New Artist at Libation Station…

Libation Station

presents
the oil pastels
of

Kathleen Faulkner

during the months of July and August

A jewelry artist for over 20 years, Kathleen has been working in oil pastel since 2005.  Although Kathleen is still very involved in jewelry work, she is finding that the oil pastels are her preferred medium.

'Heading East' 23x21" oil pastel; Kathleen Faulkner

Born and raised in Seattle, Kathleen’s home and studio are located in Anacortes where she has lived for many years.   Her love of the Pacific Northwest  is the inspiration for her work:

“I am interested in telling stories.. giving form to memories of times and places.  It is an attempt to glimpse the essence of this place in the world that is sometimes referred to as the Magic Skagit, where the mountains meet the sea, Salish Sea, that is.”

For more information about Kathleen visit:

kathleenfaulkner.blogspot.com.

 

Chicken any and every way… and Manseng…

I’m putting together orders for next week for a French wine packed tightly with a grape called Manseng and in this instance, it will be the white varietal. It is phenomenal with any and all things chicken, specifically one’s from Well Fed Farms due to the flavor intensities and fiber-esque firmness associated with fowl raised that proper, but that is our not so humble opinion. This wine also grabs the brininess out of shellfish and really adheres it to your senses with it’s own acidic-saline characteristics. That means you can slam oysters and douse them in a most happily slithering way.

I will only be bringing this in for next month’s Wine Club and whomever else wishes to preorder some and of course, for my own personal stash… because I’m an only child.

Orders must be in by Tuesday morning

$13/btl    

(club member quantity discounts apply)

The 95pt Reyvaan Syrah is completely gone unless a bottle or two falls off the truck heading elsewhere and my sales rep happens to be around to catch it. Rumor has it, it is being designated by the winery as restaurant pour only so it still will be accessible though probably at $80-$150 per bottle.

 

Wine as Dada… or Dada as wine…

… or, drink it if you will, or pour it on your head, in your pockets, and gargle with it if you will. Or drink it with foods that make no sense and is a revolting match. This concept could also apply to beer and cocktails but I think as far as anti-art goes, wine seems a more apropos marketable item for desecration, specifically with a culture least likely to not take itself so seriously, identifying itself as art and with all things art and thus by default, setting its many-times pretentious self up for the application.

I’ve would have never thought of applying Dadaism to wine culture until recently. I, like many in this biz have been perfectly happy letting wine do its thing as long as its thing was allowed to go merrily about being done… and without being accosted. Enter label branding and Costco.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Costco. I love going there for a whole day and not buying anything. I love pretending to be an employee, restacking the messy jean pile with the inhuman sizes on top and helping folks get the right palette of printer cartridges. I love checkout line antics, entering and exiting the wrong doors while flashing my passport, and watching the widescreen TV’s on leather lounges with a Polish and pop in hand. Costco is love.

But the stress to market and sell the maximum amount of everything has gotten a little beyond ridiculous. And since ridiculous can beget ridiculous… enter Dada. Enter Wine Dada. Enter the Dada Apothecary and Wine Shoppe where anti-wine is poured for the disillusionment of the masses.

…or not.

Side note… there appears to be an actual Dada brand of wine. This latest blurb is by no means associated with that brand as far as its promotion or degradation. It somewhat confuses me. Anti-Dada anti-brand Dada?

r

 

A Reading and Wine at Libation Station…

This Fri, May 6, 5pm – 6pm

A reading by author

Ana Maria Spagna
(author’s biography webpage)

from her new book

“Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness”

sponsored by
North Cascades Institute

Join us!

 

The Fine Art of Full-Contact Wine Tasting.

Industry wine tastings; the ones where sellers and buyers meet on hallowed cement floor ballrooms partitioned between palettes stacked high with cardboard encased receivables and shippables, where table to table waltzes take place… waltzes of sophistication and purpose by those and for those with educated and experienced palates and the authoritative ability to sign a check.

