Tasting- flipflop

On Thursday, January 24th, I had two glasses of flipflop Riesling. It is from california, and there was no age to the bottle. This is a white wine and this was the first time I performed the swirl and sniff method before tasting the wine. This is the first time I have ever tried Riesling as well. This wine is definitely sweeter than a pinot grigio.It smells and taste pretty fruity, with a stronger hint of peach. This specific bottle used a screw top instead of a cork. Again this wine was a gift, however I do not think it was an expensive wine at all.

Tasting- Artemis

On Tuesday, January 22nd, I tried two glasses of Artemis, a Cabernet Savignon, 2005 Napa Valley from Stag's Leap Wine Cellars. It was a red wine and it was the best red wine I have ever had. I believe this is because it is probably the best quality of red wine since it is aged about 7 years (2005) and from Napa Valley. It was not a super dry wine, but not fruity either. Also, it had a traditional style cork. I had it with a dinner of pasta, red marinara sauce, mixed vegetables, and chicken. I thought the wine paired really well with the pasta. My friend had given me the bottle of wine as a gift for driving her back to school from winter break, so I do not know the price of the wine.

Previous Personal Wine Experience

My very first experience with wine was when I tried it for the first time in middle school. It was Thanksgiving and all of my aunts were drinking wine and they let me have a taste of their red wine. I thought it tasted absolutely discusting. Then my second encounter with wine was in high school when I had our family friends homemade wine. I liked it better but I did not realize how strong the wine was because it was homemade. Throughout my life my parents rarely drank wine. They were strickly beer and liquor drinkers and occasionally would buy a box of cheep red wine.

It was not untill my junior year of college that I began drinking wine on a consistant basis. This all started when I studied abroad for six weeks to Europe over the summer going into my junior year at Virginia Tech. In Europe, I was legal to drink so trying different wines was very easy to do at meals. A girl in my group had taken geography of wine already so she encouraged me to try different wines as well. Now that I am 21, I probably buy one bottle of wine a week. My favorites are pinot grigio, and white zifandel. I like red wine as well as long as it is not super dry or super sweet.

From this class I would like to become familiar and knowledgeable with all types of wine. This includes learning the geography part of where the wine comes from. A lecture or two on other types of alcohol would also be nice. I am also interested in the food and wine pairings as well. In addition, I would like to learn the proper way to taste test wine.