I remember, when I was younger, how my parents would ask me whether or not I would like a taste of the beer or wine they were drinking, to which I would always reply "No! It tastes horrible!" "It's an acquired taste," my dad would say. At the time I could never see myself actually liking or even enjoying something that tasted so radically different from other tastes I was accustomed to. As I've grown older, though, I've realized that my parents asked me if I wanted to taste alcohol periodically because they wanted to make sure that it wasn't a mystery to me. Because drinking alcohol is a social activity, people encounter it at some point in their lives. My parents aren't really interested in wine or a high knowledge of alcohol, for that matter (they both like bourbon and coke, mom likes wine, dad likes beer). Because my parents are only casually knowledgeable on alcohol, my knowledge is obviously limited as well; the only wine I had really tasted before college was Zinfandel and "Riunite Lambrusco," limiting my knowledge of wine only to sweet red or white/pink wines.
This past fall semester I began living off campus in a house with two roommates. Having been friends with them for quite some time, I knew mildly what their interests were: chemistry, biology, computers, video games, cooking, and...wine, but when I started moving in I didn't expect to see over 90 bottles of wine on racks in the living room and hallway! One rack is for drinking; the other, for aging. What usually happens at our house is that music will be turned on while we all sit around the dinner table playing board games and drinking wine together. My roommate, Matt, who owns all of the wine, is in the wine business: he sells wine, tastes wine locally, travels to various wineries, and travels to huge wine tasting shows where several hundred bottles may be opened at a time. The first "high-end" wine that I drank from Matt's collection was Cabernet Sauvignon and it was an entirely different taste than what I was used to with the sweet wines; it's still my favorite to date!
Last semester was when my wine knowledge really began; since then, I've been exposed to many, many varieties of wines from all around the world. I've tasted many wines at the Vintage Cellar in Blacksburg, Va. (I even bought two bottles of Heritage Grand Vin Bourgeois red wine from Bekaa Valley, Lebanon), and I've also been to Attimo Winery in Christiansburg, Va. So, I would say that, because of my roommates and their friends, I have been exposed to more wine knowledge in the past year than I have in my entire life. I'm really looking forward to learning more about wine this semester in my course and from my friends, but I'm also really excited to see what makes wine so different from region to region around the world!
