Wine that got you into wine?

There were 2 of them: one white; the other red.

Before that I drank Blue Nun, Mateus Rosé, Gallo Hardly Burgundy etc.

What a difference!

Tom S

snipped-for-privacy@spam.com wrote on Tue, 14 Feb 2006 21:47:08 -0800:

n> What wine did you first taste that caused you to think, n> "wow, this is what wine is supposed to be like!" ?

n> For me, at about age 23, it was a '78 Cabernet from the n> now-defunct Grand Cru winery in Glen Ellen, CA.

Charles Krug Pinot Noir at $12 a case bought in Georgetown in

James Silverton.

Ahhhh - Grand Cru! They had the best Gewürztraminer and Chenin Blanc in California. BTW, around the corner is one of my favorite Zin pushers - Wellington.

My earliest memorable was a '70 Cheval Blanc that I bought in St. Emilion ($12) and carried in my backpack to Athens where I shared it with a lady who is now my wife. But mostly, I have slowly gone up the ladder as my means improved, then struck off in search of the *great* bottle of $10 wine....

There were two wines for me:

California- 1982 Silver Oak France: 1978 Chateau Margaux

skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@news.supernews.com...

And for me, at about 22, it was a Vosne-Romanée... Probably nothing more than a commune appellation, but wow! The event was a sort of embassy reception and I did get quite a few glasses :-) Anders

Dolcetto.

snipped-for-privacy@spam.com wrote:

For me, it was the 1997 vintage of reds in California. I'd gone wine tasting a few times prior, but 1997 was a pretty good year and I came home with a dozen (and wanted more).

Jose

snipped-for-privacy@spam.com wrote: ^^^^^^^^^^^ |||||||||||

Not quite the name I normally would respond to.

But the question is OK, and incidentally I happen know the answer.

Having been raised in wine country (Vienna, Austria), wine was part not of our daily diet, but at home wine was drunk 3 to 5 times a week with dinner. I remember "Rio Tejo" red, Portuguese plonk coming in crown-capped liter bottles (bottled by the supermarket chain in Austria) regularly on the table at home. Of course we went to Heurigen to have Gespritzer, starting age 16/17. (No need to point with the finger, legal drinking age in Eastern Austria - that's where the vine is grown - is 16.)

But revelation came 1974, at age 21, in Zurich. At a friend's place I remember having two reds that opened my eyes as to what red wine can be: 1971 Moulin-à-Vent, a Mövenpick bottling (the latter being a large swiss wine merchant and 1971 a phantastic year for both Burgundy and Beaujolais); and 1966 Ch. Malartic- Lagravière, Cru Classé des Graves. (As to white wine, I was a spoiled child: Austrian whites were already very, very good at the time - if you knew where to buy -, but reds were a disaster.)

So the summer of 1974 was the time I was bitten by phylloxera, known as the wine bug.

Jeez, that's 32 years back ... ;-)

M.

Like Michael, I grew up with wine in the house, in this case "dago red" (in reality, some pretty decent Charles Krug Zins from the '60s), but my first exposure to fine wine probably came on family trips to France and Germany, where I was allowed to partake small quantities of whatever was being served.

And my revelation came in 1980, at age 21, when I had a 1977 Concannon Sauvignon Blanc that turned me on to how interesting white wine could be. Then, the next year, I had a 1978 Dehlinger Zinfandel that opened my eyes to how complex wine could be. From there it was all downhill...

Mark Lipton

It was what still is the greatest wine of all, the 1995 Domaine de Baumard Quarts de Chaume. I had no idea how good wine could be and this was only available pre-arrival so I only got one bottle. Many years later I met someone who had a case and traded one for me. I know it's the only bottle I'll ever have so I may never open it.

I had to think back awhile...my first bottle of wine was a 1966 Chateau Lafite that I opened way, way, way too soon in 1971..paid $20.00 for it..:)...I didn't know how to love it and actually didn't appreciate it much at all, being that it was still young and full of tannins...but the one that won me over was a 1966 Chateau La Gaffeliere at The Abbey Restaurant in Atlanta, Georgia

Bill Clay

kenneth mccoy scribed:

IMO, nothing will ever beat the '59 Lafitte.

First real revelation came for me just after my 20th birthday a couple of months ago - was in New Zealand, in Queenstown. Had tried a few wines in the past before, hadn't *really* liked anything particular. Went on the Gibbston Valley Wine Route with my family, and suddenly found myself really liking the Marlborough Riesling there. Spent the rest of the trip in NZ trying out various other wines (particularly the Rieslings and Sauvignon Blancs) and have now developed a real fondness for them.

Salut/Hi Ed Jay,

le/on Wed, 15 Feb 2006 15:05:36 -0800, tu disais/you said:-

Would that be Château Smith Haut-Lafitte?

Because the red wine I had in mind was the 1959 Ch Mouton-Rothschild Which I tasted in parallel with the Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1959.

The white wine that was my vinous awakening was '67 Ch Suduiraut. And the dry white would be a magnum of Le Montrachet '67 from Marquis de Laguiche.

For me it all started at a party when I was about 25, after growing up in a family where wine was on the table everyday. At this party, about 7 or 8 years ago, I was looking for something better than beer to drink, so I saw a wine bottle from it's back and asked a bystanding guy "Which wine is that?" While I poured my glass, without even looking at the label, this guy said "Chianti". After a sip or two I realized that that wine was *good*, damn *good*, a whole step above the wine I used to drink. So I got back to the bottle to read the label, unluckily I only remember it said "bordeaux" ;) Maybe it was a 5 euro plonk, but it made me start to change my mind about wine.

Who here drinks Dolcetto regularly?

cutecat wrote:

A 1975 Rioja Gran Reserva and a pretty young lady. Can't remember the producer. Tim

Went to a Villa Maria wine club tasting, dragged along by work colleagues around 1992. They had the VM 1990 reserve cab sav, and the 1990 res cab/merlot to taste. I suddenly got it. Left with a case of each. Quite an investment then. Still have a bottle or 2 of each in the case..........

greybeard