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lummi island wine tasting nov 11-12 ’22
Hours this weekend: 4-6pm both Friday and Saturday
Though Covid protocols have relaxed somewhat, the season of outside seating seems to be pretty much over. So as we move inside, let’s be mindful of distance between us and subdue any tendencies toward those, um, exclamatory expectorants that can come with getting a little too boisterous. Thanks!
Friday Bread Pickup This Week 4-5:30 pm
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 a distinct peppery bite. Excellent paired with all sorts of meats and cheese…and wine, of course! – $5/loaf
Le Pave d’Autrefois – translates roughly as old paving stones. 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, fresh milled whole wheat, rye, and buckwheat flours for a lot of hearty whole grain goodness. -$5/loaf
mmm, and pastry this week…
Pain aux Raisin– Uses 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
To get on the bread order list, click on the “Contact Us” link above and fill out the form. Each week’s bread menu is sent to the list each Sunday, for ordering by Tuesday, for pickup on Friday. Simple, right..? If you will be visiting the island and would like to order bread for your visit, at least a week’s notice is recommended for pickup the following Friday.
Wine of the Week: Martoccia Poggio Apricale ’21 Italy $17
click image to watch video
Clean, bright, and pretty, Poggio Apricale is the everyday offering from high
altitude Brunello producer, Luca Brunelli. Built on a foundation of Sangiovese
Grosso (the varietal in Brunello), this ripe, unoaked rosso supplies terrific “grip” for such a freshly-styled
wine. Classic Tuscan aromas of morello cherry, sage, blackberry, and warm terra
cotta fill the glass, along with a supple, approachable mid-palate. A small
production wine from a very small estate, this is artisanal wine at its charming, low
yield best.
Economics of the Heart: Maintaining the Circular Flow
courtesy https://2.bp.blogspot.com
In the first page or two of any beginning economics text there is a chart of the Circular Flow of an economic system. People get money by selling their labor to business and government so they can produce goods and services. People then spend the money buying those goods and services back from producers. Everyone has money coming in from one side, and money going out the other. As long as everyone is included and keeps passing the money, the flow goes on everyone is okay.
The central takeaway from the diagram is the interdependence of consumers and producers. Everyone has to keep working, producing, buying, and selling to keep the economy going. On a macro scale like a big city, state, or country, there are large numbers of producers, workers, buyers, and sellers in a constant flux of competition and cooperation.
However, in a rural community like our little island, we all buy most of our goods and services on the mainland or have them delivered via the ferry. Every day (Mondays especially) a parade of trucks and vans comes off the ferry to deliver various goods and services to island households. Our island economy is completely dependent on the ferry for food, fuel, waste disposal, home repair, mail service, package delivery, propane, and more.
Therefore it has been a sudden shock to our senses to learn that just a month ago a decision was made…somewhere... (we on LIFAC* still have not seen the documents) that because of the proximity of eel grass beds (a protected plant species) to the mainland ferry dock, the barge platform necessary for constructing the planned new ferry dock there will not be allowed to anchor over nearby eel grass beds. Instead, the barge will have to be moored inside the ferry docking area during construction (meaning no car ferry, and a clumsy loading platform for a passenger vessel).
Further, because of seasonal restrictions on marine construction (the annual “fish window”) construction work will have to be confined to the period from October to February, when the days are often short, cold, wet, and windy, and construction could take six months or more!
County officials say this problem is completely independent of the size of the planned vessel, which is on the order of three times the size of our 60-yr-old Chief. They also say that the recent RAISE grant award from USDOT is tied very tightly to the parameters of the 34-car vessel described in the grant, a disappointment to those of us who have championed a much smaller, less expensive, and greener vessel. (So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut was fond of saying)…at least it will be a diesel-electric hybrid, and we will all be working toward eventually generating the power for it here on the Island.
