Wine that got you into wine

Not quite the name I normally would respond to.

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 Clbutté 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.