A wine class can become a symposium on people, places and culture.

This is not the first time I have written about wine education. I keep returning to the topic because pretty soon in anyone’s experience with wine it becomes evident that the opportunities and questions this liquid opens up are vast beyond imagining.

Anyone who enjoys drinking wine but in describing his preferences says, “I just know what I like, and that’s all that’s important,” has somewhere a half-buried inkling that he’s wrong. Not about what he likes, but about the insignificance of his preferences.

Once that inkling nudges into consciousness, it can’t be ignored. Inquiry begins. If as an adult you come to wonder why you’ve always been critical, negative or unhappy, you go to a psychotherapist. If you drink more than a dozen different wines, you begin to wonder why they’re different. Ignore your demons or wine’s provenance at your own risk.