The Tasting Room Will Be Televised

An ode to friendship making the world go round. Plus why did you have to take Robert Redford from us, a good photography exhibit, a tuba guy, and existential questions.

Hello readers,

Here's to another week. Hit reply if you're so inclined and tell me what's new and on your mind.

Recently, my friend Michelle sent me a clip of two cartoon chickens watching a television show. The program was about a CEO in a Party City wig who went undercover to find out what was really going on with his business. Of course, this was a send up of “Undercover Boss”, the CBS reality show that I have only watched once.

Why?

About fifteen years ago, give or take, I had just completed my first year of graduate school, and Michelle and I agreed that we should go to Sonoma to celebrate. So, there was much celebrating, and much signing up for wine clubs that we’d later have to cancel, and much talking about life and its mysteries and so forth. Near the end of our trip, I wanted to go to the Murphy Goode Winery in Healdsburg, because I had a bee in my bonnet about sipping their Fume Blanc. Eons before this trip, another friend gave me a recipe for Thai Red Curry shrimp and said that Murphy Goode’s Fume Blanc was the perfect pairing for it, period, end of story, and she would gladly die on that hill, not that I was looking for a fight. Having said that, violent discernment has a way of leaving its mark on a person, and so off to Healdsburg Michelle and I went.

Once we arrived at the winery, we were told that we couldn’t go into the tasting room unless we signed a waiver. Whatever was happening in there was going to become a pilot for a show called “Get a New Job” or “Change Your Life” or something else that was, we’d learn, blatantly false. Michelle said, “Eh, let’s skip it.” And I said, “Absolutely not, we are doing this because THIS PILOT WILL NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.”

(Cue the maniacal villain laughter)

We signed away our dignity and walked into the tasting room. There, behind the counter, was a guy with enormous sideburns who claimed that he was from El Paso and had just uprooted his family and moved to Healdsburg (perhaps after a divorce?). I seem to recall him saying he worked in a supermarket and just wanted to do something dramatically different, which is why he was at Murphy Goode that day. Would working in a tasting room suit him? Hard to know. But Michelle and I sat there drinking wine and giving this man sage – and completely unsolicited – advice about the brilliant things he could do to make his life better, and the world a better place, probably. We did this while cameras were rolling. After we left, I texted another friend about what just happened and, again, guffawed about how this pilot would never see the light of day.

Then Michelle and I returned to our real lives and forgot about this perfectly splendid, perfectly cinematic afternoon.

Months and months later, I was taking a study break one evening, when a neighbor of mine posted on social media, “OMG, I’m dying! My neighbor is on ‘Undercover Boss’.” Curious, I asked, “Oh? Which neighbor?” She replied: “YOU.”

Initially, I thought “there's no way...” and then it dawned on me what happened. Michelle texted me and said basically, yep, we are on television, and it’s not a pilot, you buffoon, IT’S UNDERCOVER BOSS. Both of us started getting “Did I just see you on 'Undercover Boss'?” texts. My neighbor invited me to come watch my so-called fifteen minutes with her because she recorded the show.

The good news is that they cut all of the obnoxious footage of us telling what turned out to be the CEO of Kendall Jackson (parent company of Murphy Goode) what to do with his life, and for that I am eternally grateful.

The bad news? You know, I honestly can’t think of any. In a world like this where things are certainly feeling a little too TOO lately, it’s memories like these that remind me of where the good is and why it’s important to embrace it every chance we get.

Here's hoping you can find a little good to embrace today, too.

Writing prompt: Write about a time when things didn't turn out the way you thought they would, and it was better than you could have expected, and probably a little hilarious too.

"When I was young, I said to myself, "You've got to make the most of your life." It's all about taking risks. Push yourself to do as much exploration as possible. Find yourself. Because sometimes we think we've found ourselves, but it's only part of ourselves we've found. We haven't pushed ourselves far out there where we make mistakes and things don't work out, but at least we've discovered something. I felt that's what my life had to be."

