Hello World! [Introduction]

Hello there! My name is Gavin Mucker, I'm a Senior Systems Biology major at Virginia Tech, and welcome to my little wine blog!

I've been a long time craft beer enthusiast, having turned down the singles aisle of many Total Wine's since I first turned 21, slowly building my palate and curiosity in fermented libations! Fast forward many years later, upgrading from Total Wine to local craft beer bottle shops (and bars), back in my home town of Richmond, VA - among a number of fantastic local breweries, cideries, meaderies, wineries, and distilleries - and last I checked on my beer tracking app I'm sitting at a rough total of 5,100~ unique beer check-ins. I guess you could say it's been a long term hobby! A hobby of which I mildly pursued as a career option, having volunteered at a local brewery for nearly a year, and worked at a craft beer growler station for over a year; but the call to return to college to continue my original pursuit in biology won out.

Growing up I'd sip the occasional small pour of wine with the family around Christmas and Thanksgiving, as I'm sure many kids did, you know, the sort of small pour that's just large enough to make you feel included while the rest of the family slowly falls into a state of inebriation. Even growing up I knew that I tended to prefer the more earthy, bitter, dry, and tannin rich flavors of big reds - my mother being a big proponent of that preference as she herself strongly prefers the driest of the dry reds from Portugal and Spain; her favorite regions. Now that isn't to say that I can't get behind a bottle of white - though truth be told I'll pretty much drink anything, as I enjoy the hunt of a new libation experience - but whites are definitely not my go to. Having said that, I have been becoming more and more increasingly aware of the drier, and even sometimes belgian lambic level of funky white wines trickling out of the natural wine movement - among more interestingly lesser known white varietals - and have fallen in love!

From this blog, and the subsequent experiences that will soon be documented and posted in the coming days, I hope to take what I've learned from craft beer, cider, mead, and some processes of liquor distillation, and apply it to wine! I wouldn't say my palate is perfect, but I have been training it on a large variety of beers and brewing processes for some time, so I hope it will serve me well and hope the experiences of drinking a variety of different wines will further condition it to notice the nuances of a number of grape species and regional terroir... and if nothing else, I'll have fun drinking a few bottles of wine with friends and classmates! An that's something I don't think anyone could complain about!