The setting consisted of three professors, 20-odd students and nine bottles of wine. Tuxedoed waiters circulated the room with hors d'oeuvres, and vases of purple tulips decorated the blue-clothed table.
The scene was not that of an upscale dinner party, but rather of the third and final meeting of one of Penn's most popular preceptorials -- 101: Wine Tasting.
The evening, led by Materials Science and Engineering Professor David Pope and Environmental Science Professor Steve Phipps, included a mix of wine-tasting and discussion.
Students began with a taste of a California champagne, or, technically, a sparkling wine -- only the ones made in France can legally be called champagnes -- and a practical demonstration by Pope of how to open a bottle.
"A few of my frat brothers had serious eye injuries from opening champagne bottles," he said, twisting the bottle carefully. "You don't want it tumbling over because you're paying for all those little bubbles."
Both Pope and Phipps became interested in wine while studying in California. Pope said he learned most of what he knows about wine informally, "drinking, reading, talking to wine dealers... mostly just drinking."
"The important thing is just to practice," he said.
Phipps and Pope both answered several questions about vineyards and wine-making throughout the evening. In response to one inquiry, Phipps noted that climate has the biggest effect on a wine, but the age of the vine is also a factor.
"Grapevines, like professors, are best when they are old," he added.
The wine-tasting event was one of this semester's more than 50 preceptorials -- short, noncredit seminars on just about any subject imaginable, ranging from "Serial Killers" to "Queer 101."
Preceptorials are planned by a 20-member student committee that is responsible for everything from contacting professors to lead the class to reserving rooms and, in this case, to choosing cheeses to serve with the wine.
College senior and committee member Joshua Helms said the work that goes into making a preceptorial happen is very individual. The committee only meets twice a semester.
"Sometimes a member might drop the ball," said College senior and Preceptorial Committee Co-Chairman Aaron Short. "We might not hear about it until April."
The Preceptorial Committee is currently looking into restructuring its communication systems.
"We'd like to meet with [the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education] in the next couple of weeks and devise a better system for accountability," Short said. "We need to start putting a lot of things on paper.... We need to find ways of using the waitlists better."
Members are required to lead a preceptorial their first semester, but after that, some become less involved. Short says sometimes a member will quit for a semester, without informing the committee.
