Take 5, D.

Weekly Update 2026-03-22: The Ecstasy of Wine Edition

What happened during the week of March 15th - March 22nd, 2026:

🍇 As promised, I owe you a rundown about last Sunday's La Chaussette natural wine festival. Both L. & I enjoyed ourselves there (probably a little too much, as the wines were plentiful), with the threats of severe thunderstorms and tornado warnings doing little to deter our good times. We could have done away with the sudden burst of storms on the way home, though by the time our Lyft made it to our apartment, the rains had largely subsided.

🍷 The festival was held at Majorette, a space just on the St. Louis/Maplewood border that has rapidly become my favorite spot for mid-sized events. Tastings were offered on both the ground floor, as well as an upper deck that ringed three sides of the interior. Old World wineries were on the ground floor, with the New World wineries (really just the USA and Australia) holding court upstairs. While I had some New World favorites of Day and Middle Brow, the clear winners for the event were in the Old World section. Two Slovenian wineries, Sanctum and Pikasi+Rodica, were our favorites of the afternoon. Coming in as a strong second place were two French wineries, Fondugues-Praduges of Provençe and Domaine Mann of Alsace (interview in English here). I think we had only one sample we poured out and didn't finish; unfortunately, it was from a Missouri winery whom I shall not name.

🇸🇮 I gave Slovenia the edge for a lot of reasons, first off due to their relative rarity in St. Louis. It is far easier to find French wines here than for many Eastern European countries, so by that basis alone, the Slovenian wines stood out. They also use local or regional grapes that aren't seen elsewhere, such as Pinela, Refošk, and Malvazija Istriana. I also encountered a unique (in a good way!) blend I would not have considered before, such as Blaufrankisch and a cool-climate Syrah. Along with its Italian neighbors in the Veneto region, Slovenia has long been a proponent of "orange" or skin-contact whites, and the offerings of this style from the Slovenian winemakers were the best to be had last Sunday. Oh, and the final selling point for me? They're currently being sold for a range between $17 and $21, which is a phenomenally competitive price. I ended up buying Sanctum Lepitir, Rodica Refošk, Pikasi Pinela, and Sanctum Bubamara, which I'll pick up possibly sometime next week.

🌡️ How was the rest of the week besides the wine festival, you ask? Well, we both needed a couple days to fully recover from the festival. I'm still glad we went, but as we both get older, it becomes harder for either L. or myself to bounce back physically or mentally. Our recoveries lined up with the rollercoaster weather that went through St. Louis this week, with the storm on Sunday 03-15 leading to wintry conditions from that night through Tuesday 03-17 which included snow flurries(!). Starting on Wednesday 03-18, spring quickly gave way to an early summer, leading to blazing clear skies and highs near 90(!!) on Sunday 03-22. Since L. had to work again on Saturday 03-21, we made plans to enjoy the outdoors at Route 66 State Park, aka the former town of Times Beach, MO on Sunday afternoon.

🌱 As of Friday 03-20 at 09:46 St. Louis time, it was the Spring Equinox. The next day, it was the start of Nowruz. Happy days to those who celebrate!

Items Of Note From Last Week:

Outbound Actions

Internal Obligations

Media

More Info About The Media Selections From This Week:

The unexamined mind is not worth having, according to the ovoid-headed Marc Andreessen. Perhaps he's telling on himself here as someone who is afraid to look inside himself, scared at what he may find. In any case, he's profoundly wrong about introspection, according to not just Westenberg., but practically every thinking person out there (and this is only a slight exaggeration). Introspection is something that guides one's actions, so if Marc proudly says he has no introspection, how or why should I take his advice, seeing as how he doesn't have the capacity to reflect upon what he says before saying it? Perhaps Liz Lopatto's take in The Verge has some merit, as Marc and other billionaires may be suffering from AI psychosis. These folks should be pitied, not hailed or emulated. Another type of danger coming from hailing the rich can be seen with Miuccia Prada of her namesake fashion house. She may not be suffering from AI psychosis, but she has been given the benefit of the doubt for decades, due to her youthful exposure to the Communist Party in Italy. Such exposure does not make her one of the "good" billionaires, or even one with some sort of awareness of her situation when compared against other rich folks. Blackbird Spyplane goes deep into her life, and it's well worth the time to read what they find out.

