Château Maucaillou
“Up to the age of eighteen, I had hardly ever drunk any wine. And then, one day, my father suggested that I should taste a wine he had opened for his friends. It was a Latour ’45.
I drank some, and apparently cried ‘So that is wine?! Well I am with you from now on!'”
– Philippe Dourthe, in Moulis Listrac by Didier Ters (Jacques Legrand SA, 1990)
I suppose for many young men and women growing up in Bordeaux families the die is cast at the moment of birth, but if it were not so who among us could resist being sucked into a career in wine, given such an introduction? The 1945 vintage of Château Latour, poured (given Philippe’s stated age, the date must have been 1959) at approximately 14 years of age. I think I would have been immediately seduced.
My own introduction to wine undoubtedly featured something less memorable. I can say that with certainty, for one obvious reason; I have absolutely no memory of it. But given that every wine poured alongside the Sunday roasts (wine was considered too posh to have on any other day of the week) I was fed during the 1970s and early 1980s was either Black Tower or Blue Nun, my money is on one of those two brands. With long odds for some other outside, probably whichever generic Liebfraumilch or Hock was on offer at the local branch of Lipton’s at the time.
It’s a wonder the wine flame was ever lit. But that’s a story for another time. For the moment, let’s stick with Philippe.
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