Professionals.

The entire mercantile psychology of gambit and counter offer, what one might spectrally expect in any realm of exchange and more, occurs here within this environment… the sheer essence of the piss and sniff, swirl and spit resides here. This is civilization as we know it at work.

Etiquette is the rule of the day, for ethics are for idealists and morals are for fools when it comes to the quest for what fermented manipulations deserve to be stacked around ceiling posts in the middle of an island between the bread and deli sections, or delicately coddled in mahogany and cherry rack systems far beneath in-climate venues of gastronomical delight. Courtesies extended ad nauseum with nods and handshakes until condensed sugars break down and transform into uninhibited pokes and jabs of remembrances both delightful and embarrassing… usually concerning a previous such event and its aftermath. Old friends are reunited. New acquaintances are embraced.

And then inevitably, something strange happens and always centric to the tasting tables because that is where the initiating offer is made and the handed-off acceptance is acknowledged. Here is where alpha and beta hierarchies collide. Seller and buyer whiplashing over nuance and intricacy morph from the most innocent differences of opinion into personal affronts to one and all’s being. Statures bend and sway, pushing and pulling as former business alignments are loathed and future ones are dreaded. Encroachments across tribal lines become blatant attempts to improve another’s position in the wine acknowledged pecking order of one-upmanship. “You have just got to taste this Cheverny Rouge before that cretin you came in with does!”

And yet, these are actually normalities. They are to be found in similar configuration at tattoo conventions and auto swaps. This is human nature. But specific to this industry, a worse thing occurs that is beyond reproach and worthy of extreme prejudicial intolerances. This is about tasting table hogs who plant themselves, elbows flared, anchored in front of the 20 bottles they fully expect to sample, beginning to end, regardless of the 80 other tasters trying to maneuver around them, daring anyone to attempt a disapproving stare, grunt, or end-around. This is where civil society fails at its most extreme.

There are no identifying characteristics that these people possess. They are the most normal seeming of waiters and buyers and managers, sommeliers: appointed, anointed, or self-proclaimed. They are geeks and ruffians, employees, employers, owners of their own domain. They are mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. And they are unable to comprehend that the 1-once pour of Bandol, the one that’s more than 50% Mourvedre or the Cornas that wholesales for $77, dripping with the ludicrousness of that pricing, can all be sampled, dissected, spit or swallowed via a step back from the table. They are relentless in their power grab to dominate the Savennieres Cuvee, the Reuilly La Grande Piece Rose or the Leredde Sancerre Red until they are bloody well ready not to.

Alas, the trials and tribulations one must negotiate to be a wine industry professional. And yet, when all the ruffled feathers and unabated friable asbestos settles. When all 75 wines are given their respective due and all the due-diligence can be logged, cataloged, and ranked notably in the proper queue, taking solace in knowing your efforts are solely for the benefit of all…

Mission accomplished.

 

Not much time for just one wine…

I absolutely miss wine I can take time with. Logistics of a wine mercantile require a continual impatient overwhelming of the senses. I think of barrage. A strafing of the palate. But to sit with one wine for hours. Days. Like the chase within a long seduction leading to a longer foreplay. Something like that.

 

…

What theme will I employ today? Daily themes are a necessity for successful boutique retail application. I think I still have many options available. I know I’ve yet to try the blue bottle ploy or the only French labels in English. I’ve already done the wines you can taste but are not allowed to buy. And of course, the totally naked elder wine shop owner, I’m saving until last.

 

Streamhenge…

Chrome covered land-locked dirigibles… leviathan arks containing a place for those to lay their heads with minimal amenities mounted on worn torn rubber… lined single file across the horizon, readying to snake their way… foothill to mountain bound and beyond.

The pass glistens with the dashed runoff hope of those whose puddled impatience drove them to attempt impassable summits too late or too early and monolithic monuments to the failed brave littered along the trail become testaments to some pretty shitty planning. Where are those Druids who threw holly and thistle to the wind. Where are their bureaucrats and accountants now? Just where did all the resale value go?