All of this is complicated by the fact that the terminal area is owned by Lummi Nation, which has its own rights, goals, and sensibilities. At the moment my preliminary view is that if the prohibitions stand and there can be no car ferry during construction, then construction should be phased over a couple of years with no more than three weeks at a time with no car ferry…something our community experiences annually for drydock maintenance. Longer than that without the necessary resupply activities that make life on the island possible at all seems like something “most devoutly to be eschewed…” **
Stay tuned…!
*Lummi Island Ferry Advisory Committee
** K. Adlard Coles, author of Heavy Weather Sailing about “experiencing a hurricane from the deck of a sailboat…”
This Week’s $10 Wine Tasting
Girot Ribot Masia Parera Brut Rose Cava Italy $16
Delicate perlage, deep minerality, and intoxicating white flower and baby mushroom aromas make this wine memorable and delightful.
Montfaucon Cotes du Rhone ’18 France $15
50% Grenache co-fermented on skins with syrah, cinsault, & old vines carignan and matured in concrete tanks; beautiful aromas of cherries, black currant; fresh and round on the palate.
Martoccia Poggio Apricale ’21 Italy $16
Sangiovese Grosso with a little Merlot and Cab Franc; Fruity and persistent nose of wild berries and spice. Soft and balanced with fine tannins to make this Sant’Antimo Rosso work well with any meal!
lummi island wine tasting january 18 ’19
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Bread Friday
Poolish Ale – In place of water in the poolish, the liquid is a nice ale beer. I
look for one with a lot of flavor and this week I’m using a nice Belgian ale. The
final dough is 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 it contains no
gluten. Buckwheat has an earthy flavor that in this bread is balanced with a
little honey. Some toasted walnuts add a nice crunch. – $5/loaf
Ann another delicious pastry this week…
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 and brushed with sugar syrup after baking. – 2/$5
Pomum
This week we return to an old favorite wine from a favorite Washington winemaker, Javier Alfonso of Pomum Cellars in Woodinville. The wine is his Pomum Red, a compelling blend of cab and cab franc, rounded out with malbec, petite syrah, and merlot. Javier grew up in Spain’s Ribero Del Duero region, and brings his heritage to his winemaking here in Washington. His wines show his preference for highly drinkable wines with rich, evolving, and lingering flavors, silky tannic depth and length, and a Muse that beckons “hey, Amigo, un vaso mas!”
A few years ago (OMD, just realized it has been seven!) Javier and wife Shyla made a surprise visit to the wine shop on a Saturday afternoon, and it was great fun. We remember this now because this weekend we are pouring his Pomum Red wine, and this vintage (sampling at this very moment!) is really Quite Delightful!
He also has a second label we have carried for some years called Idilico. At the moment we have his Idilico Garnacha on the shelf, and in warmer weather we generally carry his Albarino as well. Both bear the fingerprints of his winemaking style, which generally means “yes, you’re gonna like it!”
Pasanau
In the classic film “Sideways,” there is a scene where our male anti-hero asks our female heroine (as I see it) what was The Wine that made her Love Good Wine, like, OMD, I never knew Wine Could Taste This Good!
In our boy Donald’s case the wine that did it for him was Pasanau Finca de Planeta, a blend of cabernet sauvignon and garnacha from the iconic Spanish wine region of Priorat, about two hours west of Barcelona.
Pasanau is located in the Northwest corner of this very dry, rugged DOC very reminiscent of the American Southwest. Because its old vines have to grow deep into the ancient schist, limestone, and licorella soils to survive and produce fruit, they develop a certain profundity. We visited the winery a few years ago and were moved by its gnarly old vines and spectacular setting.
More important for you, by chance we have acquired a few bottles of the 2012 vintage of this wine at a substantial discount, allowing us to offer our limited supply for $29 each, a Substantial Discount…and we are pouring it for your tasting pleasure this weekend!
