(Editorial team)
Three days ago, we asked our readers about the wines that turned them into wine enthusiasts. And we received more replies than expected (121). This is a strong sign of life from a community now wrongly declared dead. Here is the first batch of reactions, anonymised but otherwise reproduced verbatim as posted.
Tomorrow there will be a second batch. And on Tuesday, the winner of an old Bordeaux from the editor-in-chief’s cellar will be announced.
Now, enjoy reading. The people speak the truth!
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First wines: Burgwappen (1.5 litres from Edeka for an estimated €1.79–€2.99)… with cola, naturally – mixing ratio 4 parts red wine, 1 part cola… the tendency to love wine was therefore already discernible at the beginning of puberty, no 50/50 nonsense 
The first wine that opened the door to the wine universe: Tesch Riesling Unplugged (must have been around 2002/2003)
Top of the pops with goosebump effect: Knewitz, Chardonnay Reserve – Richard Östreicher, Silvaner sur lie – Cupano, Ombrone – Balthasar Ress, Riesling 60 Monate Florhefe….. Every one of these wines was beautiful without being a GG/GC (wine + company + state of mind + location and weather 
)
It was a Mouton-Rothschild from a mediocre vintage in the 1970s, but nevertheless an experience at 18… I already knew Mosel wines ranging from good to very good, but this was something else altogether
As someone from the Palatinate, I made the leap away from co-operative wine and wine-festival pitchers via a very good wine seminar at the Wachenheim adult education centre. Among the first self-purchased and memorable wines were Biffar, 1990s Mäushöhle Spätlese trocken (today this is von Winning; Ulrich Mell was there before he went to BJ), then the Weissburgunders from Bergdolt Klostergut St. Lamprecht, very powerful stuff, 1990, 1992. But the most fabulous stuff back then was Bernd Philippi’s barrique wines; one of the few empty bottles I kept was the 1993 Pinot Noir Mag.
As a child, I was already allowed to drink water with a dash of Riesling, and later small sips of undiluted wine (different times back then). When my grandfather died, I inherited his wine cellar at the age of 17 
That was when I had, among other things, an aha moment with a dry Riesling Spätlese from the Mosel from 1976. Unfortunately, I no longer know the winery… and that was 27 years ago now.
I was about 23/24 and was working in the food-service wholesale trade at the time. I had an Italian friend with a restaurant who was also one of our customers. I often ate there – and was regularly allowed to try whatever was open. Sometimes fine wines, sometimes simple ones. Sometimes I liked them, sometimes less so.
But the first wine I really remember, the one that touched me deeply, was an Italian: Promis by Angelo Gaja. No idea which vintage. My favourite wine at the time – and at over €25, almost a luxury for me back then. But it had something magical: velvety, warm, and with a depth that got me hooked. Today I only drink it for nostalgic reasons – and every time I taste not only the wine, but also a piece of that carefree period.
As befits small children from Bordeaux, every Sunday there was a very, very small sip of Sauternes. So les petit Pitchounets become dry drinkers at 18, hence Sauternes. At six, I drank the adults’ glasses empty and then slept for 20 hours.
Unfortunately, I can’t name the wine at all; it was red wine, but I know it knocked me sideways and I still think about it today.
It was the mid-to-late 1990s. The aunt of a good friend of mine had married the then owner of Schloss Ramholz, Magnus von Kühlmann-Stumm. We – seven young lads – were allowed to camp by the fishpond nearby every year, and one evening we were invited to this fairytale castle for dinner and wine. The lord of the manor brought out several bottles with old labels from the well-stocked wine cellar and put them on the table. Even if they certainly weren’t the very best bottles from his cellar, they were overwhelming for me. I didn’t immediately become a wine drinker either, but this wine – probably also because of the surroundings – triggered something positive in me, and still does today. In hindsight, I know that this must have been my ignition point; I just didn’t realise it at the time.
My first wine was a Chianti Classico in my mid-thirties, I think from Querciabella. After 20 years of abstinence, I had decided to submit to my fate and my origins and booze it up like any ordinary Austrian. And lo and behold: the first wine I ever drank tasted good. But my real revelation was an entirely unremarkable Riesling that I drank a few weeks later during the interval of a play. My first Riesling and the beginning of an everlasting love. Eight years later, I am a wine collector with a mostly outsourced wine cellar (for reasons of space), a membership of a wine club and in the process of deepening my wine knowledge with Advanced Seminar 2 at the Wine Academy, meaning I may call myself a certified drunk.
A customer brought me an Allegrini Amarone from the 1990 vintage. After that, I quickly moved on to Dal Forno and Quintarelli. And even more quickly to the Médoc. Best wines: 1982 Latour and 1990 Sandrone Cannubi Boschis.
