Open the wine

Or else.

In 2021, my brother and I moved our mum from our family home of 40 years to an over 70s retirement apartment, due to her decline into Alzheimer’s. My brother did the lion’s share of getting it ready: a fresh coat of paint and removing the random pile of stuff the previous owners had left.

Included in this pile were two bottles of wine that can only be described as ‘deeply average at best’. Like most normal people he had no interest in them, whereas I will literally open anything*, regardless of age, appearance and probable lack of quality. It just feels wrong to throw away an unopened bottle of wine.

So, I was now proud owner of a bottle of dubious quality Cava that looked pretty oxidised, and a 2004 Jacob’s Creek Cabernet Shiraz, with the words ‘TOMBOLA 2007” written on the label. You have to presume 14 years prior Mr & Mrs Previous Owner struck lucky at the church fair/school fete, marked it up and decided to wait for the right moment to open it. The special occasion never presented itself, and the bottle remained un-drunk, and thus un-enjoyed.

This in itself isn’t that interesting, but I suddenly remembered that it was Mr & Mrs Previous Owner’s grown up children who were managing the sale of the apartment as they had both had died the previous year.

They had waited so long for a special occasion they had literally died.

If that isn’t a lesson to OPEN THE WINE, I don’t know what is.

The special occasion was certainly not going to present itself post-mortem, was it?

It reminded me of something I came across when I joined Twitter in 2010 - Open That Bottle Night (OTBN) - an initiative started in 1999/2000 by a pair of American food and wine writers at the WSJ, John Brecher and Dorothy J. Gaiter. It never seemed to take off over here, much to my annoyance (although to be fair every night is OTBN in my house. Why keep it to only once a year?).

The point being to open that ‘special bottle’ of wine you’re saving for a ‘special occasion’. Nothing is certain except death and taxes, said Benjamin Franklin. For poor Mr & Mrs. Previous Owner he could have added ‘and the special occasion that will never come’.

The special occasion is a flawed concept. When one does appear you’re either nowhere near the special bottle, or you decide the occasion still isn’t special enough… It’s an utter nonsense. A far better approach is to instantly turn a decidedly ordinary occasion into a special one by opening some decent wine.

I assumed OTBN had faded away, but a quick google left me thrilled to discover that is it still going strong and by sheer chance it’s celebrated on the last Saturday of February every year. Which just so happens to be this Saturday.

What are you going to open?

*Over the coming weeks I opened both bottles, and as expected the Cava was dubious with a capital D. I had higher hopes for the Jacob’s Creek and I ended up pulling it out as a blind with a group of winos who were round one night. I know that’s a bit of a twatty thing to do but they were a particularly smug group of hipsters who were overstaying their welcome and drinking all my wine, so on this occasion I didn’t really care. Knowing my love for knackered claret, a few guessed that (it was in a Bordeaux bottle after all) followed by suggestions of Northern Rhône, and then finally Shiraz after someone claimed they got a whiff of eucalyptus.

It wasn’t a wine of the year, or even the night, but it was in remarkable shape (perhaps we’ve all been drinking Jacobs Creek too young!) for something that would have cost £4.99 and had been stored in appalling conditions: retirement apartments are as hot as care homes, which is where my mother sadly moved on to a year later. (For the record, we left a very clean flat and we certainly don’t leave wine behind!).

I still have the bottle, on my ‘greatest hits shelf’. It’s a good reminder to never judge a book by its cover, and to always, always open the wine.