 

And what draws these newest of disenfranchised nomads to form alliances and strategies? What pulls them all in, onto vectors of diminished returns, trickling down into a faded American Dream?  Could it be Mother Abigale’s sister Emilia? Could it again be Beatrice?  Or is this the final call of Isis before she lets loose the wrath of the Nile?

 

And when the gates of Valhalla and Shangri-la slam shut, when the heavens are deemed at maximum capacity and near non-compliant, where will all the newest of unimproved also-rans and ne’re do wells go? What land would welcome and not shun the unclean, unkempt non-keepers and possessors of foundation and deed? What vista will be left to perch upon, slope to lean against, where pursuant pursuers, prosecutors of persistent persecutions shall forever cease and desist?

 

southwest of Bordeaux
edging over into Gasgogne
in a little village called Cahors

an old world Malbec
…w/the darkest
deepened fruit

rustic
and earthy
and
with chocolate chip cookies

 

A brief recent future history of wine and food…

I remember when a nibble was an afterthought. The idea of wine in and of itself existed solely in the glass and in the mind, independent from compliment and enhancement. It was strictly supplemental and all the subjectivity mechanisms were label centric. Pretty labels. Cult labels. Viral labels. And magnificent marketing entities drove the culture and it was easy, for they had templates of proven success to work with. They had milk, and sugar, soda and Budweiser.

Then a shift occurred in the food chain; food became still readily available but not immediately accessible. Food that time and patience were required to acquire and that unfolded into elements of attentiveness and due diligence and education and something deemed an art form… I believe it is called preparation. Community was re-established as cocooned humanoids began abandoning isolated transportation devices and pre-prepared mass produced individually wrapped mixtures of uncertainty. Allergies began disappearing as well as extra-large t-shirts and stretch pants.

Wine that was made strictly to be consumed to stimulate or dull suddenly integrated with that which was to sate. And then wine’s characteristics began to change. Acidity was elevated, minerality accentuated. White wines became crisp and refreshing. Red wines became thinner and structured. Drinking wine all of a sudden became part of an all encompassing process–something not having to go out of the way for–something not the center of attention and within only a couple of years, over two thirds of the world wine production transformed into a second thought. Something called terroir became primary and huge distribution entities that bribed, leveraged, and coerced their profits via legislation and bullying disintegrated… the first domino to tilt over, initiating the demise of all megalithic corporate control of the human race. Health care became readily available to all. The average age expectancy surged beyond the age of 124. The common cold was cured.

All this because some fearless visionary hero long ago took a nibble with a sip.

 

bookclub at dusk…

The ladies are in the loft, wascally wenches I want to say… but I won’t. They have their book of choice to discuss, dissect, and delve layer upon layer upon but I’m not hearing much in the way of book references concerning critique or review. I hear wascally wench noises though and I would suppose the wine is causing the conversation to drift. They have handmade salami and cheeses and the such and they are dousing them with a Jo Pithon Anjou Cab Franc. They have an old vine Macabeo. They soon may have something else that envokes the giggles. I’ll stay down here beneath the loft and take notes. That is what this is all about… notes.

 

 

6th Annual Pinot Gris/Grigio Corn Dog tasting.

Yes, it’s that time of year again when the daffodils are falling to the wayside, making room for tulip heaven… and corn dogs.

The Libation Station 6th(?) Annual Corn Dog / Pinot Gris / Grigio tasting

will commence on:

Saturday April 16th… all day.

Bring into the shop one or more corn dogs obtained from your preferred vendor of choice at the Tulip Festival Street Fair and get 4-free tastings of the Pinot Gris /Grigio’s of our choice.  All other wannabe sippers without corn dogs will be assessed a $5 no corn dog fee. The pours are the same and still well worth it.

Correct Corn Dog

Just in case one needs reminded:

Incorrect Corn Dog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taste the difference. You’ll never be able to accept street fair food the same again.

