I have always loved to cook, but could never try anything new out at home because my Mom is very picky about trying new things. After I moved into my new apartment here in Athens it was my mission to begin cooking for my friends. So began the tradition of the Monday night dinner party. Don’t get me wrong I love the food and my friends enjoying it with me, but these dinner parties are also a covert operation. It is my mission to expose my friends to wine and help them all to realize why I love it so much. I’m still referred to as an “alcoholic” by a few friends who just don’t get it, the rest lovingly call me “queen wino.”

you can see why I have this title

Here is how it normally goes: First, I’ll normally post in my Facebook status what I’m making weekly, and send out text messages to friends. Dinner is always at 9, so my other roommate can enjoy a hot meal when he gets home from work.  When they ask if they should bring wine I always encourage them, I know they will bring the white zinfandel or a similar sweet white. I’ll let them have that first and then taste the wine I am drinking just to “see if they like it.” If they do I will enthusiastically pour them a glass, then ask them how it tastes, what they recognize on their palate. I’m impressed with the progress I’ve seen, my roommate, Kyleigh has gone from telling me she smells alcohol in the wine to telling me she picks up some melon. Even if they don’t get much else, they at least learn to appreciate why I find wine so interesting. My dance has been evolving for a while, theirs has only just begun.

I even find new pairings that I enjoy on occasion. My last dinner party of the summer consisted of wheat penne with chicken and vodka cream sauce, a Mediterranean salad, and a strawberry chardonnay cake, and some wonderful company. A friend brought over a bottle of white zin for the rest of the guests to drink; I had some Argentinean Malbec I needed to finish up, so I brought it out with dinner as well.  I was really surprised how well the malbec went with the pasta. I, of course poured the girls all a sip and none of them liked it. (That’s okay; it took me awhile to enjoy the dryer reds, too. I’m patient.)

The real beauty of wine to me is the company it brings. It’s easy for me to see how much people care about me when they are willing to listen to me ramble on about something they know nothing about and are willing to taste something they don’t like just because I’ve described it so enthusiastically to them. Emma will always oblige me and take a sip when I say “You have GOT to try this, it tastes amazing with the pasta!” she will then make a sour face and tell me that it’s just not her style. It means so much to me that they do this, and by the end of the year I hope to see all their eyes light up when they try RED zinfandel with pepperoni pizza and tell me how good it goes with the spicy food.

I received an email about this asking if I would promote it on my blog. I was tempted to respond how I would love to blog about this all expense paid dream vacation they had awarded me simply for being me, but alas, it was not to be. Sadly, I am ineligible for this contest, but I am more than happy to promote it as well. Everyone should be able to enjoy wine country the way I did, it’s a phenominal place to see.I plan to go back in December

That being said, Livingston Cellars, a subsidiary of the E & J Gallo company is offering an all expenses paid trip to wine country by way of an essay contest. Winos across the 50 states (save for CA, UT, and PR) are encouraged to write an essay of 250 words or less about how each entrant “embodies the core values of the Livingston Life” These values are: 1) being an individual, 2) staying connected to friends/family/community, 3) discovering your new world, 4) making a difference to others. All applicants must be 21 when they submit entry, for more info visit http://www.TheLivingstonLife.com/Getaway

Livingston states that no other generation has embraced these values as much as we do that’s why they want to reward us with this trip. Good luck to all, and if one of my readers wins please contact me and we can put together a post chronicling the highlights of the trip. Take lots of pictures!!

I’ve finished my bottle of malbec, had a wonderful “see you soon” dinner which I prepared; complete with Chardonnay Strawberry Cake, and I’m off to Florida tomorrow. I don’t know anything about Florida wines, or even if they make them there, but I plan to find out. Wherever I go, wine seems to find me.

So I’ll be off, staying at my aunt’s home there for two weeks. I’m going with my best friend and I’m really excited, I’ve never had a ‘girls’ vacation. We’ll cook, and explore, and hopefully drink some good wine. My aunt also has no internet at her summer home, so I’ll be cut off from the world (haha) but that will be a nice little vacation in and of itself.

We’re driving down tomorrow and taking it easy for a few days. We’ll go to the coast and Orlando; to St. Augustine and Fort Myers. It’ll be a great time, hopefully I’ll enjoy some great wine or even find a winery or two along the way.

See you all when I come back to real life, to orientations and to grad school!

-Emma

If I elaborated on how much my life has changed in this past year I could write a book. Come to think of it, I have been toying with the idea of a memoir….Back to reality.

