It wasn’t until my freshman year of college that I started to experiment with alcohol. My family is a very traditional American family, in almost all meanings of the phrase, and I lived a very sheltered life under my parents’ roof. In my house, it was just understood that the kids do not drink. Anytime, anywhere, at parties, or even evenings after a long day at work, if my parents and people around my brothers and I were drinking, we just learned to ignore it. We got our soda (which can create a high of its own, and to quote Boyer, “[soda is] poison and it will kill you”) and we were happy.
As we got older (7th and 8th grade), my brother and I would start to feel left out. All the adults and my older brother were having lots of fun, and it was more intense after they had a few drinks. We would attempt a taste, were graciously offered a sip (probably some “ass-tasting” beer, I can’t remember), and quickly turned back to our soda happily. (It was as if my parents knew we wouldn’t like it, hmmm). I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to drink something like that. I was with my grandparents on this one, “I’ll stick with my soda and sweet tea, thanks.”
A few years before graduating from high school, my parents thought it would be a good idea to start letting me try a little bit more alcohol, and they started talking to me about being a responsible drinker. They would let me have a little sip of this and that, try this beer and that one, this wine and that, expressing their opinions on what they do and don’t like and why.
Like most college students, my first time drinking went pretty badly. Luckily, I was with a really good friend at a small house party. After my first year of college and safely “party-drinking” once or twice a month, I soon lost interest in “drinking till I drop”, became really turned off by the taste/burn of ethanol, and only drank in small social forums among friends.
Today, I still prefer social drinking in small groups and among friends but have been drinking wines and hard ciders more than beers and liquors. I took the beer class offered here at VT last fall and was still hard pressed to find beers I like, but even so, the class helped me find a few beers I can drink casually. I have stopped the bad habit of taking shots, and on that end of the spectrum, I have found myself mixing rums and liquors into very fruity drinks. So now I am left with finding a nice wine I can drink at dinner. This is one of the major reasons I am taking Geography of Wine this year and am excited to get started tasting and discovering.
Also:
As we got older (7th and 8th grade), my brother and I would start to feel left out. All the adults and my older brother were having lots of fun, and it was more intense after they had a few drinks. We would attempt a taste, were graciously offered a sip (probably some “ass-tasting” beer, I can’t remember), and quickly turned back to our soda happily. (It was as if my parents knew we wouldn’t like it, hmmm). I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to drink something like that. I was with my grandparents on this one, “I’ll stick with my soda and sweet tea, thanks.”
A few years before graduating from high school, my parents thought it would be a good idea to start letting me try a little bit more alcohol, and they started talking to me about being a responsible drinker. They would let me have a little sip of this and that, try this beer and that one, this wine and that, expressing their opinions on what they do and don’t like and why.
Like most college students, my first time drinking went pretty badly. Luckily, I was with a really good friend at a small house party. After my first year of college and safely “party-drinking” once or twice a month, I soon lost interest in “drinking till I drop”, became really turned off by the taste/burn of ethanol, and only drank in small social forums among friends.
Today, I still prefer social drinking in small groups and among friends but have been drinking wines and hard ciders more than beers and liquors. I took the beer class offered here at VT last fall and was still hard pressed to find beers I like, but even so, the class helped me find a few beers I can drink casually. I have stopped the bad habit of taking shots, and on that end of the spectrum, I have found myself mixing rums and liquors into very fruity drinks. So now I am left with finding a nice wine I can drink at dinner. This is one of the major reasons I am taking Geography of Wine this year and am excited to get started tasting and discovering.
Also:
- My mom and dad have started making their own wine, building a wine cellar and quickly filling it. They have gotten together with other home wine makers, shared wines, and have thrown around the idea of possibly starting a club.
- My girlfriend went to Europe and picked up drinking wine every day while there and is also in the class. This is our first (and only) class together before I graduate this spring, and we want to have something we can learn and talk about together. See her blog here.
I really love your blog, Creighton, am happy for you and, as your neighbor, proud of your evolution from toxic soft drinks ("Disaster in a Can", wrote Barbara Berquist, ND, in Front Porch magazine years ago) to responsible drinking and enjoyment of wine -- one of our planet's natural gifts to us. Kudos to your parents for teaching you the mature and responsible use of alcohol. As for your freshman-year-at-college antics -- it is in the past, as it is for me, but was a time for foolish over-indulgence many of us experienced (I'll tell you a funny story sometime). Now it's how you moved forward from there that matters. I hope to join you for a glass of your parents' homemade wine this spring. - Rob Grogan
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