Michael Pronay wrote:

> 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.)

Like Michael, I grew up with wine in the house, in this case "dago red"
(in reality, some pretty decent Charles Krug Zins from the '60s), but my
first exposure to fine wine probably came on family trips to France and
Germany, where I was allowed to partake small quantities of whatever was
being served.

>
> 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.)

And my revelation came in 1980, at age 21, when I had a 1977 Concannon
Sauvignon Blanc that turned me on to how interesting white wine could
be. Then, the next year, I had a 1978 Dehlinger Zinfandel that opened
my eyes to how complex wine could be. From there it was all downhill...

Mark Lipton