On My Way...

So, I decided to become a wine connoisseur...



Without knowing it, I guess, I started my journey in my teens drinking cheap white zinfandel and white wine spritzers - my mother's drinks of choice. In college, my now husband and I had a "friend" buy us a bottle of white wine to celebrate our 4yr dating anniversary. We were so excited to drink wine that we went out and purchased a new corkscrew and wine glasses. Unfortunately, our "friend" came back with a $3.99 bottle of grocery store wine. We both swore off wine forever.



When I started law school, I decided to become "sophisticated", so I started drinking wine again. I discovered that I liked red wine better than white wine and that wine glasses could be beautiful, so I started amassing what would eventually become a 100+ wine glass collection. Even though I knew that I like red wine, I could not tell you what merlot tasted like, and it was my drink of choice.



While in law school, I went to my first wine tasting at the Goose Watch tasting room in Lake Placid, immediately followed by my second wine tasting at the Swedish Hill tasting room in Lake Placid. I discovered that the experience of tasting wine, all different kinds of wine, could be wonderful. It was the first time that I thought about the wine that I was drinking. If I had to pin point the start of my love of wine, it would have to be at these first tastings.



After my trip to Lake Placid, on every vacation, I started to seek out wineries. I visited the Williams burg Winery in Virginia, small fruit wineries in Vermont, farm wineries in Massachusetts, and eventually, began to tackle some of the wine trails in New York and Canada. While in Greece, I visited a winery in Santorini and even attempted to tackle Napa and Sonoma on a 10 day trip to California. But, even after all of my travels and drinking, I still did not feel as though I got wine or was really tasting it. I knew that I liked many red wines, but if you asked me to pick out a merlot from a Syrah, I could not do it. If you asked me the floavor profile of a grape, I could not tell you. How is it that I could spend years drinking a beverage and not know what it tastes like?



So, I decided to become a wine connoisseur, i.e., someone who knows, understands, appreciates, and evaluates wine. I had no idea how to go about doing this.



I enrolled in and completed several classes through Wine Spectator and joined two wine clubs (not sure whether this will advance my understanding of wine) and have enrolled in a wine class for this fall. I have planned trips to Long Island, the Finger Lakes, and Napa all with the hope of learning more about wine.

So far, the Wine Spectator courses have made me realize that I did not know what many foods actually tasted like. Think of what a blueberry or a strawberry tastes like and you might conjure up a thought of immitation flavors.

I have begun to find flavors in wines that I did not notice before. I pay attention to to the color, clarity, aromas, flavors and finish.

I am not sure where this journey will take me, but so far it seems like a fun jounrney to be on.



We will see where this leads...