Moving on to my experience with wine, I can think of maybe three total that I have tried. They have not all been terrible, in fact one of them is one of my favorite things to drink! That one would be a blackberry merlot by Arbor Mist. I first tried this wine about a year and a half ago and one of my best friends weddings. I was his best man, him and his wife gifted the entire wedding party a personalized wine glass, and at the reception we busted open a chilled bottle of the blackberry merlot and poured ourselves a nice serving of the wine, toasted to it, and went to town! I have since gotten this exact type of wine a handful of time and have enjoyed it; however, the last bottle I got was not up to the standards of the previous bottles.....I must have gotten a bad batch of grapes! The next type of wine that I got was also a merlot, but I do not have the specific brand or really any other information outside of merlot. I had went to a local restaurant in my hometown, they had just added wine to the menu and so I decided to myself, "Why not?" I ordered a glass of merlot and figured I would try it. This particular glass had sort of a bitter taste and did not pair too well with the jalapeño burger and bacon cheese fries, but it wasn't terrible on its own.
At this same restaurant, but several weeks later, they had added sangria to the menu. I took a trip to get some food and try out this new sangria to spice up my holiday season! (it was a special Christmas sangria) Again I am unsure of what type of wine they used in the sangria, but it was mixed with several different fruits and spices such as cranberry and cinnamon to give it that nice warm Christmas feel in a cold drink! It was absolutely amazing and I was SO upset when they took it off of the menu. After it was gone my mom and I began to crave this sangria and so I decided to do a little bit of research and take a trip to the store for some ingredients! I tried my hand at making my own, homemade, sangria. I started off with a red wine(could not tell you what kind I got....at this time I knew NOTHING about wine, so I just browsed the options available and tried to pick out a red wine that would fit well with the other ingredients) I also got some apple cider, cinnamon sticks, fresh cranberries, some cranberry juice, and a ripe orange. I combined all of these ingredients and let it sit in the fridge overnight so that all of the flavors could blend. The next night we took it out of the fridge and gave it a try! Much to my surprise it was pretty good, but no where near as good as the one at my local restaurant :(
With this class I am hoping to increase my knowledge of wine and try a bunch of different types so that I can hopefully figure out what kind of taste I really like in my wine. I would also like to be able to learn enough to be able to speak the language of wine and then try my hand at making a sangria again, but this time combine everything properly and get a really good taste! Apart from learning the language though, I am looking forward to learning a little about the wine making process, the timeline it takes to make, the proper ways to care for and harvest the grapes, and what exactly goes into making all of the different types of wine! On top of all of that, I am looking forward to seeing what adventures my partner and I will go on while taking this class together and make some amazing memories with the beautiful thing that is the grape!
