This story originally appeared in The Centre County Gazette.
RE Farm Café at Windswept in State College is launching a new wine tasting course along with a local journalist and certified sommelier. Duke Gastiger, the co-owner of RE Farm Café, and The Centre County Gazette’s managing editor, Jessi Blanarik, will lead the class “Introduction to World of Wine,” designed for wine enthusiasts looking to build a better enjoyment and appreciation for wine while optimizing the overall wine experience.
“Learning is not a spectator sport. One of the more important project imperatives for our team at RE Farm is creating community opportunities for experiential learning,” Gastiger explained. “Windswept’s bucolic setting offers a sense of tranquility, simplicity and natural beauty, facilitating the opening of the mind to sensory stimuli.
“Wine challenges all the senses, but its cloak of mystery is more easily stripped away with foundational knowledge and personal insight. Consider wine as a condiment, sitting down to an awesome meal replete with farm fresh flavors without a complimentary wine is like being served a juicy, hot, off-the-grill burger without ketchup.”
Participants in the class will get to explore the culture, history, viticulture and winemaking of some of the most influential wine regions worldwide.
“I am thrilled to be a part of this new wine series at RE Farm Café,” Blanarik said. “I first fell in love with wine because it allowed me to travel the world from the comfort of my own home. Each bottle reveals so much about a country’s history, landscape and traditions and to me that is such a special thing to experience.”
Kicking off on Saturday, Jan. 25, at RE Farm Café, 1000 S. FIllmore Rd., the course features four 90-minute sessions with the first class titled “Whites — Fresh and Aromatic,” the second called “Reds — Bold and Complex,” the third titled “Dessert and Sparkling Wines — Sweet and Celebratory” and the final class called “Food Pairing — The Perfect Match.”
“The world of wine may seem overwhelming at first, but once you pull back the layers its complexities are equally simple and intuitive. My goal in the classes is to help each person tap into the participant’s intuition and discover each wine’s unique palate,” Blanarik emphasized. “Wine tasting isn’t just about identifying flavors — it’s about connecting with the experience, the story behind the bottle and your personal preferences. By breaking it down step by step, anyone can gain confidence and enjoy the journey of exploring wine.”
Gastiger shared Blanarik’s sentiment, highlighting how the Centre County community is unique, especially as many individuals find connection through experience.
“We are blessed with a community that values knowledge and experience as non-material things that make life better,” Gastiger said. “Some of life’s most valued memories are of meals enjoyed with friends and family. Choosing wine for those occasions are acts of love that demand forethought and care.”
“Introduction to World of Wine” plays into RE Farm Café’s overall mission to provide an exceptional dining experience while providing educational opportunities, serving as a community resource and expanding on sustainability and food grown with responsible intentions.
“RE Farm works to strengthen connections between the soil and delicious healthy food, between food and people and between each other. The shared experience is a vital part of learning (and teaching) and to facilitate that learning a common language (and vocabulary) is essential,” Gastiger explained.
RE Farm Café operates by the standards of the Living Building Challenge, meaning it looks to meet net positive water and energy standards and is built with chemical free, reclaimed, locally sourced materials. LBC also requires an element of education by making the buildings a community-focused space to teach about sustainability, equality and people’s relationship with nature.
“The Living Building Challenge is the built environment’s most rigorous performance standard. It calls for the creation of building projects at all scales that operate as cleanly, beautifully and efficiently as nature’s architecture. To be certified under the Challenge, projects must meet a series of ambitious performance requirements over a minimum of 12 months of continuous occupancy,” RE Farm Café noted on its website.
“Introduction to World of Wines” isn’t the only course offered by RE Farm Café. With a two-station kitchen, RE Farm Café offers RELearn Cooking Classes, an ideal workspace for hands-on experience through individual classes and series programming. In addition to the wine tasting course, the current RELearn Cooking Classes currently being offered include “RELearn Class Lebanese Cooking,” “RELearn Vegan Dinner” and “RELearn Ravioli Workshop.”
“Introduction to World of Wine” is $300 per person for the complete four part series. Individual session availability will be made public five days before the class at between $80-$90 per person. More information about the series, the individual classes and how to sign up can be found online at refarmcafe.com/introduction-to-world-of-wine.
