The Aspiring Wine-o

My favorite family dinners are the ones with my Uncle Brett and Aunt Carol, the family wine-o's. They are extremely passionate about wine; they are in a wine club, and they have traveled around the country and around the world to try different wines. They always bring a couple bottles to dinner to share with everyone, and the conversation that these bottles spark is amazingly interesting and entertaining. Uncle Brett loves to make a show of sniffing all of the aromas in his glass, and he always has a story to tell about where he got the wine, how so-and-so used a special technique to make it, and how he and Aunt Carol managed to get it home to Pennsylvania. For them, wine is a way of life, and they have met so many people and had so many unique experiences because of it.

I've tasted a lot of the wines that Uncle Brett and Aunt Carol have brought to dinners, and I've sampled a lot of the wines that my parents buy (they're pretty into wine too), but sadly I don't think I've developed much of an appreciation for any of them. At this point, they all taste pretty similar to me. I prefer whites to reds, and I can differentiate between dry and wet, but other than that, the subtleties of the wines I taste are lost on me.

When Uncle Brett pulls out a bottle of wine, he can say what region it came from, what grapes were used, and probably talk for hours about the history of the wine and the area it came from. This background makes the wine all the more special to everyone. Unfortunately, my knowledge of wine history and geography is limited to zero, so when I go to the store to buy a bottle to share with friends, I feel pretty overwhelmed by all of the options and labels.

I hope that by taking Geography of Wine at Virginia Tech, I will learn how to notice the subtleties in wines and how to speak intelligently about them. I hope that I can share the stories of the bottles that I open with friends and family and understand their history and geography. I would love to be able to join in on the wine conversations around the dinner table with my family, and I would love to be able to speak as passionately about my favorite wines as Uncle Brett and Aunt Carol do. I'm excited to begin my journey to becoming a wine-o this semester!