1995 Shafer Hillside Select.
Had this wine in about 2004 at a local restaurant that didn’t really have the clientele for a good list. My friend and I sat at the bar and happened upon their list. $120.00 a bottle. We drank two bottles at the bar and then made a deal to buy their rest of their inventory to take home. '94, '95, '96, '97 an awesome find.
The '95 itself was just perfect. they stored it in a non-temperature controlled cellar so the wine evolved beautifully. Big thick wine with eye burning alcohol but so balanced with the right amount of fruit and body. Just an amazing wine.
Special mention to 1986 Chateau Margaux which I pull a bottle out of the cellar about once a year. To me, it’s a perfect 1st growth and not even beginning to show any signs of getting old.
1953 Margaux
1985 DRC RC
Not A bottle, but a series of bottles. Growing up, my father had 3 cases of 1975 Beaulieu Private Reserve Cabernet. He’d open one every so often so I was able to follow it’s evolution over more than a dozen years. Learned about the evolution of wine as it ages in bottle.
1929 Bouchard Pommard Rugiens
1959 Lafite
1989 Haut Brion
1989 Petrus
I can still taste them just by closing my eyes.
1978 DRC RC - I"d had “good wine” before but never “Great wine”. Sat and had the bottle with my dad and mom (who only had a small pour). Ruined Burgundy for me, for years nothing came close so I stopped trying.
1983 D’Yquem - My first D’Yquem and to date still my favorite. Epiphany, cherubs sang, trumpets rang, my then wife-to-be looked glorious and all was right with the world.
1997 Pride Reserve Cab. Thanksgiving with family. You could smell it a mile away. Such a good wine made better by the time and place.
2002 Pride Reserve Claret because I had never before experienced such an outpouring of blueberry from a wine
Sorry, not possible, there are too many great wines I have tasted over the last 30+ years (so “head and shoulders” are quite high …) - and moreover it´s not possible to compare great whites to great reds to great sparklers and to sweet wines … for each group I´d to name 5-10 …
Many wines come to mind but the one that stands out the most is the 1989 Trimbach CSH Hors Choix.
The only wine that I dreamed about drinking again.
1959 Petrus -
Located a case for a customer in the late 1980s, he came in on a Saturday night to pick it up. He said “let’s pop a bottle!”, so I opened the bottle, and I’ll be damned if I couldn’t smell the wine from across the store. He smelled it, grabbed the rest of the case and left (leaving the open bottle).
Came home that night, screamed out “Honey! You want a glass of red wine!” she replied; “No! I just started watching a movie!” So I proceeded to go into my office, close the door, crank up the stereo, and drank that whole bottle of '59 Petrus by myself. Wowsers indeed.
not a bottle but a barrel—tasting 99 La Tâche from barrel at DRC with Bernard Noblet. Those couple sips cost me a lot of money.
1975 Silver Oak Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. it was the bottle that sent me on this journey of owning a wine store.
Something far more modest for me: Haut Bages Libéral 1990, which allowed me to understand that a great wine doesn’t need to be expensive or fêted by critics.
1970 Mouton for two reasons. (1) It was my first truly “vintage” Bordeaux, had been kept in fairly good condition, and although it was getting toward the end of its life the wine held together well and mixed strong leathery, spicy notes with fruit better than any wine I’d had by that point. (2) Tasting one of the wines from the Judgment of Paris had a cool historical novelty to it.
Gerhard +1…which is your favorite child dilemma?
this was the wine I almost listed—the wine that spun my head around in 1984 and started the insanity.
1976 Fonseca Guimaraens.
1992 Maya shortly after I joined my wine group; started a downward spiral
That was a great bottle
Mine:
55’ cheval blanc- in o1’, damn, really got me on the aged wine path. Perfect in my mind.