Your first good glass of wine

What was the first glass of wine that told you wine is a bit different and would be fun to explore? Mine was Bulls Blood. Took a girlfriend, who now is my wife, to an Hungarian restaurant, a BYOB in Westport, Connecticut. Went to a local wine merchant and he recommended Bulls Blood. Well, it was perfect, and intrigued me from then on.

-- The journey is the reward.

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Rich R
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"Rich R" wrote in news:Y%Qrc.3065$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr32.news.prodigy.com:

my first good glass was actually a bottle. For some reason unkown to me all these years later, I was in DC Liquors (OK I do know why I was in DC Liquors!) I walked out with a bottle of Chianti Classico and next thing I knew I was walking back into the barracks with a case.

Good stuff great memories. more of a drinking while playing cards on Friday night, but it was a whole different thing than my taylor tawny port expeditions through Georgetown.

Reply to
jcoulter

Your story is intersting, and you should go into more detail. For instance, you mention "barracks", so how did you get into the military, and what year?

Rich

Reply to
Rich R

Age 16 I won a half of 1964 (my birth year) Pommard on a bottle stall at a church sale of work. Kept it for a couple of years in an old fashioned larder at home and had it on my 18th birthday.

Looking back at it, it wasn't all that great (probably 2/3 Algerian), but it was certainly different. It opened up the possibilities of wine.

As a student, didn't drink anything nearly as good till a friend (a catering student) brought over a bottle of 71 Margaux and a 78 Mersault Perrieres which he had liberated from an obscure part of the cellar of the country house hotel where he worked. He had been asked to do the stock-take and neither wine were on the list - they had probably belonged to the last owners of the building when it was a house.

The Margaux was horrible, next nearest thing to vinegar, the Burgundy started a love affair that I can't afford.

James

James Dempster (remove nospam to reply by email)

You know you've had a good night when you wake up and someone's outlining you in chalk.

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James Dempster

"Rich R" wrote in news:TWRrc.99$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com:

It was 1970 I was in the Army studying Vietnamese at the Defense Language Institute East Coast. the wine was IIRC 1965 after that a friend suggested that I might like Beaujoulais and the rest is history.

Reply to
jcoulter

My first was a German Mosel in 1961 and it was like drinking liquid sunshine. I had never tasted anything so pleasant. Then I discovered Burgundies. My first case purchased was Ch Bel Air and my second one was 1961 La Tour. My life was ruined after than because all my money was marked for wine purchases.

In 1994 I was working as a marketing consulting for a large company and I was hosting a dinner one night with 8 or 10 people there and I ordered a very large bottle of Martha's Vineyard. When I turned in my expense report, my boss hit the ceiling that I would buy an $800 bottle of wine. I told him that it fed the multitude but he was still bent out of shape. I quit the company right on the spot and found another company that did not have such reservations.

Reply to
Bill

I have strong recollections of Grand Puy Ducasse 1978 - not necessarily a great wine, but I remember holding a tasting in my rooms in college, and this wine shone through with blackcurrants and sweetness. There were also some stuning Pizzas from a great restaurant called Pizza Place (this was at the University of Kent in Canterbury). That was in about 1991. I was fortunate that the college cellars would let a humble student buy one case a term at fantastic prices! It was the first wine that made me think - WOW - here is something worth getting involved in - and indeed on leaving university I started working for Oddbins. As an interesting aside, I was invited by a university friend to the Inns of Court, where aspirant barristers must dine, and this wine was served at dinner. I was pretty impressed, but that was is 1994 and I quickly saw why - the 'sweet spot' of fruit had dwindled (so often true for that vintage) and there was more obvious acidity. They clearly had a few cases left and they thought that they could use it on the lower orders!

Johnners

Reply to
Johnners

What is a "good" glass of wine? I'd been raised in a household where Charles Krug Zinfandel was present at every dinner. However, my first "aha" wine experience was with a 1974 Concannon Sauvignon Blanc, followed later by a 1978 Dehlinger Zinfandel. Those two wines let me know that there was far more to wine than I had previously realized...

Mark Lipton

Reply to
Mark Lipton

Bill,

Great story and great story telling.

Rich

Reply to
Rich R

I have appreciate wine and fine wine since 1979. That said I really came to appreciate the aging of wine 2x in the past 5 years.

In 1999 I had a 1982 Cos d'Estournel that had been somewhat but not perfectly stored. It was incredible and different than early releases. It was then I realize I drank to much wine ...to early.

Then in 2004 I had the opportunity to acquire and consume a Dom Perignon Recent Disgorged wine from 1975, 78 and 85. It was an incredible night. We met a couple at a restaurant in downtown and in advance used Doms' suggestion for the meals to serve with each. The restaurant prepared 3 different main courses in small qty and some appetizers. We had a great night and really learned about the aging of Champagne. I was totally unaware that they can evolve and become so complex.

I guess you can say I have had a 25 year love of wines but learn much in recent years.

I might not enjoy the politics of France but when it comes to food and wine...you gotta love them. Anyone tells you otherwise is a fool.

Reply to
dick

"Rich R" in news:Y%Qrc.3065$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr32.news.prodigy.com...

I doubt I could add anything of interest to this enjoyable thread because, unlike some things in life, or some people's fine-wine experiences, where there is a clear first time, fine wine for me was a gradual continuum. My parents were kind of obsessed with food and did all sorts of experimental cooking. Their children were pressed into service as prep. cooks cutting vegetables etc., which was OK because we liked most of what came out of it all. (\My father also made beer with a single fermentation circa 1960 -- dangerous partly because it was illegal in California at that time, amazingly, but also because it was explosive at that time (from the long-lever control inherent in single fermentation). The garage was forbidden at these times and the alarming random explosions from it and flying glass made the point better than any parental instructions could.

My parents also enjoyed wine from various places, usually modest, and would offer tastes to us children along with all the other strange food flavors they made, and we didn't like it.. In my teen years I had no interest in wine, the flavor seemed harsh. I would still try it occasionally, and in my late teens noticed that it did seem to go with some kinds of food (I was always cooking), and then at age 20, discovered to my surprise that I liked some wines a lot, much more than others, and could pick out differences among them, and most strikingly of all, enjoyment seemed only weakly correlated with price. So I got books and did my homework for background information. I also had the terrible misfortune of knowing various other food and wine enthusiasts who encouraged and tutored my interest and led me down the terrible slippery slope by which one discovers tastes one was perfectly content without, and tries to get more of what satisfies these tastes, spending money and precious time ferrying immature bottles around, going to wine tastings, reading newsgroups and Web sites, etc. etc. Woe!

Max Hauser

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Max Hauser

Reply to
dick

It was a light and slightly off-dry Liebfraumilch and I was probably 16, I didn't even have a whole glass.

Dana

Reply to
Dana Myers

Let's see, was it the Annie Green Springs when a teen? Nah.

By college I was quite the beer man. After, as I worked in restaurants and bars, I learned the difference between Pouilly-Fume and Pouilly-Fuisse. I liked wine, knew a bit, but it didn't grab me.

I guess the wine that made me sit up and REALLY take notice was I think 1991, at Easter dinner. My friend's husband served a 1982 Ch. Gloria with the lamb. Layers of complexity I had never dreamed of. Since then I've had '82 Gloria a few times, now I think of it as a good but not great mature Bordeaux. But will always have a soft spot for it. Dale

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Dale Williams
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Michael Pronay

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