Tag: journal

Reviewing the Lebanese wine by Ardoum called the Red Four

Lebanese Wines: Ardoum The Red Four 2020

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Name: Ardoum The Red Four 2020
Type: Red Wine
Grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Grenache, Merlot
Year: 2020
Country: Lebanon
Region: Mount Lebanon
Date Consumed: October 7, 2025

I brought a 1.2 kg eye of round home with me yesterday, and I decided to make a braised roast. For that, I needed a good red wine. If you know me, you’d know that I no longer use “cooking wine” to cook. If it isn’t a wine I can drink, then I won’t allow my food to drink it either. I’m the one eating the food that’s been cooked with that wine, after all… And so, that’s how I ended up uncorking the award-winning blend by Ardoum called The Red Four. (Obviously, it’s called The Red Four because it’s made of four grapes: cabernet sauvignon, syrah, grenache, and merlot.)

Ardoum’s The Red Four 2020, once poured in the glass, displayed a lovely ruby dress. Full-bodied with supple tannins, I got notes of ripe black and red fruits and hints of tobacco, spices, and a tiny bit of leather.

Overall, this wine was much better than what I remembered it to be, even better than their Cabernet Sauvignon 2018.

While we’re here, and since I got so much pleasure out of The Red Four 2020 last night, allow me to also share a quote from a book I’m reading now — Dialectic of Enlightenment by Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer:

Pleasure is, so to speak, nature’s vengeance.

Driving in a Sea of Clouds

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A sea of clouds beneath us.
Mountain chains
like frozen shadows
of surging waves.
The setting sun sinking into the fog
reminds me of the
yolk of a hard boiled egg.
And then, there’s the silhouette of
a mountain, like an island in the middle of
the sea of
clouds, and its peak reminds me of
the tip of
an iceberg.

The steering wheel of the car I’m driving
suddenly feels like the helm of a massive ship,
and I am the captain of that ship.

And now, the car dives like a submarine
into the fog.
I turn the headlights and the fog lights on.
I turn the hazard lights on,
and
its
clicking
sound
becomes our metronome.

I drive slowly,
very slowly.

My wife is in the back seat
next to my seven-month-old son,
who’s sleeping peacefully
in his car seat.

I keep on driving,
and
I drive slowly, very slowly.
And the fog
never
ends.
We can’t see anything.
“I can’t see anything,” my wife says.
“Please, be careful.”
Will the fog ever
end?
And the fog never ends
until it suddenly
finally
ends,
and
we can see
the road ahead of us
again.



October 2, 2024: Stupidity Is Masculine

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In Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human, we read:

The unfeminine. “Stupid as a man,” say the women; “Cowardly as a woman,” say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unfeminine.

Reading this, we immediately grasp the following: that stupidity is a masculine trait. And who is brave enough to disagree? Does this not explain one of the greatest memes ever? “Hold my beer,” the meme says. But it means, “I’m about to do something stupid.”

It’s how men have fun.

Think of your friends now, my man. The manliest is the one who’s willing to unleash his inner stupidity in order to have a good time.

“Let’s do something stupid,” great men say all the time.

The man who’s never willing to make an ass of himself is unmasculine. He is half-man and half-loser. Chances are he doesn’t have a lot of friends.

Any man who has had “guy time” or has used the phrase “out with the boys” instinctively knows this. Stupidity is what fuels the good time men have when they’re at a safe distance from women.

They crack open a cold one, and the good times begin.