Wines of the 1970's....

My taste was a bit more refined, Lancer's, and Matuse, both were a sparkling rose wine, I was married and in the military the wine added class to the evening.

Now when I was TDY and broke Mad Dog, Thunderbird Wild Irish rose were 69 cents a bottle. The trick was to drink a cup of wine and a cup of water then the hangover was manageable.

I went to work hung over one day, man did the boss give me the worst job of the day. It was summer in Okinawa, We had to load passengers and baggage for 60 people inside a KC-135 sitting in the sun and the breeze was blowing the wrong direction. My job was to build the baggage bin and floor load the the bags. 115 degrees, I sweated the alcohol out of my system, the guys i worked with said i smelled of Thunderbird. I can not think about those wine without my stomach doing a roll.
 
loknload said:
Yago Sangria if I remember correctly along with Boones Farm Strawberry Hill.
The girls that were with us at the time enjoyed those, me back then,just give me an iced cold Miller or a Rolling Rock! ;)
Click to expand...

Kept a bottle of Yago for the ladies in the back seat, square bottle if I recall prevented it from rolling about.
Miller worked for me or Old Mildew in the bottles.
 
I was a kid in high school in the late 70's. I used to hunt on the local Navy base where my father worked in the civil service. I got to know a lot of the sailors and the anti submarine patrol squadrons used to fly to the Azores all the time. They would bring back this Portuguese wine called "Mateus"...they brought back a lot of it because the entire county was about flooded with it and none of the local liquor stores sold the stuff, so everyone knew where it came from. When I asked one of the guys how they brought so much back the reply was always, "kid, there's a lot of hiding places on a P-3..."
Then when I was out of high school in the early 80's for some reason there was a regularly scheduled flight of some P-3 to Columbia and the county got flooded with weed. They called it "one hit Columbian"and it was pretty popular among the weedheads back then...but of course that was stopped. Even the U.S. Navy engaged in "traffic"...
 
I learned wine in the 1970's, beginning with Mateus rose, which my girlfriend served. I mentioned it to a friend where i worked and she asked the wine director of a famous dept. store whose president she dated. You WOULD know his name and store, so they'd better be anonymous.

She told me with some amusement that V. (the wine guru) had described Mateus as "carbonated Lavoris." (a mouthwash)

I began studying wine in earnest, and about 1975, a store was overstocked after getting some really good deals in Bordeaux, red and white. I read EXTENSIVELY about it and bought the best bottles I could. Some needed to be laid down for a few years; others could be drunk then. I also read about and tried wines from CA, WA, Chlle, and South Africa, later also Australia.

After about seven years, I knew enough to write about wine and sold an article on it to a major newspaper. I also sold one on coffee and its origins, also a love.

For a couple of years, I worked in a liquor store, being one of their main wine men. I attended tastings where I met such renowned men as the head of Stag's Leap in Napa and Jean Hugel of Hugel et Fils, in Alsace since 1639! Turned out we'd both fished Harry's River in Newfoundland for Atlantic salmon!

I've never even been TEMPTED to try any of the wines mentioned here in other posts. The exception is Yago sangria, one of the better bottled sangrias.

But I've never drunk to get drunk. I have the impression that some of you feel otherwise. Not my thing.

BTW, Mateus also made a white, called "branco" in Portuguese. ("Blanco" in Spanish) I haven't seen Mateus wines in some years, but haven't asked. I think the wine director of that famous store was too disdainful of the type.

I did get to know him better after attending tastings after he left that store. By then, I knew that a good red Bordeaux from St. Julien might be Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou and he couldn't talk down to me. That felt good.

BTW, I did use Lavoris as a mouthwash and liked it. So, his disparaging remark didn't sting me as much as intended.

The blonde who passed it on to me did marry her famous store president and they lived happily ever after until he died some years ago. She was far younger and is, I believe, still living, so no names.

And thus, I learned wine. It's a joy...if you learn about and drink the worthwhile ones.
 
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Forgot about Mateus. Never tried the wine
but always kept an eye peeled for empties.

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Perfect shape for the melted candle look.
 
I get an upset stomach and head ache just thinking about all of the above. Boon's Farm was a staple in my diet in the late 70's.
 
MD was kosher wine.....

woodsltc said:
MD 20/20 (MadDog)......just the thought of that stuff brings back a massive headache and nightmares of the morning after.:eek:

Don
Click to expand...

I never understood why wine used for Passover had to be 14% alcohol. To those of us NOT celebrating Passover, but Passout, it really did the job.

Boone's Farm Strawberry Pink (I think it was). Gads, I couldn't even put the stuff in my mouth now without throwing up. Gawd that stuff was SWEET! Miller's gave a nice buzz.
 
I'd recently gotten out of college and was mostly drinking various B&G Bordeaux, along with the usual Lancers, Mateus, and similar plonk. The B&Gs all tasted pretty much the same regardless of the place name, no surprise there, but they were only around $2 a bottle. Great times.
 
Mateus was for *fancy* occasions like trying to impress ladies that had higher standards than Boone's Farm.

Or actually drinking with a meal instead of trying to get blotto.

Ah, the 70's.....
 
At the other end of the spectrum; I used to attend the Christie's wine auctions that were held in Chicago on a regular basis when I lived there.
The finest vintage wines available anywhere used to come up at these auctions . What you wanted to do was get a invite to the pre-sale tasting where samples of a lot of the upcoming stock was opened to try. I had the pleasure of tasting some bottlings' that had been put up prior to the Civil War that were still potable. Proper storage is the key here and many of the chateaus in France have bottlings' in their cellars that date back to the 18th century.
Jim
 
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