With curlers in her hair in a bathrobe at 3 pm with a nonfilter dangling from her mouth and the dog barking and the TV on really loud?
Thank you for the laugh! If it’s true, I’m not even sorry!
My father owned a wine store. I developed a palate from tasting with my father. First wines I tasted were German, which my mother loved. Then, I started tasting reds - in those days, Bordeaux and Burgundy and fell in love with them. Fell harder for Burgundy. Still true.
My dad is a huge wine geek. His interest sparked in the early 80s reading the wine advocate and tasting California cabs like Jordan, Silver Oak, etc… Over time he got the bug for Bordeaux which became his hobby and passion. This expanded into Rhone, Burgundy, Italy, Spain, etc… He would take me to my team sports games on weekend mornings and we would then hit the local wines stores looking for good deals before heading home. We frequently came home with cases loaded into the trunk and backseat.
There was always a bottle of wine open at the dinner table. It was frequently a young Bordeaux or similar. He would have a glass or two with dinner and always encouraged us to smell his glass and tell him what we smelled. We often got a taste or two. By highschool, I was encouraged to have a small glass of my own to taste and try. Exposure to labels, AOCs, etc came from doing the dirty work of taking inventory of his cellar. Despite the spectacular exposure, my interest didn’t truly start until right after college when I began reading everything I could get my hands on and opening bottles on my own. The foundation of knowledge and experience I got from my dad regarding wine is something I can never repay him for.
As for my own household? I put my 5 month old’s face in every glass of wine I drink at home and give him the chance to get a good whiff. I dip my finger in the glass and give him a little taste of everything too. I hope he falls in love with wine like I did and I’m half the influnce on him that my father was on me.
Ditto. Could have turned me off wine for life if college friends hadn’t bought Mateus.
Moms drank a half a box of Franzia white zin every night when I was a kid.
Once I got into wine in my twenties, I convinced her to at least try other varietals. Haven’t see. Her drink a white zin in a long time; nowadays it’s Riesling and PN.
Jay, I was lucky to have a college roommate who was seriously into cooking, white Burgs and red Bordeaux. That’s how I got into wine.
My parents are teetotalers and don’t/didn’t allow drinking in their house. So, yeah.
I have no specific recollection of an introduction to wine from my parents. Wine was just always part of the dinner table, it was part of the meal. My father had a small collection of wine, and helped me start mine. On my mother’s side, her family was in the drinks business in Savoie (soda, beer and wine).
I made sure my nephew’s first taste of wine was a good one (he’s now 23 and collecting wine) – his first drop as a baby, just a few days after he was born, was 1982 Mouton. A number of years later (he was probably 7 or 8), he gave me a painting he did – a remarkably good replica of the '82 Mouton label! Still have it up on the wall; I’m looking at it now.
My parents never ever drank wine. Never in the home never discussed. Never an issue. I am a self taught wino.
+1
My father flew for TWA so we were very early into the wines of Portugal and Spain, up to the point that we only had what he could find by himself during layovers in Lisbon and Madrid. Several years later when he flew regularly into Frankfurt, it was all Liebfraumilch. Hungarian-Grandpa kept a bottle of red under the kitchen counter behind the liquor bottles, using only the same small glass, which I still have. (Also, I was the resident wax-melter for all the bottles turned into candleholders that lined our family pool hall in the finished basement. It broke my heart to toss them a few years back.)
My Italian grandfather and his brothers all made home made wine in the Newark, NJ area. They bought grapes from Italian American families in Sonoma and these were shipped by train. During prohibition families were allowed two barrels per family for “home consumption.” The Cuozzi boys outfitted everyone on the block with two barrels 8^) we had the home made wine, big burly reds that were most likely the ubiquitous Italian field blend of mixed blacks, at Sunday dinner after church. We drank out of tumblers not stems. Small children had their own table and a splash of wine to turn their water pink. As you got older the amount of wine increased until I got only wine about when I was 15 I guess. Wish I had been able to keep all of Grand dad’s wine equipment … It was pretty cool stuff.
Later Mom and Dad traveled to Europe for vacation many years and got into nice Italian and French wines. And then when I was living in Sonoma and SF in the late 60s and early 70s I discovered California wines for myself. Then Dad and I got into a bit of collecting together by the late 70s through the early 1990s.
Dad would have been 91 yesterday… He passed away in 2001. I still miss drinking wine with him. Cheers, Bob
My story, too; there was certainly alcohol in the house but my parents never ever ever had wine with dinner, not once that I recall. My mother might have a single martini before dinner and very occasionally my father might have a beer with dinner, but not very often. He wasn’t a good drinker and knew that about himself; the two or three times I remember him getting really loaded are among my least favorite childhood memories.
Yup
My parents started buying wine in the mid to late 1970’s, but they’re buying really took off with vintages from the 1980’s. They drank wine every night with dinner. When I was a teenager, I was allowed a small glass of whatever they had opened with dinner. It was a small step form there to obsession…
Probably because it never oxidized. Scary thought.
That Gallo Hearty Burgundy was actually pretty good stuff, from pretty good grapes.
My parents were only beer and cocktail drinkers. The only wine in the house was a bottle of Manechewitz for Christmas and Easter toasts.
I introduced wine to my parents.
Hey, where’s the dust on those bottles? 
They didn’t; I introduced them.
As far as my kids, supplant the woman in your ecard with a dude and that’s me.