– Robert Redford

Endnotes

On living the good life

As someone who writes about lives, and is curious about lives, I find the question of what it means to live a good and meaningful life endlessly fascinating, especially when the answer shape-shifts, for whatever reason. One of my favorite stories right now is about Kent Broussard, the 66-year-old retiree who enrolled at LSU because he had dreamed of playing tuba in the Golden Band from Tiger Land (which, as my mother will tell you, is the best band in the land). I am all about chasing your dreams, and pursuing that second act, so kudos to Kent for not thinking he's too old, or it's too late for him to do something that's important to him.

On togetherness

Another good-living thread that seems to be popping up lately is this idea of building community and togetherness in some form (gee, I wonder why). There's a cookbook author who is in the process of writing about the joys of picnics, and why it's important to have them. There's another author who has a book out now about how to create your own salon where people from different walks of life can gather to talk about life's great questions in a hopefully nonviolent way. And then there's Samin Nosrat's book Good Things, which came out this week. In it, she shares cherished recipes and other things for bringing people together in a non-perfect, but consistent way, and books that have inspired her to live a life full of awe and joy. Hit reply and let me know what the good or meaningful life means to you. I'll share some of the responses in a future letter.

On Robert Redford, 1936-2025

Robert Redford has always felt like one of these timeless, golden, perfect, graceful, thoughtful individuals that I would like to interview and maybe even hold close, but only with his consent. So I was sad to learn that he had passed away this week. I honored him by watching "All The President's Men" (oh, to have journalists taking truth to power!), because I didn't want to cry my eyes out again watching "The Way We Were." May that beautiful man rest in peace.

Southern Cooking in Paris

“My Paris is not the city of champagne and caviar,” the jazz pianist Hazel Scott wrote in an essay reprinted in Negro Digest Magazine in 1961. After a self-imposed exile from the United States, Scott found herself in France, among a galaxy of fellow artists, creating home in another country. “My Paris is a pot full of red beans and rice and an apartment full of old friends and glasses tinkling.”

Like Scott, the chef Mashama Bailey is using food to create a sense of place in her new home in Paris. After running her award-winning restaurant, the Grey, in Savannah, Ga., for more than a decade, Ms. Bailey is crossing the Atlantic and opening her new restaurant, L’Arrêt by the Grey, in one of the world’s most vaunted culinary cities.

Her cooking explores the cuisine of transience and movements, but will her understated, deeply personal approach — so steeped in the foodways of the Black Southern experience — resonate with Parisians? I'm guessing yes, but read Korsha Scott's New York Times story about Bailey's latest move by clicking here.

Take me back to London, 2.0

Very, very high on my wishlist right now is going back to London to see the V&A's new David Bowie Centre, the late singer's 90,000-object archive which has everything from costumes, musical instruments, concept art, notebooks, photographs and letters from fans all over the world (among other things). You can even request to see up to five items that aren't on display. As this archive shows, Bowie was constantly creating, exploring, experimenting. Before his death, he was apparently working on an 18th century musical set in London. And why not? If a project of his failed, he never got disheartened; he'd just pivot and move on. I think this center seems like a very good source of inspiration for creatives from all walks of life, which is why I'm just chomping at the bit to get back there.

If you're in Atlanta, be sure to check out...

"Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing" at the High Museum of Art, which I saw this week. The exhibit is about a movement in the 1920s and 1930s that pushed photographers to see things from different, dramatic perspectives and experiment with new techniques. The jump rope picture shown here was one of my favorites, but there are so many other great photos that aren't to be missed too. The show ends January 4, 2026, so if you live in or near Atlanta, make a point of seeing it before it's gone!

Where I hope you'll donate this week

This week in Mississippi, two men were found dead, both of them hanging from trees. The Southern Poverty Law Center has called for a thorough investigation of these tragedies. If you can, please donate here to support their important work.

Also, this week my local NPR station announced that it would be ending its weekday arts and culture show due to federal funding cuts. This makes me incredibly sad, so I hope you'll take a minute to donate what you can to a. an arts and culture organization that's important to you, and b. your local NPR/PBS station. We need them, and they need us too. Thank you.