my well-developed palate.

Wednesday night is wine class, which is not to be confused with Tuesday night, which is grape class. Tuesday night, I learn how to grow a grape, and on Wednesday, I learn why. The structure of each and every wine class is this:

1. Chat with neighbors for a while, including semi-uppity catering lady, tired security system installer guy, and creepy old guy who probably just comes to get drunk.
2. Listen to Dr. Bob tell wine stories drawn from his 30 years in the wine business.
3. Drink wine.
4. Talk about what you tasted in step 3.
5. Go home early feeling pretty good about Dr. Bob, wine class, and life in general.

Grades are based solely on participation.

Dr. Bob is three-quarters of a century old. He started out as a biologist, and then he was a chemist, but got drawn into the winemaking career in California. Then he worked in Oregon wineries during the state's development into a major player in the wine world before ending up in Surry County, North Carolina to teach wine class. Somewhere in that span of time, he apparently met every important person ever in the American wine business. You mention a winery, and he starts into a story about how he went camping/snorkeling/vacationing in Rio with the winemaker. He's very friendly and likeable, but I would like anybody who was that old and had tattoos. Also, he was the 1982 Oregonian of the Year. I'm not sure what that really means, but I think "Oregonian" is a funny word.

Each week, we focus on a different varietal (or type) of wine. We started out with riesling, have worked our way through gewurztraminer, pinot gris/grigio, sauvignon blanc, and chenin blanc. Dr. Bob brings in half a dozen bottles, which he wraps in these homemade burlap sacks with Roman numerals sewed into them with yarn. We taste blind, meaning we can't see the label of what we're drinking. We sniff, wrinkle our noses, sniff again, taste, swirl, taste, swirl, make notes, sniff and taste again, and completely ignore the expectorate cups.

I've always believed that your palate develops the more you taste wine, but it's wonderful to be able to actually tell that it is happening. I've done some tasting in my time, through winery and shop visits and wine festivals. But those events happen sporadically. With a weekly class, I can actually tell that I've gotten better at picking out individual tastes and smells. And I gotta tell you, when you can pick out a flavor in a wine without reading the back label, it's pretty exciting. Everything stops just tasting like wine, and you start to realize that maybe all those people weren't just being snobby when they talked about fresh, ripe cherries or gooseberries or litchi nuts.

The class is very laid-back, and though there are some who try to pin wine words like "oaky" and "undertones of vanilla" on everything, for the most part, we talk about wine like regular people. We reference specific, everyday smells and tastes. We don't say something smells floral, we say it smells like honeysuckle in the spring. We don't just label something as vegetal, we say it tastes a little like bell pepper. And if something tastes like cat piss, well, we say that, too.

Granted, I'm not great at picking out tastes and smells yet, and I have to concentrate very hard and taste very slowly. More times than not, I can get a tiny hint of a smell or a taste that I know is familiar in some way, but just can't place. And then someone else in the class will nail it, and I will feel like an idiot for not realizing it on my own.

Then again, I've been the one to cause light bulbs to go off for others, too. During riesling night, the wine poured from bag 1 had this peculiar and very familiar odor. My classmates spent a couple minutes spouting off wine words, trying to place that smell. Quietly, I said, "It smells like an old lady's perm." A woman across the room pointed at me and shouted, "That's it!"

See? I'm just learning so much.