Mar a Lago Update: Bringing Back the Progressive Income Tax
Last week Nobel economist/ NY Times writer Paul Krugman wrote an interesting article about proposals of new Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for increasing the marginal tax rate on the extremely wealthy to something over 70%. Btw, that doesn’t mean the Super-Wealthy would pay 70% tax on their entire incomes; it means they would pay an increasing amount of tax per dollar earned as income increased, topping off at 70 cents per dollar earned over some very high amount.
The two main arguments for such progressive taxation, which worked extremely well in the U. S. between the Thirties and the Sixties, are 1) the marginal utility of money, and 2) the importance of competitive markets. In the first case, if you are living at subsistence level, a thousand dollars of additional income makes an enormous difference in your quality of life. But if you are a Bazillionaire, an additional thousand or even ten thousand dollars is completely inconsequential. In the second case, despite decades of Republican Trickle-Down Propaganda to the contrary, rigorous data analysis has shown clearly that Social Benefits to the Economy as a Whole are not at all decreased by higher marginal tax rates until they are between 70 and 80 %.
The Big Takeway here is that all The Economy got from the Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and the Tweetster Tax Cuts was a Smaller Overall Pie, Huge Increases in the National Debt, and exponentially increasing disparities between the Rich and Poor. As is clear from the graph in Krugman’s article, the exponentially increasing wealth of the Very Rich and the stagnation of the Overall Economy under Reagan, Bushes I and II, and the Tweetster have been the only consistent result of Tax Cuts for the top 1%, and Krugman is making a strong case that the Return of those very high marginal tax rates would make for a Bigger Overall Pie shared much more Equitably.
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 7,546 as of 1/1/19
This week’s wine tasting
Palama Salento Bianca Verdeca ’17 Italy $11
Refreshing, flavorful, and aromatic, with notes of lemon zest, salty minerality, and green herbs.
Sharecropper’s Pinot Noir ’17 Oregon $15
Aromas of bing cherry, rose petals and pomegranate with hints of baking spice and forest floor, and flavors of cherry, and olive with toasty cinnamon notes.
Martoccia Poggio Apricale ’17 Italy $15
Sangiovese Grosso with a little Merlot and Cab Franc; Fruity and persistent nose of wild berries and spice. Soft and balanced with fine tannins this Sant’Antimo Rosso works well with any meal!
Pomum Red ’14 Washington $19
Mostly cab and cab franc with malbec, petite verdot, merlot; aromas of both fresh and leathery red fruit and exotic spices; On the palate shows black cherry, cranberry and garrigue, fine elegant tannins and a long finish.
Celler Pasanau Finca La Planeta Priorat ’12 Spain $29
Crisp, focused aromas of ripe berries, tar, and spice; flavors of spicy plum, crushed peppercorn and mineral-rich schist; thorough and complex; drink through 2028.
lummi island wine tasting nov 2 ’18
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Bread Friday this week
Barley & Rye w/ Pumpkin Seeds- Made with a levain that is fermented overnight before the final dough is mixed with a nice mix of bread flour and fresh milled rye, barley and whole wheat flours. Some buttermilk makes for a tender crumb, honey for sweetness and toasted pumpkin seeds add to the flavor and texture. A really flavorful artisan loaf – $5/loaf
Kamut Levain – Kamut, also known as khorasan wheat, is an ancient grain that has more protein than conventional wheat. Some people who can’t tolerate wheat find kamut to be more digestible. The bread is made with a levain that is fermented overnight before being mixed with with bread flour and fresh milled whole kamut flour. It has a nutty, rich flavor and makes a golden color loaf. – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Croissants! – Made with two preferments, a levain as well as prefermented “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
Rescued!
(click photos to enlarge)
The main purpose of our present trip was to attend a mini class reunion with some of my closest college mates. We had such a good time last year at our 50th back East that our friend Tim invited us all to his place on a mountain overlooking LA to watch Navy play Notre Dame (game in San Diego, we watching on TV), which as everyone knows, is the longest-running college football rivalry in the country, some 98 years this year.
