OPINION | BOTTLE SHOTS: We're all qualified to talk about wine, so let's just do it

The first wine I ever bought was a bottle of Cupcake Red Velvet, a red blend that, per the advertisement that I'd seen the day before, would taste just like the iconic dessert. I liked cake, so in my 21-year-old mind, it stood to reason that I should like wine, too. Well, this wine, at least.

Turns out, I didn't. To me, it tasted acrid and vaguely red, as if the flavor of every red thing I'd ever known, strawberries and cherries, raspberries and fire hydrants, had been distilled into a strangely single liquid. Needless to say, I did what every good college co-ed would do and added a few ice cubes and finished the bottle.

That was more than a decade ago, and now, a few bottles and some fancy certifications later, I'm your new weekly wine columnist. I'm a Certified Sommelier by the Court of Master Sommeliers, a former wine blogger, and I've experienced trial-by-fire for five years as a staff member in various roles at Little Rock's O'Looney's Wine & Liquor.

In theory, all of that makes me qualified to talk to you about wine. But ... what if it didn't? What if everyone was already qualified to talk about wine? What if we talked about wine the way we talked about Netflix shows or fast-food french fries? Would we finally be able to agree that chardonnay is hands-down the greatest grape the same we agree that Rally's has the best fries (We do agree about those Rally's fries, right?)?

Sure, I've read a lot of books, walked in a lot of vineyards and drunk more wine than I want my mother to know about, but all of that has taught me that the thing that matters most, perhaps the only thing about wine that matters at all is if you like it.

I hope you'll join me here each week as I take a deeper dive into not just the what of wine, but the why of it, as well. Wine has been a part of the human experience longer than almost anything else. Now, I'm not saying that every glass of wine has to be a deep, philosophical exercise — I'm all for knocking one back just for kicks — but what I am saying is that if you let it, wine can become a new lens through which you see the world and even, maybe, yourself.

That's what you can expect here next week, the week after that, and on until they kick me out. I'll steer you to the good stuff, try to keep you away from the bad, and maybe somewhere along the way, we'll learn a little something about the world while we're at it.

In the meantime, I'll invite you to follow me on Instagram at @sethebarlow where you can keep up with what I'm drinking. You can also reach out at sethebarlowwine@gmail.com.

Upcoming Events