him Gone. Since Impeachment is likely a futile or even counterproductive endeavor, it makes sense to follow each of Mueller’s breadcrumbs where it may lead, while continuing every effort to keep the House and send the Tweetster and Dark Lord McConnell back to Mordor where they belong.
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 10,000 as of 5/1/19
This week’s wine tasting
Villa Sparina Gavi di Gavi ’13 Italy $17
Bright golden color. Scent of overripe pears, spices, citrus fruit and aromatic herbs; Well balanced notes of honey and butter; full-bodied and savory. And a wine bottle worth saving!
Bargemone Provence Rose ’18 France $14
Beautiful pale pink. Bright, mineral-dusted aromas of pink grapefruit and dried red berries. Light and racy on the palate, with tangy citrus and redcurrant flavors. Finishes brisk and dry, with good lingering spiciness and length.
Carmen Carmenere ’17 Chile $16
Aromas of fresh berries, baking spices and chocolate get this wine going; full bodied yet balanced, with toasty black fruit flavors with grip and intensity; full bodied yet balanced, with blackberry, herbal plum and spices.
Robert Ramsay Mason’s Red ’17 Washington $17
Easy-drinking cinsault-dominant Rhone blend; subtle nose of black cherry paste with a hint of cinnamon spice that expands on the palate to a soft anise finish.
Flaneur Pinot Noir ’17 Oregon $28
Sharply etched berry and cherry fruit flavors, with a hint of brown sugar. Light citrus acidity underlies an astringent finish, which builds interest with hints of cherry tobacco and cola.
lummi island wine june 1 ’19
Quick note
Thursday night we were camped out of internet range and were unable to publish our weekly blog to reach you on Friday morning as usual. We got home today (Friday) just as Janice was arriving to open the wine shop for Friday Bread pickup at 4pm.
This post is to let you all know that the wine shop WILL be Open Saturday June 1 from 2-6 as usual. This week’s wines (see below) drew lots of positive comments tonight…we hope you will all find time to drop by and try them on Saturday!
This week’s wine tasting
La Torretta Chardonnay ‘17 Italy $11
Fresh, crisp and bright on the palate with bracing notes of minerality; nose of golden apples and hint of honey. Harmonious and well balanced.
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.
La Torretta Pinot Noir ‘16 Italy $12
Ruby red color. Medium bodied. Complex aromas and flavors of violets, strawberries, raspberries and vanilla. Soft velvety texture.
Capcanes Mas Donis Old Vines ‘15 Spain $12
Velvety mouthfeel and texture; wild red and black berry flavors, with cherry, spices and herbs; medium to full-bodied with soft and velvet tannins and nicely refreshing finish.
Corte Volponi Ripasso ’15 Italy $21
A classic ripasso, with rich nose and flavors, good tannic backbone, and a great pairing for rich Italian fare.
lummi island wine tasting may 24-25 ’19 Artists Studio Tour
Friday Breads This Week
Pain au Levain – Made with bread flour and freshly milled whole wheat and rye flours. After building the sourdough 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. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
Sweet Corn & Dried Cranberry – Made with polenta and bread flour, 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
Bear Claws! – Made with a danish pastry dough rich in cream, eggs, sugar and butter. The dough is rolled out and spread with almond paste, powdered sugar, egg whites and just a bit of cinnamon to round out the flavor. Then, because bears love honey, topped with a honey glaze after baking. – 2/$5
Studio Tour Artists
Lummi Island hosts three Artists’ Studio Tours a year: Memorial Day Weekend, Labor Day Weekend, and, of course, the Second Weekend in November (it’s a Long Story). This Tour we are hosting paintings of birds by Anne Gibert together with knitted bags with embroidered birds by Sue McCaslin.
We put up the show a couple of days ago; below are a few samples!
Studio Tour is scheduled for 10am- 6pm on Saturday, May 25, and Sunday, May 26th across the Island. As we go to press we are anticipating being open 10-6 on Saturday for Artists’ Meet and Greet, along with Wine Tasting from 1-6 pm. At present, with apologies, Sunday hours are uncertain.
