What wine figure has had the biggest impact on you?

I always find it interesting to meet people who are really into wine and hear how they were first exposed to this wonderful hobby. So many great stories of eye-opening bottles, parents who imparted their passion onto their children, etc.

I’d be curious to hear about who has had the greatest impact on your personal wine journey. Was it an old-school critic like JR, MB, or RP? Magazines such as Spectator, Decanter, or Noble Rot? A fellow Berserker or wine aficionado? Perhaps even a specific winemaker? Whether it was GaryV, Galloni, or signore Klapp, it’d be interesting to hear who had the most profound impact on your personal wine journey and why. Cheers!

Paul Masson and Orson Welles. They would sell no wine before its time.

In 1981 (just turned 16 years), Christmas family dinner. Before this, I didn’t like wine at all (“sour taste, and low alcohol, -No thanks”! ).

My father had a small box of wines, 6-8 bts. from My grand parents. Bottles were saved “for a special event”.
Some NV Champagnes, a port, and two 1959 red wines. Upright in box, City apartment, no temp. control, many years like this !

We opened the burg, and the Bordeaux, both 1959 and unknown, believing they were ruined, but they were both great wines. As I remember, they were light, not bitter, brick colored, and very easy to swallow with the traditional roasted duck. A new dimension of flavors, paired with food, opened up for Me…
I had to start My own collection.

In the mid 90’s, I was a fan of RP, I loved to read the juicy TNs, and then buying the same wines, for My cellar. Great advices, that I appreciate a lot today.

Regards, Soren.

My Dad, who exposed me to wine and a very civilized existence. We still drink together quite regularly. We are uniquely different people, but wine is a shared passion.

Robert Parker, for starting my education into French wines. Yea, I broke up with him in 1999, but still have to give him credit.

And then my very close friends with whom I have shared this passion for many years. I started my career with 4 other young lawyers in a large firm, and together we started wine tastings and a wine club, which ran for years. I still break bread with some of these gents. My current group of wine friends are also my cycling buddies, and my very best friends, of 15+ years. Sharing wines, meals, cycling and seamless conversation on so many vast subjects - some of which is entirely puerile - is what brings it all together.

Gotta give this Board some credit too. Have made some wonderful friends here. And learned many things and been exposed to wines that I had never heard of before. We have a great community here.

Really, this board, and the people who are a part of it. I’d been into wine for a couple years, and had read whatever I could find on the subject.

But most of my reading is done online and I was finding less and less value in the Spectator. Decanter didn’t do much for me either. So I googled “wine forums” and stumbled across this place.

That was in May 2014 and it’s been really fascinating to look back on these last couple of years and see my evolution. I was smitten by Berserkers quite early, and decided to start at the very beginning of the forum and work my way forward through every topic that struck my fancy. That took about six months.

Thanks to this board, its members, the discussions, and the reviews, my understanding of the wine world expanded from “US wine is Napa and Sonoma, and oh yeah Oregon does some Pinot too”, to gaining an appreciation for other areas of California such as The SCM and Anderson Valley, and really understanding the differences in that can occur with the same grape across all of these regions.

This board has also helped me discover my love of old school, classically structured Napa Cab, low/unoaked Chardonnay, reds and whites from the Loire, left bank Bordeaux, and German Riesling (not necessarily in that order).

I feel like I’ve gained 20 years of wine education in just 2. Can’t imagine what the next 2 hold, much less the next 20!!!

Señor Orlando. He taught me to embrace the green.

waaaaay back when, I had

http://www.amazon.com/Wines-spirits-Foods-world-Waugh/dp/B0006BWMJA

Wines and spirits, (Foods of the world) Hardcover – 1968
by Alec Waugh

Helped open up the world and kindle the fire.

The person who kicked my interest in wine up several notches from the “I’ll have a glass if there’s no decent beer on tap” level to the “I need to commit to a cellar in the basement” level was a friend who’s a Master Sommelier. If not for him, I’d probably not be neck deep in this hobby. Specifically, a 1996 JC Pichot Les Larmes de Bacchus years ago and more recently a 1993 Ponsot Clos de la Roche - both from Bern’s - were the bottles that hurt my wallet the most.

As far as members on this board, both Craig G and Robert Alftert made me dip my tow back in the Bordeaux pool, which would have been a region I simply avoided otherwise. Gotta give a shout out to Mike Pobega for some very nice California Cab recommendations, and thanks to Alan and Chris for their suggestions / trades of American Pinot during the “Pick a Buddy” swaps.

Alexis Lichine.
I picked up the wine interest from my father. Back then, in the early 1970’s, there wasn’t a lot out there about wine. I had a copy of his encyclopedia and read his descriptions. The wine world back then was only Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, and Cabernet in California. Because of his book, I started branching out into Italy, Rhone, Alsace, and Germany. And the wines were ridiculously cheap back then. I currently have an aged, very eclectic wine cellar as a result.

Admit it, it was the big hug i gave u when we first met!

