> First semester that year, I took a Beverage Management class, which was ostensibly about managing bars, but it was no secret that everyone took it because of its tasting component.

Is this breadth of topics common for the American higher educational system or did the author go to a special university?

At the very largest universities there is a really really wide variety of programs and courses. For example here's a course catalog where a search for 'intro' returns 3500 different courses. https://classes.osu.edu/#/?q=intro&client=class-search-ui&ca... You can see the variety, from "Introduction to the Army and Critical Thinking" to "Introductory Meat Science"

This breadth is typical of the very largest universities in the U.S.

Sure. My alma mater (Michigan State) offers a minor in "Beverage Science and Technology" https://reg.msu.edu/academicprograms/ProgramDetail.aspx?PTyp...

It requires all the following courses:

  CEM 482 Science and Technology of Wine Production 3
  CHE 483 Brewing and Distilled Beverage Technology 3
  FSC 481 Fermented Beverages

Author of the post here, I joke that I could've gotten a minor in Food because, on top of my actual CS major and Linguistics minor, I took Contemporary Nutrition, Grilling & BBQ Science, Beverage Management, and Vegetable Gardening (not to mention Bowling).

My university had courses such as wine tasting, beer tasting, and food tasting. Not necessarily a ton of them, but enough that a lot of 4th year students would fill their "free" credit slots with those courses as fun easy As.

It depends on the specific institution, but the US higher educational system does have a lot of very specialized degrees. This is part of a "Food Science & Nutrition" program (https://staging.fshn.illinois.edu/about/what-we-do-why-it-ma...).

While the value of some of these courses is somewhat questionable on their own (hence the old joke about majoring in "Underwater Basket Weaving"), they make a bit more sense as part of a broader program and/or a double-major.

For instance, you might double major in Chemistry, plus Food Science and Nutrition, if you intend to do some work in that industry - or perhaps Business plus Food Science and Nutrition.

Someone with less ambitious college plans might major in Food Science and Nutrition alone and aim for a job as a nutritionist, or a restaurant manager, etc.?

It's also common for people to register for courses like this as a fun or lightweight diversion from "more serious" majors. For instance, MIT offers a course on glassblowing, which counts toward the humanities & arts part of the general curriculum requirements.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is something of a "special" university...

Most large university have a few well known courses like this, though I don’t really know the purpose. Every in Boulder wants to take the history of the US through baseball, for example.

Most reasonable business schools will have a significant restaurant management / hospitality program.