My Personal Experience with Wine

Hello!  My name is Julia Hosick and this is my brand new wine blog!  I'm a senior at Virginia Tech double majoring in French and International Studies.  As a French major, one would assume that I'm "into wine" and have a lot of experience with it, but that's not exactly the case.  Having traveled a lot I've been exposed to many types of wine but I haven't really learned how to drink it and appreciate it, and I haven't exactly taken advantage of all the exotic wine drinking opportunities that have been presented to me over the years.  My most significant wine experience thus far has been visiting a winery, Domaine de l'Aumonière, in Cour-Cheverny, France this summer.  The group I was with toured the winery, saw how the wine was made, and participated in a wine tasting.  Besides this, I have only occasionally had wine with meals, and this isn't even a frequent occurance.  In other words, I would describe myself as a wine novice.

Domaine de l'Aumonière wine tasting

Inside the winery

Based on the wines that I've had, I tend to prefer white wines, probably just because they aren't as strong and are (at least in my experience) generally sweeter.  Though I can't think of the names of any specific wines off the top of my head, I do like Moscato.  I'm not sure if this counts as a wine exactly, but my favorite drink is a kir royale, a combination of champagne and crème de cassis.  Another (cheaper!) variation is a kir, in which white wine replaces the champagne.  Drinking lots of those while traveling this past summer helped open me up to drinking white wine and getting used to the flavor a little more.  Since then, I've started to drink wine more than I used to, although I still have a tendency to stick with white wines.

In this course, I hope to learn more about different types of wine and how to appreciate them.  I think it will be interesting to learn what types of wines come from different parts of the world, and how things like geography and climate influence the taste of the wines.  I also hope to learn a lot of practical knowledge about drinking wine, for example what foods to pair with certain wines, how to identify good wines, how to properly "taste" a wine, etc.  I'm also looking forward to expanding my palate and trying many different wines that I would otherwise not have as much exposure to.