To get to his house, one drives about 3 miles up a narrow, twisting one-lane road, often with a steep dropoff on one side, with a couple of seriously steep sections. We arrived on a very hot day, near 100°, and were making good progress until we got about halfway up a 17-degree slope, the steepest on the road, and the car just stopped…it did not have the power to get the trailer up that hill, and backing down was, um, Quite Unappealing.
What unfolded was a Welcome Rescue Operation in which Tim brought down his vintage six-wheel-drive Swiss Army Truck, and we hooked a chain from our towing ring (gotta love those Volvo engineers!) to the truck, and up we went! And though we worried the next couple of days about the trip down the hill, trailer and car brakes did their job and descent was tense but uneventful…all in all, a bit more Adventure than we had in mind, but as you can see the expansive view across LA and suburbs was well worth the effort!
Birthdays at Bodega Bay
We have mentioned a few times in recent years that a favorite camping spot with our trailer is a small RV park in Bodega Bay, California. The park itself, like many, is well-run and well-maintained, but comparatively speaking, offers no extraordinary amenities in the park itself. Its charm is that it borders on a California State Park and campground, often largely deserted in the off-season, offering few of the water and electric hookups that many of us are looking for these days.
We arrived here yesterday, and are parked next to Mike and Diane, close neighbors on the Island, and whom most of you know from the wine shop. Tomorrow we will leave here and caravan up US 1 toward home, arriving next week sometime.
Tonight we dined at a favorite restaurant nearby that we have mentioned before in this blog, a small and charming little place (Terrapin Creek) that happens to have a Michelin Star to its credit, definitely reflected in the quality of the food and service, but not particularly in the prices. (See previous posts here and here).
Once again we recommend it heartily if you are ever in the area…YUM!
Since our birthdays are about a week apart, (Pat’s a few days ago, mine a few days hence) this was a great opportunity for a celebration at a great little restaurant with dear friends from home!
Mar a Lago Update: Verifiable Voting
The long-awaited Midterm Election is just around the corner. Results will be in in less than a week. How much confidence to we have that the results will accurately reflect the Will of the People?
There are many reasons to be skeptical. Until the 2000 Florida debacle in which the Supreme Court selected the President on a legal technicality…a decision later proved contrary to the will of the people of Florida…most of us assumed that our election system was secure and reliable.
In 2004 Ohio was the New Florida, winning W another four years on questionable election results. Then of course we have the Debacle of 2016, with unprecedented spending by bazillionaire donors, social media infiltration and manipulation by Russian hackers, widespread disenfranchisement of left-leaning voters, and a nonstop slanderous media attack on Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton. No one in their right mind believes even for one second that the Tweetster actually won that election.
So. Here we are on the eve of another National Election. By all accounts a large voter turnout is expected. How confident are we that the results of the election will accurately reflect the preferences of our diverse communities? The answer for most of us these days is “Not Very.”
Which is why, regardless of the outcomes of this particular election, which at present seem unlikely to bolster our confidence, it is in our collective long-term interest to: 1) support non-partisan efforts to make elections secure, accessible to all eligible voters, and verifiable, and 2) do away with partisan gerrymandering at every level of government and have voting districts designed by non-partisan organizations dedicated to fair redistricting.
A good way to support the first goal (verifiable voting) is through the Verified Voting Foundation, a non-governmental, nonpartisan organization founded in 2003 by David L. Dill, a computer scientist from Stanford University, whose objective is to preserve the democratic process by requiring that voting machines produce a tangible, verifiable paper receipt for each vote. Universal use of the verifiable paper ballot would have gone a long way toward preventing the loss in voter confidence after the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections.
And the best way to support the second goal (ending gerrymandering) is to support the Campaign Legal Center, which works at all levels of government to support every citizen’s right to vote.
And of course…BE SURE TO VOTE!!!