Mar a Lago Update: Question Authority, Think for Yourself
Some many years ago, Timothy Leary materialized as a speaker at WWU. It was sometime in the Reagan years, and he had been out of public view since the days of “Tune in, Turn on, Drop out” in the Sixties. His new Mantra was “Question Authority, Think for Yourself.” He went on at some length about this (see short video). Since I was already dropped out, with irreconcilable Differences with anything that smacked of Authority, and a seething Disdain for the awful Presumptions of Authoritarianism, I mostly just Nodded, with a vague concern that before the evening was over he might try to sell me something. As if somehow all that Acid had Backfired on him, fried his Circuits, and left him Defenseless against Corporate Takeover.
In the years since, our entire Planet has continued accelerating toward the Right…you know, those people that H L Mencken had in mind when he said, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is Clear, Simple…and Wrong.”
One of the great puzzles of Human History is why Authoritarianism has had such consistent appeal in so many times and places, why so many across the world have so often willingly embraced it, and why the open ideas of the Left have been such Poison that the Right is compelled to Destroy them by any means possible. At the simplest level, for various reasons large numbers of individuals feel safe under the Thumb of Authority Figures, while the rest of us only feel Safe when we have the freedom to pursue our own Muses.
As in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Forces of Light and Darkness are lining up for a Battle for the Future of Life on our Planet. The Authoritarians do not believe there is a Problem, but rather see the entire Planet only as a Field for Short-term Exploitation, just another Perk from the Dominion Over the Earth Thing morally enshrined in the Bible. For decades, going at least back to the first Earth Day in 1970, there has been a constant stream of scientific reports that have continually reinforced the network of facts about Global Warming and the increasing Existential Threat irresponsible human resource exploitation habits pose to the very existence of Life on Earth.
For more on this, listen to this recent episode of Hidden Brain…
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 10,000 as of 5/1/19
This week’s wine tasting
Elicio Rosé ’18 France $12
Syrah-grenache blend; bright vibrant pink; fruit-forward notes of fresh raspberries and summer flowers.
Demarie Langhe Arneis ’17 Italy $16
Clean, minerally, refreshing, and thirst-quenching, with palate of citrus, pear, and green apple, and Great summer wine!
Coupe Roses La Bastide ’17 France $12
Carignan-Grenache blend; aromas and flavors of the garrigue underbrush of the high Minervois, laced with notes of blueberry and Carignan’s tarry black notes.
Demarie Barbera d’Alba ’16 Italy $19
An ancient Italian varietal, this Barbera is big, round, with aromas of prune and spicy mulberry that linger on the palate with notes of plum, blackberry and cherry.
Corte Volponi Ripasso ’15 Italy $21
A classic ripasso, with rich nose and flavors, good tannic backbone, and a great pairing for rich Italian fare.
lummi island wine tasting may 16-17 ’19
Friday Breads This Week
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 with flax
seeds and dried currants for a delicious bread. A really flavorful artisan
loaf! – $5/piece
Black Pepper Walnut- made from a similar mix of flours, bread flour, fresh milled
whole wheat and rye. A fair amount of black pepper and toasted walnuts give this
bread great flavor with a peppery bite. Try with all sorts of meats and cheeses – $5/loaf
Chocolate Babka Rolls – A sweet pastry dough full of eggs, butter and sugar, rolled and spread with a chocolate filling, rolled up and cut into individual rolls that are placed in baking forms for baking and then brushed with sugar syrup after baking. I’ve heard some people say they hide these to keep them all to themselves. Be sure and get your order in early as quantities are limited – 2/$5
Hearing is Believing
As mentioned last week, after many years of Consternation at the difficulty of hearing each other in the wine shop when more than a dozen people are present, we finally installed some sound absorbing panels over the bar. We had no idea what, if anything, would happen. As it turned out, though we did not have big (and Loud) crowds last weekend, we had enough of a gathering on both Friday and Saturday to detect a Noticeable Improvement, and that it was Good…even though it was not what our experience had allowed us to imagine beforehand.
At some point on both Friday and Saturday, we noticed that 1) the space was Still Loud, but 2) even so, we could still engage in conversation with those next to us, while 3) also being able to hear and distinguish the voices of all the other people in the space. It wasn’t something we could have imagined beforehand, but we are pleased that it makes the noise much more Coherent and much less Dissonant. Metaphorically it is like finding the adjustment on your binoculars where Everything Comes into Clear Focus and you can see clearly enough to differentiate the different objects you are seeing without having to give any up.