Don’t forget the yellow mustard.

 

test

Yes… this is a test

 

 

MM

It’s Manhattan Monday. That doesn’t mean there’s any sort of salute to Manhattanites or communal reverberations toward the Wall Street set. It means 1.5 jiggers of Bulleit Bourbon, one shot of Dolin Rouge vermouth and a dribble of orange bitters. Stirred and not shaken over ice and drizzled into an apropos martini vestibule. Plop some Dolin and sugar soaked cherries in if desired.

We used to use rye but good rye is expense and besides, we have 3.5 liters of Bulleit in the cabinet… Thank you Arizona Liquor Board.

All other Arizona agencies tho can bite it.

 

changes…

There is one basic mantra (okay, maybe several), but this one rings resonant with my particular frequency more than most:

We can be bought, but not bored.

Well, I am full blown bat shit crazy bored and things must change for the sake of all within physical and virtual reach of this most recent metaphorical reincarnation–me as a live wire looking to attach to ground. It’s not that I don’t have enough to do or need more filler on my plate. The problem is the quality of all the maniacal incidentals are rapidly becoming devoid of acceptable levels of inspiration.

I had hoped as did many that the State of Washington would have let loose of their grasp of the liquor monopoly they currently enjoy and open more possibilities for allowing Libation Station to really embrace all that is and can be libated from educational to retail to special event standpoints. There is another attempt via the ballot box circulating its way through the system to privatize liquor, but my hopes are not running too high for that to actually happen. This bizarre love / hate relationship the State has nurtured between the prohibitionists and revenue generators over the decades has not only been brilliant but basically bulletproof. My fingers are still crossed for a breakthrough at the ballot box though I’m not holding my breath.

Anyway, while our goal is still to maintain a physical brick and mortar presence, a sense of place, I’m looking more toward adjusting our focus within the virtual world, but NOT as an on-line retailer. As this blog references the chronicling of such wine shop antics; how we roll or don’t, I will continue to post little blurbs such as this as things unfold. I still want to maintain our wine retail license because access to all that great juice gracing our doorstep is still a driving force for my particular happiness factor. But we are at a point where a melding-like merger-esque transforming manifestation in a transcending way is, and organic by nature, a necessity. We are drawn to growing potentials of various localities. We like cross-pollination. We adore the overuse of the word “sustainable”. We may promote a revolution or two in the process. We might dis some standards along the way.

Part of the fun though will be wading into the murky processes to see what plays and what doesn’t. That’s the great thing about the virtual world–the immediacy of real-time statistical analysis, and by the looks of the decreased traffic on the sidewalks and the consistent increased hits on this blog and activity on Facebook and Twitter, this direction is a reasonable shift for now.

Stay tuned. This could get interesting… or not.

r

 

Obviously…

I’m trying out new templates. I’m bored.

 

Pre-order secured tho limited. It’s Bandol-esque Provence-ish-ness will be available soon. It will be pink. It likely will be somewhat Cinsault but does it matter?  It might nudge one to commit handwritten poetics on paper napkins while overlooking the Riviera. But which one?

 

New Guest Artist on Display

Anna Bostwick

Bio
Guest Artist at Libation Station   March 1 – April 30 2011
110 North 1st Street
Mount Vernon WA

 

Growing up with her dad in the Air Force, Anna’s family moved often.  As a young person she learned beginnings were scary and endings were usually sad; but with that came her interest and love for photography and her signature … “Come to a place where time stands still.”

Somewhere around the age of 14 Anna remembers asking her dad if she could borrow his Yashika camera to see how it worked. He had brought it home from Asia and as soon as she had it in her hands she was hooked and in high school, she received initial training in darkroom development and earned  awards for her skilled photography.