This week’s wine tasting
Chat. Blizard Blanc d’Amour ’16 France $14
Grenache blanc, viognier, marsanne, rousanne; complex, fruity fragrances of grapefruit, white peach, lychee and acacia flower. Balanced, ample and suave, with a fresh finish.
Phantom Chardonnay ’17 California $17
Entices with rich layers of flavor. Green apple and pear transform into spicy notes of freshly baked apple pie, while barrel fermentation imparts a creamy, luscious mouthfeel.
Perazzeta Sara Rosso ’15 Italy $12
90% Sangiovese, 10% Ciliegiolo from the Tuscan south; bright and full-bodied with cherry, crisp acidity, and tantalizing earth tones make this pretty wine a winner with savory dishes.
l’Ecuyer de Couronneau Bordeaux Rouge ’15 France $16
Merlot-dominated it has been made with ‘easy-drinking’ very much in mind, offering a bit of New World ripeness; full bodied with good depth; palate of berries, red fruit, and hints of tobacco in a long finish.
Martoccia Poggio Apricale ’17 Italy $14
Sangiovese Grosso with a little Merlot and Cab Franc; Fruity and persistent nose of wild berries and spice. Soft and balanced with fine tannins this Sant’Antimo Rosso works well with any meal!
lummi island wine tasting sept 14 ’18
(note: some photos will enlarge when clicked)
Bread Friday this week
Rosemary Olive Oil – made with bread flour and a bit of freshly milled white whole wheat for a little more flavor and texture. Fresh rosemary from the garden and olive oil to make for a nice tender crumb and a nice crisp crust. A great all around bread – $5/loaf
Oatmeal Pan Bread: A new bread to introduce into the rotation. Made with bread flour, fresh milled whole wheat and, of course, oatmeal. Plus a bit of honey. This bread has great flavor and makes perfect toast – $5/loaf
and pastry this week…
Morning Buns! – These have been made popular by Tartine Bakery in San Francisco, I use the same laminated dough as my croissants. The dough is rolled out, spread with a filling of brown sugar, orange zest, butter and cinnamon. Rolled up and sliced before baking. – 2/$5
Needle in a Haystack
One challenge of the last few weeks has been to get the Honda 9.9 outboard working on our little sailboat Dreamtime. We confess a broad lack of understanding of modern outboard motors, which seem fickle and moody, prone to random fits of pique today when they were running just fine yesterday.
Most of our marine engine experience for the last few decades has involved diesel engines, which, despite their many idiosyncracies, tend to run as requested despite their mood of the moment.
So it is that for the last several weeks we have been in a little dance with our outboard, trying to sort out why, after showing a willingness to start, it preferred to run with the choke engaged and with too high an rpm to allow easy shifting. Therefore it felt like the end of a long journey today finally to find and successfully adjust the idle adjustment screw that had been eluding us.
In the photo at left, in bottom center, there is visible a silvery bolt. At the right end of the bolt there is a dark opening. Inside the opening is located the idle adjustment screw. Because of the recess, the screw is not visible except from the left side at eye level. From above or forward the screw is not visible at all, which is to say, it is not visible from the boat it is mounted on. So it is with a great sense of aha! satisfaction today to have found and adjusted the previously invisible idle adjustment screw, the result of a fortuitous accident of having taken this photo that revealed it. Mystery solved…you know, for the moment…!
Pasanau
In the classic film “Sideways,” there is a scene where our male anti-hero asks our female heroine (as I see it) what was The Wine that did it for her, i.e., made her Love Good Wine. And frankly, I don’t remember what she said. What is important here is that the phrase “did it for you” roughly translates into, OMD, I never knew Wine Could Taste This Good! With the implication, of course, that Life would be Changed Forever from this experience, something between Transcendence and Addiction.
