Introduction

I know diddly squat about wine.

Well, that's an exaggeration actually. I know a few things about wine.

I spent my junior year studying abroad in France, the land of wine and cheese, which is a rather embarassing place to know nothing about wine. 

I know, or rather figured out quickly, that in France they categorize wine by the region in which it is made rather than by the type of grape, like we do here. I remember feeling like the comfortable rug of blind decision was yanked out from under me the first time I tried to order wine in France; unable to just say "I'll have the house red," or "I'll have a glass of merlot," like I had heard my mother say at restaurants before, I was stumped by the côte du Rhône's, Chateau d'Yquem's, and the Saint-Émilion's I saw on the menus instead of our standard merlot, pinot noir, pinot gris, etc. 

What's worse, is that my boyfriend is French. It seems like it is ingrained in his esprit what wines are good and bad, and which wines you drink with this, that, and the other thing. It was he who informed me (countless times) that the wine we were consuming was an apéritif and not just a table wine.

 Fortunately, spending my twenty-first year in France allowed me to dabble in wine, so I slowly determined what I liked and what I didn't like. Initially I thought I didn't like red wine, thinking it was all dry, so I stuck mostly to whites and the occasional rosé. But as I went along I accidentally stumbled into the reds, and now I seem to like everything!

Despite my forays into French wine, I'm still that person who goes into Giant or Kroger and picks the bottle with the prettiest bottle or label. Or I buy whatever is on sale and hope for the best. I still don't know precisely what I like and don't like (since I haven't really ever tasted anything I didn't like).

My personal goal and reason behind taking this class is to learn what I like and why I like it. I want to be more informed when I make my purchasing decisions. I want to be able to actually order a glass a wine at a restaurant without blindly pointing to a spot on the menu!

So hopefully, with the help of this blog, my highly entertaining and informative textbooks, and my plucky wine curiosity, I'll be able to achieve these goals!

Bring on the wine!