the great uniter.

I know that none of you will be surprised when I tell you this: during the final exam period of my wine tasting class, we had...a party. True, we did have to turn in a short paper detailing what we took away from the class, but more important than that was that we bring a bottle of wine and whatever food we signed up for. Higher education at its finest, folks.

This class was awesome. I wish that I lived closer than 45 minutes away from campus, so that I could take the class every year. Or I wish that there was a wine club near where I lived, an opportunity for me to go someplace every week to talk about and try new wines with people who are equally interested and then leave feeling great about God's invention, the grape. Individually, I could never afford to try half a dozen new wines a week. And yeah, I suppose I paid for my share in my tuition, but it was more than worth it to share these new wines with new friends.

I have next to nothing in common with my new friends. Namely, I have exactly one thing in common, and that thing is wine. Otherwise, I would never have gotten to know these people: Nick, who installs security systems and was in the Air Force, Ben, a professional waiter who is determined to have a college degree by age 32, and Cindy, a fellow ASU alum and self-employed caterer who drives all the way from Raleigh every week, Pat and Clyde, a married couple who spend their retirement going to wineries that specialize in fruit wines, Junior, a hispanic with a thick Surry County accent. And then there's me, Sandra, a software developer with extra time on her hands.

Some of these people, they are really doing the wine thing. These are middle-aged people who have quit their full-time careers to be full-time students of the vine. Kenny was a mechanic for thirty years when he decided to turn his hobby of wine-making into a career. Michael was in health care finance, but became disillusioned with the business and so left it to follow a dream. I cannot help but admire these people, who have left their secure positions to make wine in North Carolina. And this place is no Eden; it's not even Napa. But they're going for it, because they are fascinated by what happens when you squish something and let it sit awhile.

Wine is a great uniter. Don't like the person? Have a couple more sips. We don't always agree on wines, but we generally agree that wine in general is a good idea. We are the wine dorks. We held our party at a local winery, and we eagerly listened while the owner detailed what grapes he was growing and what kind of cultural practices he was using. When Dr. Bob couldn't get a bottle open with his cheap corkscrew, a full third of us had corkscrews on us at that very moment (including me). We wear shirts that say "Life is a cabernet" or "Screw it! Don't cork it!" Just in case you don't believe in such a thing as a wine dork, get us together and start a debate about French versus American oak barrels.

I was a little nervous about the party, mostly because the only potluck food I can make consistently is devilled eggs. I mean, I make darn good devilled eggs, but they're not exactly a typical item on a wine/food pairing chart. But screw it (don't cork it!), I brought my devilled eggs, made with tender loving care. Then I saw the pigs in blankets, and I felt a lot better. I felt even better when I took home an empty dish.

Man, the food was good. And man, the wine was good. I had a lot of it, sampling what each person brought: Cindy's shiraz, Lisa's zinfandel, Pat's cyser (a mixture of hard apple cider and mead). For dessert, we all enjoyed the Danish cherry wine that Alan brought, something we had discovered in our tasting adventures in class. We ate rich cheesecake and thin Italian cookies, took a sip of that delicious cherry stuff, sighed in contentment, and saluted Alan, "Good man."

It was a good time, and not just because we were lubricated. We would have had a good time without the wine, if not for the fact that without wine, we would not have been there. We would have been just a dozen separate people in separate lives with nothing in common with each other. Luckily, we have the great uniter, and though we are all still very different, that seems to be enough.