The Sunday Digest 071
The 'getting logged out' to 'champagne' pipeline.
Welcome to The Sunday Digest — a free Sunday newsletter featuring long (and some short) reads, original columns, things I’ve saved over the last week, relaxing playlists, episodes releases, exclusive product drops, and more. Yes, you can reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you. Or, if podcasts are more your speed on Sundays, we’ve got that too.
Editor’s Note: My sincere apologies for missing last week’s Sunday Digest. Truthfully, I forgot to schedule the newsletter and only realized it Monday morning.
Sunday Read › What Makes a Champagne Vintage Great? Ask a Deep Learning Model
by Tim Barber for Wired
After an earth-shattering tummy ache in 2022, I largely swore off champagne. Drinking a glass during the cocktail hour of a wedding simply didn’t seem worth it at the time. Besides that, however, I’ve never had an affinity for champagne for the following reasons: the cost, my palate, and the fact that it gives me a horrible headache the next morning if I go one flute too far.
But in 2024, I’ve made a decision that I want to understand my palate better. My claims of “having a bad palate” my entire life may just be a case of me not wanting to confront the fact that I pretty much know nothing about wine, champagne, or most spirits for that matter.
Presenting this week’s Sunday read.
Firstly, it turns out that nighttime temperature is far more critical than anyone suspected. “If it’s over 13 or 14 degrees Celsius (55.4 to 57.2 Fahrenheit) at night, the secondary metabolism of the vines is not efficient, and the correlation with quality is noticeably negative,” says Bunner. In fact, a profusion of cool nights in 2014 (despite the blazing hot June) was one of the factors suggesting a stronger year.
Secondly, the issue of hydric stress—the effect either of a lack of water, or too much in a short period—is, according to Bunner, more impactful than some have imagined, and set to increase as weather patterns become more unpredictable.
Now? I feel like this guy.
Read in full here.
New Episode › Retail Therapy 063: Babygirl Men, Bookshelf Wealth, and Olive Oil Ice Cream
Are we obsessed with babygirl men? Do we have "bookshelf wealth"? Are we hot enough to be reading the entire gamut of Hot Guy Books? Does olive oil and maldon salt actually taste good on vanilla ice cream? Answers to those questions and more. We also offer a mea culpa on what's been called the "Shein of skiwear" by some listeners, the micro-interaction of tasting a bottle of wine at a restaurant, Campell Hunt Puckett's recent TikTok rise, wishlist items, and more.
Listen to Retail Therapy on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube (see above), and anywhere else podcasts are found.
The Sunday Haiku: No, I Will Not Type My Password Using The Annoying Keyboard On The Screen
Wait, are we logged out?
Ugh, do you know the password?
Let’s watch something else.
Things I Saved This Week
Note: For some reason, Substack has started to alter the thumbnails of these saved posts from Instagram. Hopefully they fix soon as this just doesn’t feel very aesthetically pleasing to me.
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