Where I come from.

Hello!

I’m Audrey, and I am a senior at the University of Oklahoma! I’ll be graduating in May with a degree in Microbiology with hopes of advancing on to medical school. Although I am a scientist, I have always made my love for travel, art, and music a top priority. With this, I have found myself in wonderful places near home and abroad that have exposed me to the wonderful world of wine — visiting Italian vineyards and and enjoying a concert or art exhibition with glass-in-hand, to name a few. As Luis Fernando Olaverri said, “wine is the only art work you can drink,” which is even more reason to enjoy it any chance I get. I started drinking wine when I was in high school, but it was almost always “borrowed” from my mother’s Franzia bag or from a friend at a party… I didn’t know much about what I was drinking. After my freshman year of college I studied abroad in Arezzo, Italy and was exposed to my first fine wine: learning how to swirl like a snob and pretending like I finally understood. But I didn’t actually learn a whole lot… Admittedly, I still don’t know much about what I’m drinking, which is why I’m so thrilled about being able to take this class.

I have a confession: I actually don’t really like Rosé. Judging by the name of this blog, you’d think I love it — but I much prefer dry whites. Or at least I think I do… Honestly, I still get intimidated when I look at a wine menu and try to remember if “this” or “that” was better last time I tried it, and often end up settling for my usual Pinot Grigio. I’m starting to get myself excited about red wine again, because I slowly began drifting away from red and became loyal to my chilled white wine after my time in Italy. This is simply because I don’t prefer room temperature beverages — alcoholic or not. After taking the first few Wine IQ quizzes and realized that it’s okay to try a chilled red wine, I realized there was no reason for me to run away from red wine. I am now remembering how much I enjoy a nice glass of red, and it is only week 1!

Through this class, I am looking forward to learning about a wide variety of things pertaining to the purchasing and enjoying of wine. First and most importantly, I want to know how to properly pair wines to get the most out of my dining experience. I LOVE cooking new dishes and trying strange foods, but the extent of my knowledge of food-wine pairings is white wine with fish and red wine with dark meat. That has gotten me far enough, but I want to see what difference it makes when I know which white to pair with which fish. I know this class will help me enjoy my food even more than I thought I could! Secondly, I want to be able to confidently distinguish between different types of wines and be able to make suggestions to friends based on what they like in a wine — sweet, dry, “smoky” (whatever that means), etc. I got asked the other day, “what wines do you usually buy” and I gave an answer I didn’t know was contradictory. When the employee at the wine shop said “those are two very different wines,” I realized I knew even less than I thought I did. So, LET’S GO! Cheers to a great semester of learning something (actually, many things) new.

Audrey