Let’s take time out to celebrate the 75th birthday of a sturdy icon. No, you fools who were thinking I was talking about Paul Gre-guttless are wrong. I’m talking something younger…like the Deception Pass Bridge. This New Deal project cost Seattle $304,775 to complete. Compare that to today’s Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement cost of some $3.1 billion and it’s easy to realize that it really was a deal. The Bridge spans 900 feet and is a steel cantilever design. Depending on the tide, ultimate losers can expect a jump off the bridge to fall 180 feet (depending on the tide) into the crisp, cold Puget Sound. The bridge was opened to traffic on July 31, 1935, and on Saturday at 12:27pm, the bridge will close for a procession of pre-1935 cars followed by a fly-by of some Whidbey-based taxpayer jets. Unlike the I-90 sinking bridge to Mercer Island, this bridge has never been rebuilt nor had a major overhaul. Another memoir left behind by “The Greatest Generation.”
Face it, if you are an old-timer, you have seen those Banner Bank tv commercials showing Eric Dunham in some sort of chain-mail, six degrees of separation that ultimately begins and ends with the bank. Okay Eric, so you might be as famous as Kyle MacLachlan around these parts, but you still ain’t put out a movie quite like “Blue Velvet”…and if you did, I don’t really want to know about it either.
Eric’s a Walla Walla native so forgive him. He’s also a four-year Navy vet, so forgive him for that, also. His first wine, a 1995 cabernet, scored an “exceptional” from some World Wine Championships deal so he went on to establish Dunham Cellars in a hangar at the airport in 1999, after apprenticing at L’Ecole No 41. Eric’s a guy’s guy as he is one picture-esque dude with a fondness for dogs (re: Three-legged red wine and Four-legged white wine).
Dunham Cellars produces a skippy Shirley Mays chardonnay, also from Lewis Vineyard, southeast of Prosser, along with a cabernet, syrah, riesling, and a late-harvest riesling (RS 23.1%), while also spitting out a Double River-Lewis cabernet, a left-bank ‘Trutina’ from Double River-Lewis-Frenchtown Estate, a Columbia Valley syrah, two single-vineyard syrahs, and a “Pursued By Bear” cabernet that is partnered with Kyle MacLachlan. I know…women, keep your clothes on, Kyle is too busy right now for you, kinda like me.
This wine was served with the main course of my Friday afternoon grill session. My vegetarian plate included white corn-on-the-cob, portabello mushrooms, red-green-orange-and-yellah bell peppers, Walla Walla sweets (onions), and a freshly-mowed ribeye from Double-D Meats in Mountlake Terrace. A great combo!
Deeply extracted in glass to near-black, this single-vineyard merlot fills the nares with liver-kicks from Nutcracker plum fairies. A full-bodied merlot that could single-handedly hammer-fist a similarly-priced pinot noir. Flavors burst with black cherry, blueberry pie, and a minty business end. Tasted at 54-71 degrees F on the IR temp gun. Gorgeous and intelligent. No wonder other wine bloggers have not reviewed this wine.
Alcohol: 14.8%. RS <0.2%. TA 0.68. pH 3.7. 432 cases. 100% merlot. Oak: 78% French, 22% USA, all new. Released Dec. 1, 2007. Release price: $75. Costco Covington price: $39.97. Music pairing: “
Summertime Blues” by Eddie Cochran. Value: $40. This is WAwineman…uncorked, uneducated but not uncouth.
