Flings and Things

Always at (or near) the cutting-edge issues of upper-middle-class America (Northwest subspecies) Seattle Weekly devoted the cover of its 26th issue (Sept. 22, 1976) to the topic of "liberated marriage." Pioneering relationship journalist Jane Adams interviewed couples who considered the occasional off-leash fling as beneficial to successful modern wedlock. Editor-publisher David Brewster contributed a farsighted survey of the birth pangs of serious wine making in Washington, praising the respectful way the new Ste. Michelle winery near Woodinville fit into the pastoral Sammamish Slough landscape, and predicting a great future for the brand.

In the arts pages, the present writer memorialized Philadelphia String Quartet cellist Charles Brennand, dead at 47 of heart failure, and reported on the surviving Philly members' determination to play on. Gordon Bowker (writing as "Lars Henry Ringseth") lauded the opening of a new restaurant in Uptown called le Tastevin. In a way, le Tastevin is still there, both physically (as Kaspar's) and spiritually, in the wineshop at Denny Way and First Avenue North, where the restaurant's founder, Emile Ninaud, still purveys fine wines to discriminating customers.

rdowney@seattleweekly.com