My Personal Experience With Wine

My personal experience with wine to date is actually not that impressive.  I've never really been much of a wine kind of guy; actually to be honest, I don't know why it is I'm taking this class.  It might be because my friends told me to take it with them, or it could be that I never had the chance to take World Regions with Professor Boyer and I always wanted to take a class with him before I graduated, but when it comes down to it, my lack of experience is the reason why I really did want to take this class.  See, the extent of my knowledge of wine before this year was purely the bottle my parents would crack open once or twice a year at home on the holidays (more likely than not, from Costco).  This past summer, I had the chance to try a mimosa for the first time.  I remember when my friend texted me to pick up a bottle of champagne, I went to the nearest grocery store and I stood in front of the selections lost as heck, until finally a kind lady who could tell I was confused helped me choose a decent bottle.  Luckily there were no college-aged people around to laugh at me, but I was definitely embarrassed.

Fast forward to this past winter break, nine other friends and I decided to go on a cheap cruise to the Bahamas aboard a Carnival cruise ship.  The policy for twenty-one and up guests is that each individual is allowed to bring one uncorked bottle of either wine or champagne.  All ten of us ended up bringing cheap bottles of names that I barely had ever heard of before; sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio, moscato, etc.  The one I remember clearly is the Barefoot Moscato that my friend, Esther, brought.  It was horribly sweet, to the point where I literally couldn't drink it anymore.  I remember watching my friend Jon (our group's "connoisseur") uncork the bottles, do the swirl with the glass, and all of that stuff, and remember thinking that it was pretty impressive that he knew all that.  That week on the ship, was probably my first REAL taste of wine in my life, and it got me that much more excited about taking this class this semester.

Which leads me to this point: this semester I am most looking forward to just learning as much as I can about the geography of wine, how to drink wine, how wine is made, etc.  Overall, I think I am most excited about just the experience of going and really "practicing" my wine-tasting skills and learning through that.  Professor Boyer has already helped me TRIPLE my knowledge of wine in the first few classes alone, which makes me realize that I'm going to be learning so much the rest of the semester.  Definitely excited about that and just enjoying my last semester here at Virginia Tech and all that this class has to offer.

Thanks!