2004 Jamet (BTC Coravin at Park Viss hotel) was the Rhone that got me into Rhone. Had never had something like that (old hickory bbq in a field of flowers). Wowza.
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1961 Petrus, when it was served by the glass at an airport bar.
Most Finnish winos remember that place. I flew 2-3 times a week back then. The amount of DRC, 100+ year ports etc you could buy by the oz was nuts.
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Ch Margaux, late 70s or early 80s vintage in mid 80s. My brother and I got sent out to find a friend of the family to bring him home from the bar. Looked a bunch of places and came back empty handed. Opened the door and the house was filled with the smell of Margaux. First reaction was you fucker.
I have recently noticed that quite a few Medoc Crus Bourgeois now offer older vintages on a direct basis. This can be a boon for European wine lovers, but alas doesn’t help Americans very much.
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Trip to Napa in Jan 82. It was freezing in my hometown of DC (I was in balmy Cali when AF 90 crashed into the 14th St Bridge). Tastings at Beringer, BV, Mondavi got me hooked. Introduction to some Bordeaux (particularly COS d’Estournel) later that year solidified my interests.
All things in moderation. Especially class, we have an image to uphold.
Ah, yes, I remember it well.
I was still a young man and was a unicycle racer. I had just completed the arduous Tour d’ Duchy of Fenwick, or as we insiders called it, the Tur-duck-fen. (Racing unicycles are for the true purist: only one pedal and no seat.)
After winning the tour on the final stage, a spectacular hill climb to the top of the highest mountain in Fenwick, we were celebrating my donning of the Maillot Cyan at the annual Blue Ball which concludes the tour. It was a veritable bacchanalia of all the wine you could drink, of only the finest wines ever made.
We were served an Anno Domini 27 Heureka Wedding Cuvee from Cana, poured from a BFA (a type of amphora) that was absolutely the most cromulant wine I’ve ever had, before or since. It would absolutely embiggen itself on palate, becoming positively turgid, with loads of pulsating flavors coming and going as I sipped from their finest pure lead wine stems, with notes of Grapok Sauce, pearl jam, Gagh, Chech’tluth, and Mot’loch.
Frankly, unbelievable.
I was so moved, I tore off my vestments and ran naked through the streets of the alpine village shouting “Heureka!” to all I encountered. They still remember me, and whenever I visit the Duchy I am hailed as Archie Meedies (which, in their language, means “screw pump!”)
Yeah, it was great.
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You’re scaring the young ones off.
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1994 Dow’s, paired with a 20 year aged cheddar after a nice dinner with my parents to celebrate my college graduation in 2010. I haven’t had the wine since but I just bought a few bottles in the hopes of recapturing the magic.
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That…was awesome! Very early frontrunner for POTY 
1982 Paul Pernot Les Pucelles
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I had two “a-ha” wine moments that hooked me. The first was in 2003 while I was still in college. I was invited to dinner by a friend who had recently graduated and was working at his first job at an investment bank. Having graduated from being a poor college student to a fancy “finance guy” he wanted to show off a bit of his newfound cash flow by booking dinner at an expensive restaurant. The group of us were meeting up in Providence RI (long story), and the fanciest restaurant he could find was a Capital Grill. It turned out one of the other people attending dinner was a friend of my friend who I’d never met and was so passionate about wine he’d recently decided to quit his job and move to New Zealand to go to a wine making school. Unsurprisingly this gentleman and I hit it off and he was of course also given the wine list to make some decisions for the table. Among the bottles ordered was a 1994 Beringer Private Reserve. I’d never drank a wine that expensive, nor a wine with close to 10 years of age. It was a transformative glass of wine - it was basically drinking something completely different than any wine I’d ever drank before. It changed what I understood was possible to experience when drinking wine and made me realize I really wanted to explore the wine world.
The second experience was 3 years later in 2006. By then I had graduated college, was living in San Francisco, and was fully indulging in exploring California wine. I was spending countless weekends in Napa and Sonoma tasting everything I could get my hands on. But I really hadn’t drank much French/Italian/Old World wine yet. One day I popped into a wine store in Russian Hill and was feeling like I need to push outside my California comfort zone. I asked the guy behind the counter (who I knew a bit) what he recommended I try from France. Knowing I was a Napa-Sonoma guy, he immediately reached for a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. I’d never heard of the region, the grapes, or the producer (Domaine Pegau) but he thrust the bottle in my hands and said “you MUST try this!” I glanced at the price tag and saw it was $49 which was more than I’d ever paid for a bottle of wine, but the guy was so adamant I bit my tongue and bought it. About a week later I opened it at a dinner party at a friend’s apartment. The first glass was the second “holy sh*t!” wine moment for me. Another door had been opened and many new smells, flavors, perceptions, and other mysteries tumbled out.
Those two bottles were so memorable I actually kept them both. They’ve survived half a dozen moves and now sit in a display case in my living room where I keep wine bottles from memorable moments in my life (i.e., the wine poured for my toast at my brother’s wedding, my 40th birthday wine, etc).