I’m going to second the idea that Berserkers has had a large impact. As for a winery, I’d say Draper and the gang at Ridge which goes back to the 70’s for me.

Without a doubt it was Robert Parker.

When I first started working in the studios in LA, the best sessions were always with jingle composer Don Piestrup. Not only is he an incredible writer and a great guy, but he had a wine cellar of 8,000 bottles of first rate wines. For each session he would bring at least a case of assorted wines to try. A ten o’clock hour jingle session with LA’s finest musicians, then an eleven o’clock wine tasting and that happened a few times a week for several years. Wines that were poured ranged from premier and grand cru white and red Burgundies to 60’s and 70’s Californias to 1945 Taylor vintage port. This was a master class of both wine education and music education second to none.

Steve Zanotti–of Wine Exchange. On Thursday afternoons for years, occasional other days also, I would sit in the back office with him and Kyle, later also Tristen, and taste, taste, taste, as he educated me. In return, I would proofread the then hand-written Wine Ex newsletter, as his wine abilities were inversely related to his spelling capabilities. He was brilliant at palate memory, merciless at dissecting a wine, and outstanding at characterizing or describing a wine, an incredibly gifted taster, the best I have seen. He became a friend, I spent a lot of money, I had access to amazing wines, and an amazing education. This went on for years, beginning more than two decades ago.

I’ve been calling on retailers in just about every major market in the country over the last 25+ years; Zanotti and Kyle Meyer were by far the best retailers I ever called on. I will never forget the old trashcan they used to have in the middle of their office, and those two could hit it with a trajectile spit from anywhere in the room. It was like watching two great gunslingers -

I had several initiations into this world of wine. In 1998, when I was 16, I went to France on a school trip and we got wine with dinner every night. Most of the wine was tough for me to drink at the time but did because I loved the idea of class sanctioned drinking. But at dinner one night in Paris, we were at a fine restaurant (some place with a duck in the name) and the table wine was much more enjoyable than the other stuff we’d had to that point. Later, our French teacher arranged for each table to share a bottle of “fine Bordeaux” (likely a decent second or third growth, maybe cheaper since we really didn’t know any different). This wine was an eye opener for sure. In comparison this bottle made the other wine seem lifeless and dull. I credit my French teacher with introducing me to wine for enjoyment (rather than just drunkenness).

As years wore on, I had terrible luck chasing the red (wine) dragon. I couldn’t understand why wine sucked so much. Now I realize I just hadn’t been looking in the right places. Plus I was a poor student and wasn’t willing to shell out a bunch of money for something that I wasn’t sure about to find something that had been mostly I enjoyable. This began my journey into craft and foreign beer. I could justify dropping a few bucks on beer to explore new styles but shelling out more than $10 on a bottle of wine that I knew next to nothing about was terrifying for a 20 something student on a budget. Somewhere in my early 20s though, I met Chef Kevin why reintroduced me to wine. Chef Kevin explained to me the usual course of wine exploration. You will likely start out liking sweet whites and progress to dry whites and lighter or sweeter reds and then eventually appreciate the dry reds. He was absolutely correct and I had been jumping the gun a bit by trying to find a red that was like the Bordeaux I had that I loved. At that pint I tried to focus on finding whites I liked and to progress my way though the palate development stages.

Over the next couple years, my then fiancé and I tasted our way though many styles of wine until we started to favor bold dry reds. A few years later in 2005 or so at a party at Chef Kevin’s house, my wife and I and Kevin were the last ones at the party and Kevin pulled out a Napa Cab from his cellar and we tasted another eye opening wine that rivaled the Bordeaux I had years earlier. Now I knew those wines were out there and now I had a rough idea about how to find them. The next 10 years have been about how to find what else I like and how to get ahold of them without selling the farm so to speak.

HUGH JOHNSON - Because his Encyclopedia of Wine was my first wine book, and I still find myself quoting from it 40 years later.

ROBERT PARKER - Because he turned me on to so many small importers in the 1980s, and his monthly newsletter made me look a hell of a lot smarter that I really was.

JIM PEDRONCELLI - Sales manager for his family winery for 60 years this year, he was always my favorite visit in California. So humble, yet so dedicated, when I was young and would just pop in on him at the winery, he always remembered my name and would take time out no matter what he was doing to answer my stupid questions. And it’s been fun to watch his family business grow over the years into what it is today - the greatest values in California.

WALTER BOLL: The late German importer based in Chicago was my first ‘mentor’. He turned me on to so many great German estates over the years - and really developed my love of the ‘Petite’ Chateaux of Bordeaux -

yeah, I once accidentally almost stepped in that thing and knocked it over. I often emptied the disgusting 5 gallon container–God only knew what lurked in there.

Which wine figure has had the biggest impact?

The aggregate total of how much I spend on wine each year! Yikes! :astonished:

Dang, I was going to mention Welles! He got me thinking that, hey, this could be an EZ, high-ballin’ life drinking wine! champagne.gif