Hi everyone! My name is Elena Amanda Meccia, but I go by Amanda! I am a senior this year at Virginia Tech and I am taking this class in order to educate myself on everything wine. I am 21 years old, soon to be 22, and I currently do not know a single thing about wine.
The very first time I drank wine, I had just graduated high school and went to Spain for a two-week trip with my Spanish class. From this trip, I learned that red wine can be super bitter, but not in sangria. The sangria that I drank was almost always made from red wine, but there was once that I had it with white wine and it was much sweeter.
That experience was around 4 years ago, but I just studied abroad in Spain again as a senior. Once again, I never really drank a lot of wine when I was there, but there was a drink called "Tinto de Verano" which is very similar to sangria. Because this drink was made up of soda and red wine, it was always cold and super sweet. Other than these drinks, I really did not have a lot of wine in Spain the second time around.
Something that stood out to me, though, while I was in Spain and also visiting other countries is that Europeans love to drink. Anywhere I went, people drank tinto de verano, wines, or other mixed drinks with their food and it was so fun. Wine and food was always such a fun experience and I remember feeling so fancy during every meal. Although I do not drink a lot of wine, and partially this is because I thought it had a lot of sugar and was bad for you, my experiences in Spain inspired me to actually learn a little something about wine. I want to learn which ones I like and the names of wine, I want to learn which ones are sweet and which ones are more bitter, and most importantly, I want to drink wine more because I find that I like the feeling of wine more that mixed drinks.
I have already learned a lot about wine from this class which has made me super excited for the next time I go out! I will definitely be ordering a glass of wine!!
Spain 2018
