The first time I tried wine in high school, I hated it. My parents always drink reds, and when I took my first sip of their wine I immediately wanted to spit it out. Of course when I was offered a glass with dinner I never turned it down, but often it was a serious struggle to finish it. My tastes have definitely changed a bit since I tried wine, but during the semester I am looking forward to appreciating a wider variety of wines.
In the past
few years since I first tried wine, I have definitely found a couple that I
enjoy. I mainly enjoy white wines, namely Moscato because it is super sweet and
easy for me to drink. The first time I tried Moscato I instantly became more
optimistic about finding a type of wine that I actually want to drink. I have
now branched out to some less sweet white wines as well as some pink wines, but
I still don’t wholeheartedly like any reds.
I generally
drink wine a few times a week at home with my roommates. When I am home, my
parents have a glass or two of wine with dinner every night. Lately, they have
been really into drinking different bottles of Malbec. However, due to its cheap
price, Franzia is usually the wine of choice when I’m with my roommates or friends at school. The picture to the left is my friend Stephanie and me (I'm on the left) enjoying some pink wine. My roommates and I buy
a lot of Franzia Sunset Blush and White Zinfandel, and on the rare occasion we will buy
the Chillable Red. We drink it with dinner, after dinner, while watching TV,
while getting ready to go out for the night, while tailgating, you name it.
Having a box of wine in the townhouse at all times is a must so we can all have
a glass or two whenever we feel like it. However, I have mostly stopped
drinking it before going out and drinking liquor because that has given me a
nasty hangover a couple of times. While I was in New Zealand over winter break
I drank a lot of their local Sauvignon Blanc, which I enjoyed. We did a wine
tasting in Queenstown and I found that I liked a type of New Zealand sweet dessert
wine best.
In Geography
of Wine this semester, I am definitely looking forward to learning more about
wine in general. I don’t really know much about how to find wines that I like
or how to identify the “notes” of a wine while drinking it, so I hope to learn
how to do those things. I also would like a better background of the history of
wines in different parts of the world. I am especially interested in learning
about New Zealand wines because I went there over winter break and tried a
bunch of the wines made there. Learning how wine is typically made is also
something I am looking forward to, as I don’t know much about the process or
aging or anything like that. I can’t wait to delve deeper into the vast world
of wine!