For us, it was a Frog’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon, probably around a 2000 vintage, which Pat’s son Donald offered as an antidote for my futile quest to find the perfect $7 wine. Bear in mind this was around 2004, when dollars bought a lot more, and that this wine at the time was about $40, Way out of our experience or comfort zone. I remember wanting to be able to inhale more deeply because the aroma was So Seductive. Life has not been the same since.
In Donald’s case the wine that did it for him was Pasanau Finca de Planeta, a blend of cabernet sauvignon and garnacha from the iconic Spanish wine region of Priorat, about two hours west of Barcelona. Pasanau is located in the Northwest corner of this very dry, rugged DOC very reminiscent of the American Southwest. It is famous for the complexity of its wines. Because its old vines have had to grow deep into the ancient schist, limestone, and licorella soils to survive and produce fruit, they have developed a certain profundity. We visited the winery a few years ago and were moved by its gnarly old vines and spectacular setting.
More important for you, by chance we have acquired a few bottles of the 2012 vintage of this wine at a substantial discount, allowing us to offer our limited supply for $35 each.
Mar a Lago Update: The Emperor’s New Clothes
In the original fairy tale, the scenario was that the Emperor was apparently not the Brightest Bulb in the Box, suffered from an Excess of Hubris, and liked Adulation. And for whichever of those reasons, the Emperor bought some Very Sheer Invisible Clothes and wore them in a Parade. The Moral Takeaway from the story was that only a young boy was free enough from Cultural Inculcation to be able to Name what Everybody Knew.
This week is a landmark because, after so many years of Silence, so many Witnesses have come forward on the subject. These include: 1) a fascinating NY Times OpEd about the Chaos in the White House that reeked of misguided self-righteousness and martyrdom; 2) Bob Woodward’s methodical exposé of the Chaos in the Tweetster’s Government; 3) the Bizarre Senate Judicial Committee interviews with the Tweetster’s latest Federalist Society pro-Life, pro-Gun, Pro-Corporate Supreme Court pick; 4) the Tweetster’s claim of Total Success in rehabbing Puerto Rico after last year’s devastating Hurricane, despite troves of Evidence that the US Response was underfunded and understaffed to the point of Indifference; and 5) the Imminent Arrival of Hurricane Florence, just downgraded to Category 2 (100 mph winds instead of 130), but still LOTS of Rain and likely $100 billion damage, only the latest uptick in the now-inevitable-for-the-next-75-years annual Worsening of Storm Damage.
One is reminded of the Old Saying, “to Judge the Direction of the Wind, it is enough to look at a Single Blade of Grass.” On the other hand, as with the boy Naming the Emperor’s Nakedness, it won’t work until enough people are willing to open their eyes…
Washington Post Tweetster Lie Count to date: 4713 as of 9/1/18
This week’s wine tasting
Popolo di Indie Bianco ’16 Italy $13
100% Cortese; aromas of white fruits blended with sweet citrus and a hint of tropical fruit that dance delicately on the palate, intertwining with fine acidity, a touch of mineral flavor and a long, soft.
Pech Celeyran Ombline Rosé ’15 France $10
Nice fruity nose, and palate of red fruits, strawberries, and raspberries, with an appealing freshness ideal for summer afternoons.
Portteus Bistro Red ’15 Washington $13
Fun, smooth and easy drinking blend of Malbec and Merlot. A food friendly wine with delicate, elegant texture. Notes of blackberry, pomegranate, cocoa, honey and licorice, with a creamy finish. Over-delivers for the $.
Martoccia Poggio Apricale ’17 Italy $14
Sangiovese Grosso with a little Merlot and Cab Franc; Fruity and persistent nose of wild berries and spice. Soft and balanced with fine tannins this Sant’Antimo Rosso works well with any meal!
Celler Pasanau Finca La Planeta Priorat ’12 Spain $35
Crisp, focused aromas of ripe berries, asphalt, and spice; flavors of spicy plum, crushed peppercorn and mineral-rich schist; thorough and complex; drink through 2028.
2072 Granger Way