As they say, the rest is history.
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Cantemerle 2006 about 10 years ago - I’d been drinking wine before that without really paying much attention to what I was drinking. My wife and I would have some general preferences, based on something we had had in a bar or ordered in a restaurant - an Argentinian Malbec, a Primitivo - generally looking back something on the heavier and probably slightly sweeter side.
The Cantemerle was an absolute eye opener, just showing how much character a wine could have and for a decent price - that opened my eyes to Bordeaux which led me to take time to understand the region, spend a bit more on a bottle of wine at home than I ever would have considered before (but still only as much as an ‘average’ restaurant wine). A friend then referred me to a colleague who runs a wine club - tasting events and a monthly sale list of wines they pick up through clearances, auctions etc, plus some direct vineyard allocations, mainly from Swiss vineyards (I’m in Switzerland), so I get good access to a lot of wines for a good price. Bordeaux remains by go to region, but I enjoy the Swiss Pinot Noirs, enjoy trying Beaujolais and Loire Valley Reds and am increasingly dipping into Burgundy.
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In the late ‘70s while in school, I lived for a few years in a large rental house with 4 other guys. One of them, Bob, loved to cook and was into wine. To combat the Monday blues, he started a tradition of cooking a gourmet meal for the group every Monday night, with the proviso that we all bring a bottle of wine.
We were all poor students in our 20s who didn’t know diddly about wine. First couple of dinners, we were bringing stuff like Mateus or Blue Nun. Bob brought stuff we’d never heard of. We could tell it was different, usually in a good way. He pointed us to a local wine store a few blocks away, looked like a hole in the wall, with an old gnomish character who would make suggestions for decent stuff, all Old World, that was affordable on a student’s budget.
The wines were definitely better than Mateus or Blue Nun, and we got to try a variety of things. No epiphany wines, though. It was Bob’s cooking that was the star of the show every week. I do remember liking a number of Macon whites, but nothing really stood out until the last dinner of the year before graduation. Bob pulled out all the stops for that meal, invited some of our favorite faculty, and had us all working as line chefs in the kitchen. One of the main courses that night was butterflied leg of lamb, and the wine he served with it was a 1961 Haut Brion. Hell yeah, that was an Heureka moment!
To this day, Haut Brion remains my favorite Château. Opening a bottle is a special occasion and always brings back fond memories of our days together and those Monday night dinners.
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Chez Panisse was the setting, 1967 d’Yquem was THE wine. I remember blurting out “flavor circus” as its honeyed apricot, caramel, butterscotch, pineapple and spices cascaded and overwhelmed my senses. Not long after, during my first few weeks in the apex fine and rare wine biz, I continued my sweet education with a 1959. Oh, my!
Then, it was off to the races as we continued developing our palates to be able to offer firsthand tasting experience to our growing bank of sophisticated wine clients.
Here are some of my regional eye opening wines from early in my dream job/career
1964 Petrus
1971 RC, La Tache and Richebourg horizontal
1955 Nacional
1982 Ramonet Montrachet
1969 and 1971 Dom Rose
1970 Martha’s, 1975 Eisele
We drank these bottles several times, except for the exceedingly rare 1955 Nacional. These amazing wines were more than Eureka moments, they were glorious stepping stones into a vast golden, classic vinous era.
I believe Bacchus smiled upon us as we delved deeper and wider, popping bottles with our clients and special friends regularly.
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Awesome.
Used to be big into the points & miles game. The first time I ever had Krug (which I only knew to be expensive and nothing else about it) was definitely a “wow … didn’t know wine could be like that” moment.
I didn’t really find the wine hobby til many years later. I don’t think I had an “ah ha” type moment with wine, but there are certainly wines I’ve had over the years that I would say had “course altering effects” on my wine journey.
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When the DOH airport opened amd everyone had access to the Al Mourjan lounge (before Al Safwa and the lesser lounges opened), their lounge Champagne was Krug. I had a 11hr layover there on a $300 coach ticket. Do the math. 
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The change, if you interpret it this way, was much earlier. The first transliteration of the word was in 1603 and was spelled Heureka. The next example, occurring in 1658 was Eureka and that was virtually always how the word has appeared since, except for one example of heureka in 1806. There is no entry for Heureka, only for Eureka, with all variants under that entry.I would describe as what happened as a quick journey of a transcription of a Greek word to an English word more or less based on that transcription, a thing that happens all the time. Of course, the OED, not offering all known examples of a word–imagine how long it would be then–has probably missed some heurekas, but I doubt it underestimates the proportions. Since the ground work for the first edition was created by hundreds of amateur readers, they probably had a tendency to say Eureka when they found unusual spellings. In any case, while you are right that you cannot call the usage incorrect, it is certainly an archaism verging on the fustian, say I in my most fustian manner.
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Not sure here whether to give you thumbs up for the insight or laugh to your self depreciation with fustian.
So here you go!