Phew, difficult. The first wine I bought myself was a Château Jean Faure 1982, sometime in the 1980s. I had already drunk wine at my parents’ house, mainly from the Rheingau, and gradually slipped into the world of wine.
I think the first wine that really blew me away was a 1985 Côte-Rôtie from Chapoutier in the early 1990s.
My father-in-law, a committed Franconian wine drinker, was horrified by my affinity for beer and introduced ‘worker’s wine’. Whenever there were digital deployments, there was ‘worker’s wine’ – a simple Franconian Schoppen wine. The twinkle in his eye, as he brought out the wine in order to have a glass himself, will always stay with me, and that is how wine very quickly became a pleasure. Wine is not just pleasure, but always an experience with friends. I then stumbled across Italian red wines and was able to educate my father-in-law in that direction.
It was a bottle of Château Latour 1984 that I was given: at 17, I played organ and bar piano at a wedding in a castle where mainly wealthy people get married. I was invited to the meal and, at the end, was given a bottle of the table wine as a thank-you. I drank it with a considerably older, good friend with whom I occasionally drank a bottle of Barolo, the good one from Aldi – we agreed that we were drinking something unusual here, because the bottle required absolutely no effort to get through and was empty much faster than either of us realised. I still have it to this day.
There were two Champagnes. I turned 20 that day. My uncle, nine years older and, for me, a restaurateur, bar owner and godlike expert for almost a decade, invited me. He put two bottles of Champagne on the table. In a silver ice bucket full of ice. They were a Billecart-Salmon Rosé and a Krug Clos du Mesnil. Clueless but motivated, I drank. Meanwhile, my god-uncle told me everything about the history of Champagne, the region and what makes this drink special. He described a world of which I wanted to be a part.
Cabernet Sauvignon from Simonsig. Until then, I only knew the eighth of a litre of red from a two-litre bottle in a cheap pub. I didn’t understand why anyone would drink it without a mixer. But I was young :-) The experience left its mark on me, and I kept the empty bottle for years, sometimes repurposing it as a pasta rolling pin. From then on, I was a red-wine drinker. Without this powerful, juicy, inexpensive introduction, I would have stuck with beer. The path to becoming an enthusiast (if I am one) was gradual, but a Grüner Veltliner from Ebner-Ebenauer also opened me up to white wine.
We drank supermarket wine. Viala and things like that. Known from the adverts. And Gallo Cabernet. That was the weight class for a long time. At some point, I tried the ‘Olivin’ from Winkler-Hermaden, a single-vineyard Zweigelt matured in wood, at a company dinner in Graz. That was the key moment. It opened up my senses. So this is what wine can taste like! Wow!
Inevitably, my first wine trip was to Styria. Back then, the focus was still on red wine. Styria wasn’t the happiest choice for that. But I also brought a few Zweigelts home. And good addresses. From then on, I bought wine at the winery or from specialist retailers. Mostly the well-known names, though. Another milestone – or almost a turning point – was when I found Hauptsache Wein and Captain K*. There I got to know many new names and also began taking an interest in ‘garage winemakers’. Hartmut Aubell and Gottfried Lamprecht, for example, have enriched my cellar ever since. There are also countless young winemakers in South Tyrol who swim against the tide but do their own thing. Andi Sölva with his ‘Sea’ and his ‘Künstler’ is just one of them. He and many others won me over, and that is precisely why my heart belongs to South Tyrolean wines – because of the land and its people, the food, the whole package. That is where I am at home now.