Just a few years into her marriage to husband Greg, came Alexa and then Kayla and that is when photography really took off for Anna. Her models were brilliantly beautiful and a constant source of change and excitement. Greg built a darkroom in the house and black and white film became a constant expense in their household. Anna had upgraded from her dad’s Yashika to a Cannon and then moved on to a Nikon N8008. It was a Bronica and learning medium format that really brought notice to her photography and she was asked to photograph weddings and family portraits. When the digital format hit the stores Anna waited until she felt the right camera had come along, that is when she purchased a Nikon D2X. Each body style brought her many hours of learning about the different cameras. With quicker lenses and new ways to achieve the ultimate photograph learning is constant and so much fun. Anna is constantly learning new techniques about photography and the different tools needed to be a success.

Anna is a wedding and portrait photographer, and she works for the  Lake  Stevens  School District in Public Relations allowing her to photograph students doing what they do best and creating a variety of publications for the school district.  Anna’s work and adventures have allowed her to shoot nature at its best while on location for various weddings and other bookings throughout Washington and  Oregon .  She has gathered quite a library of art photography.  Washington has so much to offer a photographer with its beautiful coastal range and wonderful mountains. It is easy to add nature photography to her resume and photograph this wonderful piece of the map.

 

prepost apologies prior to a mini-meltdown

Okay… I’ve reached a pinnacle type tipping point today.

No, I won’t open any wine on the shelf for you to taste to see if you want to buy it.

No, your children aren’t allowed in the shop (4 times). It’s not my rule. It says it on the State of Washington sign on the door you just read and then ignored.

No, I’m not going to spend a whole bunch of time with you over the perfect risk free $8 bottle of wine. There is really not much one can say about an $8 bottle of wine beyond thumbs up or down.

Yes, that bottle is $170. It’s not my fault you wouldn’t appreciate it’s significance.

Yes, I charge for tastings. Is that really so hard to believe considering we don’t appear to be in a Costco?

Yes, you can get that 2 bucks cheaper at Haggens, but then you wouldn’t get to be here torturing me.

Yes, the French still hate us as much as we hate them but oddly their wine tastes the same regardless.

No, it’s not alright to assume that I’ll assume the wine you took out of the shop will be the same when you bring it back just in case you made a mistake.

Sigh… better.

 

Pre-Valentine Day Poetry Reading and Wine Tasting.

Wine and Poetry:

Friday Feb 11, Libation Station

5:15pm

$10 at door includes tasting

Featuring poet and author, Andrea L. Weiser who will read selections from her new book, River Bed, now available through Lulu.com.

 

Andrea L. Weiser is a naturalist, archaeologist and author who derives inspiration from hiking, skiing, scrambling and kayaking the mountains, canyons, and rivers of the American west. She lives with her husband and daughter near the edge of wilderness and North Cascades National Park. Weiser’s poems and essays have been published in Prism, Kinesis, Images, Wambliota News, The Durango Valley Herald, Roofbeam, Surviving the Western State of Mind: A Montana Writer’s Daybook, The Eureka Journal, The Tracker, and American Whitewater.  Her passionate style is both captivating and revealing as she explores a relationship with the natural world and discovers insights about human nature. She holds a BA in writing and an MA in archaeology.

Comments about River Bed, now available through Lulu.com:

“These fine, lyric poems venture into the earth’s wild places while exploring the depths of the poet’s heart. Family, love, loss, ritual, and the mysteries of the natural world come alive in these poems. The poet engages them fearlessly, with an open heart and keen and generous sensibility. Readers will recognize River Bed as our shared world, where the poems flow as clear, fresh, and true as mountain snowmelt.”

—Tim McNulty, Poet, essayist, and author of Olympic National Park, A Natural History

“Keen scientific observations of the North Cascades come packaged in the metaphor and power of poetry. River Bed infuses the reader with a joy of life in all its complexities…I recognized all my familiar companions: winter wren, aspen leaves, roaring streams, cedars, and water ouzel….like climbing in the North Cascades in all four seasons.”

—Susan Zwinger, Author of five books on natural history