So I was a beer drinker coming out of college (graduated in 1980), and pretty much stayed with beer until the mid 80’s, when I “grew-up” and dabbled in Bartles & James wine coolers with some other young professionals in our neighborhood. Then my boss at the time (I was a Pharmaceutical Sales Rep), who was about 10 years older than me, had a district meeting with about 12 of us, and he invited us over to his house for dinner one night. He served Kendall Jackson Chardonnay, and that was the first “real” wine I remember having and it was a revelation to me…my boss was really into wine, and I started asking him about other wines he liked, etc, and he recommended some (Far Niente Chard among others)…from then on I was hooked!
1 Like
King David sacramental wine at the Passover seder table
Growing up it seemed like there was always wine at Sunday dinner (Catholic rather than Jewish here), a traditional mid-afternoon affair almost always with a big roasted chunk of meat and veggies, a glass always available to any kid who wanted some and I did partake. My dad had a cellar stocked with a small number of favorites recommended by a not too bad local liquor store including Egri Bikaver, some type of Valpolicella that was pretty good, and an NSG (I don’t remember which one). I don’t remember tasting the NSG because I’m not so sure dad wanted to share it as I remember him saying it cost $17/ bottle (late 1960s/ early 1970s). I remember trying Mateus rose and Cold Duck too but I think he was less than impressed so they never repeated.
1 Like
I’m surprised that I got into wine as my first memories were Manischewitz and Carmel wines.
Alan Weinberg, so You remember your bris. And you probably couldn’t have walked anyway. You were likely too young to walk!
Sitting around stoned, drinking some Taylor “lake country” or Gallo “burgundy” by the jug, and playing “party” bridge with by friends at VaTech.
1 Like
Interesting question—there was a similar (albeit different) thread asking “what was your wine epiphany.”
First memory was Trader Joe’s red boxed wine during college parties. We used to crush that stuff and loved it. Crazy how much has changed!
What wine goes with excruciating pain? Loire red I’m sure.
2 Likes
I don’t have a specific wine memory, more like an early wine impression from my parents.
In the early 1960s New Zealand was a wine waste land. No wine production apart fron a few European immigrant families (many from the Dalmation Coast). Beer and sherry and port dominated.
My father worked for the NZ Forest Service and knew some folks in MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries). MAF ran a wine research vineyard at Te Kauwhata. This is in the middle of the lush dairy farms of the Waikato region. It is not a wine growing region.
They researched which grape varieties did well in an effort to help develop a NZ wine industry. They also made and sold table wines, These were wines made by civil servants from grapes that were selected on the basis of yield (high) and disease resistance!
I can remember as 5 or 6 year old that my parents drank a glass of one of these wines with dinner most nights. I never tasted them but I am pretty certain they were absolutely awful.
I did not realise how unusual in NZ it was for people to drink wine with dinner back then. It clearly left an impression on me given what has happened subsequently. I guess I should thank those faceless goverment employees who made those experimental wines back then.
Cheers Brodie
2 Likes
Underage. Ripple at 69 cents a fifth. Hurled.
1 Like
Usually drank house wines until my wife took me to Napa in 1998. Our first stop was Pine Ridge which, at the time, was revelation. I looked at her and said, “so this is what wine is supposed to taste like.”
After that trip it was all over.
2 Likes
Your marriage ended over a wine trip? That’s tragic!
3 Likes
I assume you jest. 34 years so far.
You reminded me of my earlier “first wine memory.” Snow was on the ground that evening. Next morning, neighbor asked if someone died in the front yard. Someone sorta did . . . .
1 Like
I have spent decades trying to forget that. Ok Phil, you’ve earned this:
Yer welcome.
I was 18 years old, and going into the Army. My parents were up at the cabin, so we had a going away party for myself at my parents house. This was the summer of 1974. I worked part time at a liquor store (where my retired father worked part time), and we had (what I now know as…) a low fill bottle of this expensive French wine called Chassagne Montrachet, from a producer called Claude Ramonet sitting in my parents wine rack for what seemed like forever (it was the 1968 vintage). My father had grabbed the bottle from the liquor store when they were going to dump it out. I remember it was imported by Alexis Lichine (I actually had a picture of the bottle at one time). None of us knew what they hell it was, just that it was expensive.
Anyways, we had done some experimental chemicals, ran out of beer around Midnight, and decided to go golfing. We got back around 3 in the morning, with nothing to drink. A friend suggested that we open that expensive French wine (it still had the $22 price tag on it). So we did. It was awful at first. Tart and sharp as I remember. So we rolled another, put on some music and sat back for a little while.
About an hour later, my friend tasted the wine again. “Hey? It kind of tastes like macadamia nuts?” Oh my god, I thought to myself, it did. So we finished the bottle. And thought we were drinking liquid gold. It was truly a revelation. None of my friends from back then are wine drinkers today. But all of them will tell you that their favorite wine in the world, is a Chassagne Montrachet. None of them has tasted one in the last 50 years, but that doesn’t matter. That was a special night.
7 Likes
That’s just mean but so appropriate! My parents had the Starmania 33 record and that music punctuated my early chilhood along with The Beatles, Easy Rider soundtrack, Harmonium and Midnight Blue by Louise Tucker.
1 Like
Lots of great stories! My first wine memory was also my wine epiphany. My father liked wine but couldn’t be bothered to get into it, so I was brought up on a diet of Blue Nun, Mateus Rosé and Le Piat d’Or. Then in July 1982, for reasons unknown, my father unearthed two bottles he had been hiding in the cellar: Nenin and Issan 1955. They were both absolutely delicious, mindblowingly so. Those bottles hooked me for life, and when I moved to France six montgs later, I started my collection. I think I would have done anyway, since I was living close to Bordeaux, but that experience showed me what a few years in the cellar could do for a wine.
2 Likes
A rather different angle here …
On the bus in (former) Eastern Germany, first time abroad, part of a group of teenagers on the way to an international sports competition. At a stopover at a convenience store we managed to buy and smuggle out a bottle of cheap wine, to be consumed straight out of the bottle during the rest of the journey, hiding in the back of the bus from stern trainers and officials. Looking back, it must have been a Federweisser (a young, white wine), most likely a Riesling. Many years have passed until I dived hard and deep into the Riesling universe, but I can still taste this, fresh, cool, zippy, slightly tingling.
2 Likes