I rarely drank wine when I was younger and when I did, it was just OK. Then one evening at 2 Guys From Italy in San Carlos CA, I ordered a bottle of 1974 Charles Krug “Vintage Selection” Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon since they did not have beer for purchase.
That was the one. So for our upcoming Anniversary, my wife and I are going to revisit the wine that changed our lives.
I love a trip down a “good memory” lane …
Circa 1972, age 22, at the Du Barry restaurant on Newbury Street in Boston over a dish of frogs legs. Jacqueline and I had been seeing each other for a several months, and my dad invited us to meet him in Boston for lunch. I remember that the dish was a little scary, but surprisingly delicious. My dad ordered a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé to drink with the meal. My first French food and my first “serious” wine (i.e. not Ripple, Boonsfarm, Mateus, etc.). Seemed very sophisticated to me at the time, something maybe beyond my reach, but also worthwhile aspiring towards. How time flies and things change.
P,S. Posted elsewhere here, maybe more than once.
1985 Ridge Geyserville. Then the 1979 Ch. Gruaud Larose send me down the French wine path.
Hard to say, since I grew up drinking wine from my father’s cellar. I’d say the wine that sent me down the path I’m currently on was a 1998 Jamet…
Of all things to get me hooked, mine was an aged (~ 10 years) Steuben that my wife’s uncle made from his vineyard in PA.
2009 Kosta Browne Sonoma County Pinot Noir gifted to me by my brother-in-law started my interest in wine. Then a 2006 Carver Sutro Palisades Vineyard Petite Sirah hooked me fully!
2014 Ram’s Gate Winery Hyde Vineyard Syrah in 2016. Was at my first wine tasting in their beautiful tasting room in Carneros. Tasted a Chardonnay, a few Pinots and then boom, the deeper darker Syrah exploded my brain (and pushed my buttons)! 
. Syrah is still my favorite varietal to this day.
My first Tâche. It may have been a 00. Got the bug for certain.
BV Chablis. I think I’ve told this story before, but in February 1976 I took my date to a fancy French restaurant (l’Ermitage, in Los Angeles). She liked dry white wines. I knew nothing about wine. I ordered the BV Chablis which was the cheapest wine on the wine list at $6.00. I am by nature a collector, and this wine started an interest and a collection that’s lasted 49 years.
1986 CVNE Imperial Gran Reserva hooked me on aged Rioja
2006 Merus hooked me on ‘better’ Napa
2003 Chateau Montrose hooked me on Bordeaux
I used to drive to and from college at U.C. Davis to home in Mendocino County. When I turned 21, I succumbed to a “free wine tasting” billboard (yes, the good old days) and visited J. Pedroncelli. I immediately fell in love with its 1970 Chenin Blanc. Sadly, the wine has been discontinued but J. Pedroncelli continues to beckon, more than 50 years later.
Casanuova delle Cerbaie BdM at the vineyard. I’d always drank wine and had been to Napa/Sonoma, prior to visiting the Tuscan wine country, but when I first tasted that BdM, I was hooked forever.
1994 Phelps Insignia - It was so much better than any red wine I had tried up to that time. (I had the 1989 Haut-Brion a couple years later and that took me to the stratosphere.)
An early 2000s Opus One at a high-end restaurant in SF did it for Napa. Then a 2006 Jadot Corton Pougets did it for Burgundy.
Mine was a 1985 Leoville Barton in 1993.
Several different wines back in Priorat in 2017. Pasanau and Clos de l’Obac.
It isn’t the wine that got me hooked on wine, I had already been enjoying wines for a few years, mostly California; however, it is the wine that got me focused on the French profile: 1990 Chateau La Louviere, Pessac-Leognan. Started buying it on release around the 1993 timeframe. Just a gorgeous wine, so earth-driven. I distinctly recall a Thanksgiving dinner at my parent’s house where we popped bottles of this and a bunch of California wines, including Caymus, Silverado, Beringer and Montelina, and it won the Judgment of Alfert. From that point forward I was hooked. I have had more than two cases of that lovely wine, my last bottle, probably around two years ago. It is still one of my benchmarks for what makes this wine region so great: The ability of a wine to so over preform despite its price point and to age so gracefully and develop such complexity over the years.
NV Louis Martini Mountain Red from the half gallon jug with the handle, in 1961.
That was when I learned that I liked wine better than beer or spirits.
NV Gallo Zinfandel out of a gallon jug in 1963.
At 16 years of age in the Monday night poker game my freshman year in college. We were drinking out of a gallon jug of Gallo Burgundy (before Hearty Burgundy). Guy wins a pot, throws a dollar to the guy who is old enough to buy and says “next week buy the gallon of Gallo Zinfandel instead of the Burgundy, it costs a buck more”. I pay attention to my glass of Burgundy, the next week taste the Zinfandel. Revelation! In those days, probably 100% old vine Sonoma juice for $5/gallon instead of $4 for the Central Valley Burgundy.
Then the half gallons of Foppiano Petite Sirah. Bought one, thought it would age, put a case of 6 jugs in my basement, held it for 10 years. Invited everybody I knew over and went through the case in a week.
Damn @Dan_Kravitz you are old!!! 
I think for me (and for many people), it may not have been a single wine but a series of “epiphany wines”. Each one revealing a deeper layer of what wine could be.
I’m relatively new to wine, but if I had to pick a single wine it was a 2019 Foillard Morgon Cote de Py. It was the first time that I felt like I was drinking an expression of a place and a person. It wasn’t a product created by a lab and marketed by a think tank, but was the creation of a farmer and vigneron working his ancestral land with a vision of what he wanted to create.
