Iconic wine moments

WWMD: What would Margaret drink?

Margaret Pearman is a certified sommelier under the Court of Master Sommeliers and is responsible for curating the award-winning wine list at Charlie’s Coastal Bistro. Here are her sipping suggestions for June:

The world of wine is filled with a plethora of iconic wines that have earned their place in history. From the powerful orange label of Veuve Clicquot Champagne (1), coveted so much that it is traded on the black market and recognizable from a mile away, to the almost mythical Domaine Romanee Conti (2), for which there are more fake bottles circulating than the producer actually makes in a given year. However, for many wine enthusiasts an iconic wine is one that transports them back to a specific moment in time, creating a transcendental experience that keeps them coming back for more.

I reached out to some of my local wine experts to find out about their iconic wine moments. Jennifer Vasil, who started selling wine as soon as she was of legal age, remembers when a representative from the renowned Santa Barbara pinot noir producer Hartford Court came to town, and she knew she was in the right business. Chris Telep fell for wine due to the delicate nature of pinot noir, and his iconic moment came with a sip of Laurent Perrier brut rose (3), which is expertly crafted and elegantly packaged in a short, round bottle with a classy pink label.

Camille Copeland of Roller’s Wine and Cheese is a member of a rare club that has tasted Kalin Cellars Semillon (4), specifically the 1994 vintage. For those in the wine world, it’s like a rite of passage to have the opportunity to try the aged whites of Kalin Cellars. As for me, it’s challenging to narrow down a single iconic wine moment. However, when I was staging with a winemaker, I was invited to a small house party on the outskirts of Napa where a bottle of Kongsgaard chardonnay (5) was passed around. With a strange medieval image on the label, I didn’t think it would deliver, but oh boy, did it change the way I thought about chardonnay forever.

What about you? What’s your iconic wine moment?