Trump on Trump | The Spectator

The excellent wine of Mount Ventoux

On April 26, 1336, the poet Petrarch, accompanied by his younger brother, climbed up the windy slopes of Mount Ventoux in the Rhône Valley. He said that he was the first person to climb that Alps-adjacent peak, which isn’t quite true. But it may well be true that he was the first person to go mountain climbing for fun. Petrarch wrote about his outing in 1350 in a famous letter called “The Ascent of Mount Ventoux.” The twentieth-century German philosopher Hans Blumenberg (speaking of mountains) wrote that Petrarch’s climb marked “one of the great moments that oscillate indecisively between the epochs,” namely between the medieval world and the Renaissance. Today, we like mountains. They mean picnics, sight-seeing, natural beauty.

Hannah Moore

Why German-origin Americans keep quiet about their culinary contributions

Irish Americans are arguably the most ostentatious in their national celebrations. It is hard to imagine any other group getting a day off work and spending it turning the Chicago River green. I wrote of my own Irish pride in these pages last year. March 17 was the highlight of our social calendar. My grandfather inaugurated our city’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, which still runs in Great Falls, Montana, today. Montana — especially Butte — is famous for its Irish population, which makes up 15 percent of residents. But there is a significantly larger ethnic group in Montana, whose traces of national pride are almost imperceptible. According to a US Census Bureau survey in 2020, 24 percent of Montanans claim German ancestry.

Jane Stannus

The small town in Ontario with a world-class chocolatier

I’m sipping Madagascan hot chocolate out of white-and-gold Haviland Limoges, and nibbling on Venezuelan milk-chocolate bonbons, under an oil painting of Queen Victoria. I am on a visit to Guild Chocolates, “the finest chocolate shop in Petrolia,” in southern Ontario. The town’s population was circa 6,000 at the last census and on a Saturday morning, the chocolate shop is the place to be. During my visit, a sign on the Dickensian, wood-paneled storefront clearly indicates the shop is temporarily closed, but people keep turning the door handle and popping their heads in hopefully. Jaclyn Sanders, proprietor and chocolatier, calls warmly and apologetically out to them. Jaclyn opens her shop only one day a week: Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Food & Drink