Close Reading x Poludora: An Evening of Wine and Literature
Close Reading is teaming up with Poludora for our final event of 2026!
Poludora is an education startup which centers teachers and Socratic methods across disciplines, including wine, literary translation, and the classics.
For one evening, we’re bringing wine and literature together to ask what they can teach us about each other. We want to create an experience that engages the mind and delights the senses, so we've designed the night around three modes of attention: analytical, historical, and sensory.
Over three hours, we will:
Learn the foundations of how to read wine. We'll begin with an interactive tasting, using an industry-level framework to help us go deeper than "I like it." Hannah, a WSET-certified Level 2 wine professional, will guide us through three wines: how to smell, how to taste, and how to talk about it.
Discover wine on the page. From ancient Greece to today, writers have used wine to speak about civilization, ritual, pleasure, excess, and friendship. We'll read passages across the centuries and close read them together to understand what wine has meant: how it has gathered people, marked occasions, and connected us to each other.
Experience wine and poetry. There's often a tension between analyzing something and simply enjoying it, whether it's a poem or a glass of wine. In the last part of the night, we will use everything we've learned to go deeper into the experience itself. A new glass, a few poems read out loud, and plenty of time to talk. This is where the evening opens up, because wine has always been, above all, a reason to gather.
What's included
Five pours of wine throughout the evening
Pizza
Dessert
Guided wine tasting with a WSET-certified instructor
Guided literary discussion
All readings provided
What you'll take home
A structured method for tasting and understanding wine
An understanding of wine as object, as story, and as shared connection, traced from Homer to today
Poems to return to, and a way of experiencing wine with all your senses
New people to drink and read with
This is for you if
You love wine but don't always know how to talk about it
You love literature and want to see it from a new angle
You want a fun night out where you also actually learn something
You'd like to meet thoughtful, curious people
Hosts
Elena Navarrete is the founder of Close Reading NYC, a community of 400+ New York readers. After studying Comparative Literature at Columbia, she moved into consulting and found there was no middle ground between casual book clubs and grad school. So she created one: small-group seminars on books like Middlemarch and Anna Karenina, with real rigor, built for people with full lives. Learn more about Close Reading NYC here.
Hannah Kent is the founder of Poludora, an education startup which centers teachers and the Socratic method. She’s a food and beverage professional certified in WSET Level 2, holds an MFA in Literary Translation and a BA in Classical Studies and Ancient Greek, and currently teaches classic literature to adults in NYC and beyond. Learn more about Hannah and her work here.
Good to know: 21+. We’re happy to accommodate dietary restrictions; you’ll be asked about them when you reserve your ticket.
As a small business, we can't offer refunds and all sales are final. Tickets are transferable, so if you can't make it, send someone in your place and email us their name.