I just changed my Master’s concentration yesterday, which is why I felt the need for this post. Originally I was accepted into the Media Studies program focusing on children’s television education. I then branched that out to include public relations as I got more and more into wine. Yesterday I bumped into my adviser and we got to talking about how much I love the wine industry and everything I’m doing with it as far as The Second Glass, this blog, and one more surprise that I will get into soon. She suggested that I move my study over to Media and Cultural Studes, focusing on wine culture specifically. I am switching advisers to someone who knows a lot about wine, culture, history, and is a self professed foodie. I think my college experience is getting better by the day…

Looking back a year ago I had basically nothing to do with wine. I still drank it at parties and get togethers, but to think that I would crave shiraz a year later was unthinkable. I received my undergrad in Broadcast Journalism, all I had ever wanted to do was become a reporter; or at least that’s what I thought I had always wanted to do. By the end of my college career, I really wanted to explore other media options such as magazine writing and PR, but I had too many credits to change and too few prerequisites to make any difference.

I graduated, and couldn’t get a job for 5 months. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because in this time I discovered Twitter, The Second Glass and my new love of wine. I was forced to try red wines when a dear friend of mine began taking me to weekly lunches and exposing me to his 30+ years of wine knowledge and vintages. To say I didn’t appreciate it was an understatement; I could barely handle it at the time! That’s when I really fell head over heels. The more I decided to dive into the world of wine, the more I wanted to learn and the more I wanted to experience.

It’s funny to say, but wine has made me brave. Not brave in the hitting on men at a bar while drunk with wine sense, but brave in the trying new things sense. I was able to go to California for two weeks because I wanted to write an article about it, I can go into restaurants and realize the tastes of the people in that area from the wine list, I can go to a wine shop and know what I like and be willing to try new vintages and grapes. All of this came from me applying to get my Master’s. After being pretty lost in the sudden economic downturn and massive joblessness in the country, to know what I was going to be doing in a year gave me a lot of confidence to go out and live. Boy have I lived, and boy have things changed!

Now that I’ve done my 360 spin from newscaster to wino extroadinaire I’m ready for the next year. Once I finish my study I want to go to Egypt for a month, then visit Rome and Greece with my best friend. After that, you won’t be able to move me from Ohio to California fast enough. Let’s see what changes I have to make on that prediction a year from now…..

My roommate brought me home three bottles of wine and a copy of Wine and Spirits Quarterly today, I’m also getting ready to throw a dinner party and I’m being asked if friends should bring the wine. That doesn’t seem out of the ordinary, it’s just made me realize that I am the “wine friend.” I am frequently asked what kind of wines to pair with food, what wines to try when someone is just getting into wine, and friends have realized that the mere mention of wine will get my attention. It’s gotten to the point where people who are just getting to know me realize my passion for wine.  I had mentioned to a friend that I went to a bar I didn’t particularly like the night before, he responded by telling me that the bar had good wine. (The bar doesn’t really have good wine, he was just telling me that to see if I would change my mind because of wine.) I even met with a professor who I am a teaching assistant for to discuss a class and ended up having to feed the meter so he and I could talk more about wine.

I feel like the Wino of OU because I’m always the one holding the wine glass when everyone else has the red plastic cups; because I’m getting to the point where I can recommend starter wines to people; because I talk about it so frequently that friends have purchased Wine for Dummies just to keep up with me; because for my house warming party I am hosting a wine tasting; and I could go on.

So how did I get to this place, the place of loving Cab when at first I thought Riesling was a little too dry? How did I get to the point of shameless self promotion of both my wine articles at The Second Glass and this blog? Where else? It started right here at OU!

A professor of mine, who has become a dear friend thought it was a cool idea to let us try wines from the areas we were learning about. Naturally, I didn’t really like the wine he brought in at first, but I thought it was fascinating and set out to find out how it was made. From there I began to learn about the wine making process and the different grapes and purchased lots of wine information books. I approached the world of wine a bit differently and discreetly at first because my family doesn’t drink wine and they didn’t appreciate my growing love for it, I had no one to teach me or recommend anything to me.  I then reached out on Twitter. I began reading the tweets of sommeliers and would Google the wine, I would make myself try all different whites and reds, I’d write my own tasting notes that I could understand, and then I began to write for The Second Glass. That gave me a lot of opportunity to try wines that I wouldn’t normally have known anything about and meet people in the wine industry who I otherwise wouldn’t have.

Now I will mention something about a wine and have to stop and ask myself “How did I know that?” I soak up the wine biz like a sponge, I’m only starting to get into it, but I know this is my true passion. I have already left my heart and many great friends in wine country. I can only hope to continue with my knowledge and teach my friends about this world so I won’t be the only one drinking shiraz at the party.