Chapter 1: Introduction
Welcome to my blog of wine! In case you were wondering, yes, I like Lord of the Rings a whole heck of a lot. I felt it was a fitting name because I recruited some of my friends to help me with this class (like finding wines, wineries, and making dinners to test wines with). They were extremely enthusiastic, but that's probably because they're all really big fans of wine. In fact, they made fun of me for enrolling in this course because I am not.
My first experience with wine was smuggling a bottle of Fish Eye white wine into the dorms freshman year. A friend from high school gave it to me and another friend, Evan (who is included in the current group that is helping me). We shoved it into a backpack and brought it to Evan's dorm room, where we poured it into Hideaway Pizza cups and tried to guzzle it. At that point, I had VERY LITTLE experience with alcohol, and one hundred percent expected it to taste like sparkling grape juice. I was oh-so-very wrong. It was really bitter and made my teeth hurt (???) and I HATED it. I sipped as much as I could simply because it was free alcohol, but it was disgusting. I could not give you any description to its taste because I tried to swallow it literally the moment it hit my tongue. Wine lovers are cringing right now, I know.
Fast forward to the summer after my sophomore year. I registered to go on a trip to Austria with the OU Women's Chorus. The director, Dr. Z, kept mentioning how excited he was to go because we were headed to Eisenstadt, a charming town that is the capitol of the Burgenland region, a region known for its rich red wines. Over the course of our two weeks, we would be treated to wine samplings and tastings at different restaurants and receptions after our concerts. Local places would donate a few bottles for guests to try, and some of us would even be sent home with little bottles of our own. Of course, that all meant nothing to me. I tried just about every wine that was sat in front of me on the trip, and they all tasted mostly the same but with a few noted differences (I definitely preferred white wine, as they tended to be sweeter).
So here we are in the present. I avoid wine if at all possible aside from the occasional glass of Cupcake wine that my friend Liz keeps in her fridge because it tastes like sparkling grape juice. I feel very called out by some of these lecture videos, but I also feel very encouraged. I enrolled in this course to learn how to enjoy wines more by actually identifying what I'm tasting, and that's exactly what I'm gonna learn! I'm extremely excited because I really want to appreciate the effort put into bottles of wine and NOT just spring for that $15 bottle that I know will taste like Welch's. I know it's cheesy, but it makes me feel fancy to know that I could actually drink wine with my dinner and enjoy it and talk about it, so I can't WAIT to make some fettuccine alfredo with my friends and get to work.
My first experience with wine was smuggling a bottle of Fish Eye white wine into the dorms freshman year. A friend from high school gave it to me and another friend, Evan (who is included in the current group that is helping me). We shoved it into a backpack and brought it to Evan's dorm room, where we poured it into Hideaway Pizza cups and tried to guzzle it. At that point, I had VERY LITTLE experience with alcohol, and one hundred percent expected it to taste like sparkling grape juice. I was oh-so-very wrong. It was really bitter and made my teeth hurt (???) and I HATED it. I sipped as much as I could simply because it was free alcohol, but it was disgusting. I could not give you any description to its taste because I tried to swallow it literally the moment it hit my tongue. Wine lovers are cringing right now, I know.
Fast forward to the summer after my sophomore year. I registered to go on a trip to Austria with the OU Women's Chorus. The director, Dr. Z, kept mentioning how excited he was to go because we were headed to Eisenstadt, a charming town that is the capitol of the Burgenland region, a region known for its rich red wines. Over the course of our two weeks, we would be treated to wine samplings and tastings at different restaurants and receptions after our concerts. Local places would donate a few bottles for guests to try, and some of us would even be sent home with little bottles of our own. Of course, that all meant nothing to me. I tried just about every wine that was sat in front of me on the trip, and they all tasted mostly the same but with a few noted differences (I definitely preferred white wine, as they tended to be sweeter).
So here we are in the present. I avoid wine if at all possible aside from the occasional glass of Cupcake wine that my friend Liz keeps in her fridge because it tastes like sparkling grape juice. I feel very called out by some of these lecture videos, but I also feel very encouraged. I enrolled in this course to learn how to enjoy wines more by actually identifying what I'm tasting, and that's exactly what I'm gonna learn! I'm extremely excited because I really want to appreciate the effort put into bottles of wine and NOT just spring for that $15 bottle that I know will taste like Welch's. I know it's cheesy, but it makes me feel fancy to know that I could actually drink wine with my dinner and enjoy it and talk about it, so I can't WAIT to make some fettuccine alfredo with my friends and get to work.
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