The Preliminary Takeaway is a cautious Optimism. It seems that the panels are quite effective at reducing the Distortion of the reverberating sound, dampening the reflections and making it more Coherent and Understandable. It is not an outcome/experience we could have imagined; nevertheless it is a clear Improvement and a fascinating lesson into how we experience sound waves! Who Knew?
Ad Lucem
For those of you (98%…?) who never took Latin, the rough translation of “Ad Lucem” is “Toward the Light.” It is also one of several labels used by Oregon wine industry pioneer Jerry Owen of Lady Hill winery, who was a founding partner in the well-respected Owen Roe winery in 1999. Lady Hill Winery is across the road from Champoeg State Park in the northern Willamette Valley in Oregon, where his ancestors settled in 1850. We have made it something of a habit to visit the winery whenever we bivouac at this very pleasant State Park, and have found it a pleasant destination with memorable wines and enjoyable conversations with Jerry. He has offered to drive up some weekend and pour some of his wines for all of us, and we hope we can make that happen.
The original release of the Ad Lucem wines had a nicely designed cork label (we can show you!) that caught our attention, so when we saw this Ad Lucem label on a distributor list last week we immediately ordered the wine, and are tasting it for the first time as we write. It is not disappointing! Blends of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre have been the centerpiece of Rhone Valley wine production for centuries, and this wine is another good example of why this is so.
Mar a Lago Update: Making Sure Climate Change Is a Debate Topic
Today we digress a bit from the Ongoing Frenzy of Lies and Counter-lies that has replaced dispassionate, political discussion in our Country to give Voice to the Most Vital Political Issue of our Lifetimes: How to Save Life on Earth from Extinction.
Since the first Earth Day in 1971, we Baby Boomers have watched the process of environmental degradation grow more and more out of control despite our best efforts. At every step progress on environmental preservation has been fought and resisted by those who profit by it and by denying its very existence.
In the summer of 1980, nearly forty years ago, I spent ten weeks at Battelle on a project exploring the likely economic costs of anthropogenic Climate Change. My assignment was to explore the impacts of climate change on world fisheries. The Takeaway here is that even forty years ago The Data told us we were in Big Trouble. The record since then shows a history of systematically ignoring, dismissing, dissembling, excusing, and denying these well-documented threats that has taken a Mind-Numbing Toll, to the point where our own species’ short-term perspective now threatens the future of All Life on Earth. Right now, Today, a Million species are poised for Extinction because of our actions; the Countless Micro-interdependencies among species that create soil, nourish plants, clean waterways, and Support Life are beginning to fail across our Planet.
And so to Our Point: the Presidential Debates are coming soon, and there are over 20 candidates. Only ONE of those candidates – our Washington State Governor, Jay Inslee, has staked out a platform on the Defining Issue of our Time –reducing human-caused Climate Change. Therefore it is vitally important that Inslee’s voice be part of the national debate. The requirement for admission to the debates is that the candidate raise a certain amount of money from at least 65,000 individual donors.
Therefore we encourage all of you to donate at least one dollar to Inslee’s campaign so we can keep Climate Change at the forefront of National Debate through the coming Presidential Campaign.
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 10,000 as of 5/1/19
This week’s wine tasting
Big Salt Oregon $15
Shows grit and chalky saltiness, with floral, honeysuckle and tropical fruit notes and pebbly minerality. An aromatic but not sweet, supremely satisfying sipper; an excellent food wine.
La Croix Belle Caringole Rosé ’17 France $12
Syrah-Grenache blend; intense nose of rose petals and pear-drop candies; palate of alpine strawberries, raspberries, and cranberries, with a citrus accent on the crisp finish.
Domaine La Croix Belle Caringole Rouge ’17 France $12
Syrah, Carignan and Merlot blend from Languedoc’s Cotes de Thongue region; fresh and supple with flavors of cherry, and black olive, and herbs.
Maryhill Winemaker’s Red ’16 Washington $11
Fruit-forward and smooth with hints of cherry, blueberry and red fruit. Off-dry with fruity notes on the palate accented by cherry and vanilla. Food-friendly and perfect for everyday enjoyment.
Lady Hill Ad Lucem Elaina Red ’15 Washington $21
Grenache, syrah, mourvedre blend; aromas of toast, dark fruits and berries and grilled meat that expand into mouth-watering rich flavors and crisp acidity on the palate.
2072 Granger Way
