Introduction

Greetings, all! My name is Kelly Blair and I am a student in the spring 2013 section of Geography of Wine at Virginia Tech. As per instructions for our first blog assignment, I am going to take this chance to introduce myself, describe my personal experience with wine, and what I am hoping to learn from my journey through this course.

First and foremost, I am an undergraduate student here at Virginia Tech on track to graduate at the end of this semester. I am an Economics major in the College of Science with a History minor. Recently, I turned 21 years old roughly two days into the semester on Thursday, January 24th. I am really excited to be taking this class at this point in my academic career – I do not think I could have picked a better time. 

Unequivocally, up until this point in my life, I have been an extremely rare, casual drinker at best with my close friends. I have always felt clueless when it came to wine, and therefore I never attempted to partake in the drinking or discussing of wine. Accordingly, my experience with wine is extremely limited and I find myself going into this class with essentially a completely blank palate.

In many ways, I am excited about this course because I am taking it at a perfect time in my life. Since I just turned 21, I will be able to go out to the wine tastings and actually be able to have some hands-on experience with wine as the course goes along. I am really interested to learn what kinds of wine go with which kinds of foods and how certain foods affect different types of wine. To me, this will be a class that I take immense amounts of information from that I will be able to use throughout the rest of my life. Also, I think it would be awesome to learn enough information to host a wine/food pairing dinner party with friends and family for special occasions. Therefore, ultimately for me this course is all about building my confidence and expanding my knowledge of wine and staying open to new experiences.

I look forward to a great, informative semester in this class!