I was a guest at a good friend’s house a few long blocks from our one evening that went long into the night. At the end of the evening, after he had graciously opened many bottles, he opened a beautiful bottle of 1961 Latour. I had to leave to walk home, so our host poured a full glass into a styrofoam cup and sent me on my way.
I balanced that cup the entire dark walk home, then woke up my wife, and we shared it at the kitchen table in the wee hours.
To this day it is one of the great wine memories of my life for many reasons I’m sure you can understand.
Does Manischewitz Red count as wine, on this board? If so, then the glass my then bride and I shared during Huppah was the most meaningful. 33 years ago last month. Some great wines followed in the years since, Latour, Haut Brion, Harlan, SQN and a few others I shared with some great company on this board and not, but the lowly Manischewitz Red (Concord grape?) was the most meaningful, and still is, in the grand scheme of things…
Exhuming this one again, my bongoloid brain forgot the most important glass: 1990 La Turque in 2008. I shared it with 8 of my 9 “Companion” level friends–the people I’d throw myself in front of a train for or give bone marrow to…some of whom had never met each other until that day, when I got the chance to tell them all what they meant to me. Yeah…that glass was pretty special, and that’s still the most expensive bottle I’ve ever purchased.
I think it would probably be the plastic cup of local muscat that I shared with my girlfriend at the market in Octon, over a dozen Agde oysters, on our first holiday together (wine came free with the oysters).
To turn this on its head though, perhaps my most memorable glass is one that I never drank. When I left the hospital after our son was born a few years ago, after a hell of a long delivery, I went out to the car park to find the car completely dead. Turns out I had left the lights on. I had no idea what to do - it was the middle of the night, there was no phone signal, and I was exhausted as I hadn’t slept in over 48 hours. In the end I found a guy manning the booth on the ground floor (I was on the seventh). Turns out he had a pair of starter cables but had left his car at home that day - then he remembered that one of his friends, who worked for the local council, had parked his lawn mower (one of those huge things the size of a tractor) around the back the day before. He drove it up to the seventh floor (it took about 20 minutes) and started my car for me. However, when he slammed the lid afterwards the catch broke, so it wouldn’t close again. After trying for a while in vain, he said he had some gaffer tape in his booth, so I followed him down (another 20 minutes, hood open, driving at crawling pace after a giant lawn mower like some surreal procession). Anyhow, we taped the hood down and I drove home. As soon as I got in, I drew the cork of a half bottle of Latour 1962 that I had waiting on the sideboard. I proceeded to pour a glass of it, sat down, and promptly fell asleep. By the time I woke up, the wine was sadly no more. I just laughed - didn’t care in the slightest.
Sharing a bottle of 2001 Domaine de la Mordorée Reine des Bois CdP with my brother and others, that he had purchased at the estate on a trip we took together years before. He still has a photo that I took of him holding the bottle, with Christophe Delorme. Otherwise, anything that my wife and I tasted at Leitz or Willi Schaefer on our anniversary trip.