Speaking of pity, consider the poor landscaper who has the unenviable job of trying to make an office park in southern Texas look palatable. The heat and dry conditions already act as detriments, but if you were to choose your plant life correctly, you could find native plants that can thrive in this climate...or, as Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't explores, you could make your office park look like it came from the Midwest, with truly disastrous and misery-inducing results. And yes, your ears aren't deceiving you, the guy running this YouTube channel is clearly from Chicago. He's also known for kayaking in the Chicago River back in 2023 and encountering a massive snapping turtle dubbed "Chonkosaurus." I also have pity for the poor sushi chefs who work in conveyor-belt restaurants. It takes steady hands to continually slice fresh seafood to keep up with the appetites of those dining on them, especially if you have a hearty eater like Solo Travel Japan / Food Tour. His goal was to eat ¥5000 worth ($31.39 at the current exchange rate of ¥159 to $1) of sushi, with many of the plates costing $1. Well, he didn't go over his budget, but he still had 24 plates of sushi! I was impressed with the variety of offerings, but all I could think of were the chefs in the kitchen slicing like mad in order to keep up with the orders.

Ryan and Craig of ABV Chicago fame would have both enjoyed their time at La Chaussette, had they attended. However, as they'll both readily admit, wines aren't their strong suits. Their recent episode has them approaching wine from the beer world, sampling 4 beers inspired by wines in different ways. Some of the beers used wine grapes in with the beer, while others were aged in freshly-used wine barrels. The results were as varied as the process, but they were both unanimous with their favorite one on the show. Also going outside of their usual comfort zone is Raina of Japan Guide fame, as she explores an area of western Japan not usually seen by those who make Hiroshima their westernmost stop while touring on Honshu. She spends 3 days in Yamaguchi Prefecture, which at one point allowed her to walk underwater in a tunnel to the neighboring island of Kyushu!

I've gone on at length about how I feel that the car industry as a whole, and the American one in particular, has entered a lost decade or two. The Verge views the "great EV whiff" as another symbol of the driftless nature of the US auto industry, with their half-hearted efforts to get into the EV world that were stymied by poor planning, supply issues during COVID, and the aggressiveness of the Trump administration's rollback of incentives in favor of fossil fuels...which, as we're seeing now, are most certainly affected by the fighting in Iran. Trashfuture manages to have a timely episode about Iran that wasn't overtaken by events, in which they talk about the crumbling of "imperial omnipotence." I'd throw in the decline of the US auto industry as just another facet of this type of crumbling, so in a cynical way, their whiffing on EVs is a feature and not a bug.

Finally, let's end with music. Not many people are watching the Oscars, so perhaps its move to Netflix in a couple years makes sense. Regardless of whichever outlet airs the awards, they will always make time for movie soundtracks, as those awards are always a highlight. Flow State commemorates various movie soundtracks in a nearly 2-hour podcast, covering all of this year's soundtrack nominees along with famous themes both old and new. It's one of the reasons why I've had Morricone's "The Ecstasy Of Gold" stuck in my head for a few days (and also why random Metallica songs inevitably follow.)

Picture time!

Let's try a new feature to reward folks who've made it this far in the blog entry.

The warmer weather and the start of spring means the return of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds is imminent. In the early days of learning how to focus with my Canon rangefinder, I often used our hummingbird feeder as a subject. Here's the best photo from sometime in June 2025, shot on Ilford FP4 Plus black-and-white film.

It was around this time that I felt I understood how to focus with this camera.

  1. Since I canceled the Pika account that would have hosted the Second Blog, I felt it would be confusing to call one of its supporting spreadsheets by that name. I took a page out of Warren Ellis' naming convention for his projects, and tied in a random place generator to give me coordinates to anywhere on Earth. Once a random location was picked, I'd zoom in on a map to find a potential name, which is how I came up with Project Broome.↩

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