Wine Over Time

Growing up in India, the only two alcoholic drinks that my parents drank were whiskey and beer. When we moved to the US when I was 9, my parents added a few more drinks to their repertoire: gin and tonics, vodka sodas, and even tequila. But according to my mother “I just don’t like wine, it doesn’t taste good,” and as a result, wine was never an option to even consider.

It wasn’t until the summer after my freshman year of college when I studied abroad in Florence that I began to drink wine for many reasons, including 1) I was old enough to drink there, 2) red wine was a staple at the dinner table of our hosts, and 3) it was really inexpensive. While I began to tolerate (and even like!) the taste of wine, all I really knew about wine was that I liked red wine, because according to the Italians, that was the only kind of wine that true wine drinkers liked. I started to drink wine casually in college and when I moved to New York, realizing it was often either the most sophisticated option or the cheapest option.

When I moved to California, wine became an even more important part of my life and something I wanted to understand better. Wine was always available at dinners, friend’s birthday parties and work off-sites were held in Napa, and I began to think that just maybe, white wine was pretty good too. My appreciation for wine has only increased over time, and as I’ve spent more time visiting vineyards in Napa, Sonoma, and around the world in Spain and Italy, I’ve realized I want to know more about how it’s made, how wines differ based on region, grape, country, vintage, etc., and what the wine industry looks like so I’m pretty excited to take this class and learn exactly that.