Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.
- 1 Timothy 5:23
I've always been a beer girl. Ever since my first Oktoberfest when I ate an entire loaf of bread and washed it down with a home brew, I've associated beer with delicious things. Wine, on the other hand, I've associated with communion and fancy dinner parties - two serious, not-so-delicious things that often require heels and inevitably, discomfort.
Until last semester, wine was an enigma to me. I thought it only came in two colors, red and white; "blush" was a term I used to categorize makeup. The one wine I had tasted outside of church had been offered to me by a friend's boyfriend, and similar to my opinion of him, it was sour. Wine, I decided, was not my forte.
My next wine tasting and first experience with moscato derived from sheer desperation. It was summer - I was saving money to move to DC for an internship and living off of grilled chicken patties and frozen vegetables that were ten for $10.00 at Kroger. I caught myself humming while cutting coupons and dropped the scissors, horrified that I was turning into my mother (Mom, that is a joke, I love you). I rationed toilet paper and created a budget with little wiggle room, especially for alcohol.
One Friday night, I FaceTimed a friend and we decided to drink together, toasting to our future travel plans...except I had nothing to drink. This is ridiculous, I decided, slamming down my plastic water-filled wine glass. Desperate times called for desperate measures: the apartment's previous tenants hadn't emptied the fridge when they left, and sure enough, behind a bag of expired bacon and a box of Laughing Cow cheese, I found it.
The wine bottle was half-empty, the cork haphazardly stuck into the neck with the alien word "moscato" labeled in cursive font, but I wasn't dissuaded. They say wine only ripens with age, right? Well whoever they are, I decided to believe them.
Life announcement: when it comes to expired moscato, do not - let me reiterate - do not believe them.
After one glass, my stomach was pleasantly warm but my mouth tasted like rubbing alcohol and moldy fruit. Plants shriveled up and died when I breathed on them. But I had a wine glass in my hand, I was actually drinking wine and I felt smart. I felt adult in a way that beer hadn't provided. The glass made me feel more mature than a bottle; I felt as if I’d been finally entrusted with something delicate, as if I’d been handed the keys to my parents’ car. A right of passage. I believed I could be one of "them," but a few glasses of vinegared white wine could probably make you believe anything.
The next day, I bought my own bottle.
Since then, I've become a regular wine drinker and occasionally been called a "wine-o," Urban Dictionary defintion #1. However, despite enjoying wine, I still don't know much about it. So this semester, I decided to take a Geography of Wine class, wherein we are required to regularly sample wine and blog about it. Enter More than Moscato. Over the next few weeks, I'll be writing up my opinion of the different wines I taste and how they pair with various foods, etc. If you don't like wine or drinking, you aren't going to like this blog. It's going to be all wine, all the time. And pictures. There will definitely be pictures.
If that all sounds good to you, then hey, stick around. A vôtre santé!