My favourite alcoholic drink in my youth was Hessian apple wine. Optimal drinking strength even when very thirsty, dry, refreshing, but it has to be drunk cold. Still just as refreshing today as it was back then. But cooling it was impossible when camping minimally with friends in summer. So I bought dry red wines at the supermarket and tried them at home. I knew dry red from my father and knew that connoisseurs drank it warm. Gallo Zinfandel proved perfectly suitable. Fruity, full-bodied, got you drunk. At around €5, affordable too. Add a cheap, virtually indestructible balloon glass, of the kind that used to be put on restaurant tables here and there in France, and the problem was solved. Everyone else drank warm beer around the campfire; during the day I drank Californian red wine that had been stored in the shade in the bushes – everyone else had to make their way to the toilet several times in the evening, while I went once at most. Superiority through wine consumption! I supposedly became a connoisseur through the occasional purchase of a few bottles of Amarone when they were advertised in the offers leaflet at Feinkost Albrecht. Two men, two bottles of Amarone, Pink Floyd very loud – expensive (almost €20 a bottle) but powerful evening combination in winter. Better than Zinfandel, but still not the real feeling. A clear setback in my wine-drinking career came in the form of a wine tasting with friends at a winery in the Rheingau. We tried one Riesling after another. The winemaker talked about vineyard sites and traditions, but we didn’t understand it. The Riesling stuff was simply more acidic than apple wine, yet cost many times as much. The winemaker noticed the restraint on our faces and therefore pulled out all the stops to convince the young drinking crowd. Finally, he served the tipsy throng a Riesling with residual sweetness that had been matured for 10 or more years. It was quiet at the table. We sipped and smacked our lips reverently, probably because we thought that was what professionals did too. The winemaker’s eyes lit up. Suddenly, one of the fellow tasters broke the silence: ‘It tastes just like my grandad smells.’ Apple wine after all, then. Much later, in the westernmost corner of Franconia, I discovered that white wine didn’t have to be so stomach-churningly acidic and gradually drank my way up to the €10, maximum €15 level with Silvaner and Riesling. Pinot Noir was new to me too – from Armin Heilmann and Stefan Kremer. Much finer than Amarone, yet with plenty of flavour. And after enjoying it, you could still move from the sofa to the bed. That was a completely different level of quality from before. I visited wine taverns, talked to winemakers and was interested in the details; the intoxication was more of a pleasant side effect than the purpose. The path to becoming a nerd already seemed predetermined. Then, sometime at the end of 2013 or beginning of 2014, three bottles of Rudolf May Silvaner Recis 2012 found their way into my cellar. They had been incorrectly priced in Amazon’s wine department. At the regular price, over €20, I would never have bought this sinfully expensive white wine back then. That was the wow moment; it was different from everything I had had before. Finer, more complex, deeper – goosebumps. At that point, no Churfranken Silvaner, no Rheingau Riesling and no Aldi Amarone could touch it. That was when I was in trouble!
For me, it was in Merano, in South Tyrol, around 1985. My then wife and I used to go there fairly often; my father-in-law had moved there from Hamburg and opened a successful spiritual-healing practice, (a Czech, an RAF pilot in the war, miraculously cured of cancer at the time) where we always stayed. Next door was a great wine and spirits shop. I wondered why a particular bottle of Barolo was so expensive. I didn’t have much money. So I promptly swapped the price tag with a cheaper one and succeeded. It was a very old Fontanafredda. A revelation in the glass; I was intoxicated by the nose alone. From that exact moment, I was hooked. I then bought quite a few things in that shop and thereby more or less compensated the owner.
Poujeaux 1998. Not a great wine. Not a great vintage. Nevertheless, the entry point had been established.
Gesellmann Bela Rex 1993 and an endless conversation with Albert G. about what wine is and why this stuff can taste so bloody good… my friends and I could distinguish white from red perfectly well back then and had absolutely no clue. Albert G. didn’t mind; he simply talked. And afterwards I wanted to know exactly.
Cabernet Sauvignon from Simonsig. Until then, I only knew the eighth of a litre of red from a two-litre bottle in a cheap pub. I didn’t understand why anyone would drink it without a mixer. But I was young :-) The experience left its mark on me, and I kept the empty bottle for years, sometimes repurposing it as a pasta rolling pin. From then on, I was a red-wine drinker. Without this powerful, juicy, inexpensive introduction, I would have stuck with beer. The path to becoming an enthusiast (if I am one) was gradual, but a Grüner Veltliner from Ebner-Ebenauer also opened me up to white wine.
It happened on a summer’s day in 1984. Sixteen-year-old Wolfgang was strolling around the Nierstein wine festival, a kidney skewer in his hand, when he came across Friedrich Reichard Naab’s wine stand. Curiously, he had a 1964 Schwabsburger Schlossberg Riesling Spätlese available by the glass. Its contents not only went well with the skewer, but also helped get Wolfgang F. hooked on (mature) Riesling. The next morning, accompanied by his father, he was in Mr Naab’s cellar. And bought some. It is estimated that three bottles of the 1964 still exist in the author’s stock…
I genuinely can’t answer that in this form. It was a process that is still ongoing. There was no single initiating wine in my ‘wine life’. My parents domesticated me with wine from about the age of 16. Back then, my parents’ cellar mainly contained German Riesling and Scheurebe (including Prädikat wines). At around 22, I began to engage with it seriously. But there was never one single wine. Not to this day.
I think it was a Château Gruaud Larose. I even think it was from the shitty 1980 vintage. It had that deadly sweetness and died in the second glass too, but it was a special experience.
1. The dry Lorcher Rieslings from Weingut Graf von Kanitz at the family dining table. 2. The 1978 or 1985 Latour – I’m no longer entirely sure which – that my godfather generously opened (then as now, he was very free-handed with his Pauillacs, as that was and is his favourite region); I was 14 or 15. And it was entry into a new dimension.
To be continued