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The best wine I ever tasted:

--was at a funky old Italian restaurant, defunct now, where two temperamental brothers often hollered at each other from kitchen to table and back, but always treated guests like long-lost cousins.   One night I went there ...with a couple of cousins.   One picked out a predictable pesto pasta.  I chose the veal marsala, and when asked what wine we'd like I turned to my cousin Ken --a former wine steward--and he picked a bottle of Gattinara.  It was neither pricey nor prestigious.  I doubt that it would rise or vibrate on the Parker Scale. 
But when paired with that marsala, its resiny finish made the meal.  It was my first sip of Nebbiolo, which was memorable enough, filling my  mouth and raising my eyebrows. 
30 years later the restaurant is gone...the testy brothers went home to Italy.   I've poked around the Internet looking for a clue, but haven't found one.   I  report this moment because it was a benchmark for every wine I have tasted since then.   I've tasted some fine ones:  cabs from Paso Robles, Pino Gris from New Zealand, even a few Rhones
from high tone cellars of serious connoisseurs. 
In a sense, I hope I never find it.  My tongue is 30 years older.  I know it was not a garden variety Travaligni, in that distinctive bottle.  In my mind's eye, a medieval knight may have ridden a prancing horse across a tan landscape.  It may have been Antoniolo, or Castello de Lozzolo (a rare vintage now found mostly in sales of antique wines). 
In this blog, I will keep that moment in mind. I will guide me away from preferring wines purely for their alleged prestige or their price or their standing with sommeliers.
Whatever I say about the wines I like, I qualify with this wisdom:  let the wines you
drink decide for themselves if they fit in your mouth.  Wine is like music.