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It didn't take long for law professor Christopher Buccafusco to begin feeling disconnected from his students when classes shifted online in March due to COVID-19.

So Buccafusco, a professor at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan, came up with a novel and delicious way to interact with his far-flung students: a weekly wine tasting via Zoom with a splash of the law for good measure.

Christopher Buccafusco.

He began hosting the Thursday evening tastings in early April, where each week he and participants taste wine and discuss a case or legal aspect of the wine industry.

"I was looking for an opportunity to stay connected with my students after we turned to distance learning. It turns out I missed them a lot," Buccafusco said last week, before his fourth online tasting.

He picks a weekly topic, usually a particular wine region, then sends an advance notice of which types of wines he will taste and how participants can get them. (Wine stores remain open in New York amid the shutdown, and there are plenty of delivery options.) Some students just end up drinking whatever they have on hand. The sessions, dubbed "Case of the Week," are just for fun—students don't earn any credit, but it has proven to be a popular opportunity to see each other in a more social setting than class, to learn more about wine, and to get an overview of how central the law is to the wine ecosystem.

Buccafusco, now a wine collector and enthusiast in addition to teaching, worked at a wine shop back when he was a law student and he would host wine tastings for his friends. It offered an opportunity to socialize and share his love of wine and spirits. So it made sense that he again turned to wine as a conduit to bring everyone back together amid the coronavirus pandemic. And there is no shortage of legal topics to discuss as he and his students sip away.

"It turns out that most of the things you need to learn about the nature of wine are fundamentally legal," Buccafusco said. "There are a lot of things about tasting that aren't, but what makes one region different from another? What are they all called? How do all these systems work together or don't? Those are all governed by national and international laws. What counts as a Barolo and who can use the name Barolo is governed by a complex legal system that began in Italy in the middle of the 20th century, and has now been taken over by the EU."

The wine sessions typically draw between 150 to 200 participants, and students' spouses, siblings and parents often join in. Buccafusco opened up last week's session—on Italian wines—to Cardozo alumni and admitted students, which led him to worry about whether he would max out his 300-user Zoom limit. If the wine discussions remain popular, he'll keep hosting them.

"It's pretty open, fun and lighthearted. We have a nice time," he said. "I will keep doing it as long as people will sit there and listen to me talk about wine."