First Entry:
 So far in life, I've only just started to dabble with wine. Introduced first to beer and liquor when I first got into drinking I'd never really considered wine as a drink, thought it was a girl's drink, for movie watching and casual drinking. In my first forays with alcohol, a drink of sophistication and moderation didn't exactly fit with how myself and my esteemed friends and colleagues would drink.

Time brings maturity however, and in the past year maybe a bit longer, I've started to try wine as a casual drink with meals and casual drinking, in situations where I'm planning on having a drink or two and stopping, a notion that a few years ago would have perplexed my younger self. I first got into wine with sweet white wines at parties, pinot grigio and riesling were among my favorites that I first started to try. At first I was hesitant to try red wines, because they were always far too sweet from what I had seen and also were never cool, people always had it at room temperature. I got some advice from friends and tried cabernet sauvignon and merlot, which I actually enjoyed at room temperature. Recently I've tried shiraz and roscato, and can't wait to try what's next. I'm always surprised by the variety of taste that each type has, and how all of them are enjoyable unlike some cases in beer, like IPAs for example.

In this class I hope to learn how to cut through the complexity of shopping for wine, to identify the important parts of a label and make decisions with those. I also hope to learn more about mixing wine with meals, how to drink the right wine with the right dish and so on. I really just want to become a more well-rounded wine drinker, and have more knowledge behind me when picking out which ones to drink and expand the range of wines I enjoy. Drinking wine still has quite a foreign feeling to me and I hope by the end of this class it will be something I can be informed and experienced with.