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Posted to alt.food.wine
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Wine that got you into wine?
wrote: ^^^^^^^^^^^
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Not quite the name I normally would respond to.
> What wine did you first taste that caused you to think, "wow,
> this is what wine is supposed to be like!" ?
But the question is OK, and incidentally I happen know the answer.
Having been raised in wine country (Vienna, Austria), wine was
part not of our daily diet, but at home wine was drunk 3 to 5
times a week with dinner. I remember "Rio Tejo" red, Portuguese
plonk coming in crown-capped liter bottles (bottled by the
supermarket chain in Austria) regularly on the table at home. Of
course we went to Heurigen to have Gespritzer, starting age 16/17.
(No need to point with the finger, legal drinking age in Eastern
Austria - that's where the vine is grown - is 16.)
But revelation came 1974, at age 21, in Zurich. At a friend's
place I remember having two reds that opened my eyes as to what
red wine can be: 1971 Moulin-à-Vent, a Mövenpick bottling (the
latter being a large swiss wine merchant and 1971 a phantastic
year for both Burgundy and Beaujolais); and 1966 Ch. Malartic-
Lagravière, Cru Classé des Graves. (As to white wine, I was a
spoiled child: Austrian whites were already very, very good at the
time - if you knew where to buy -, but reds were a disaster.)
So the summer of 1974 was the time I was bitten by phylloxera,
known as the wine bug.
Jeez, that's 32 years back ... ;-)
M.
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