I accepted an open invitation on Social Media for a virtual “Open That Bottle Night.”  It has become a much-lauded evening among wine drinkers and especially those that write blogs. Actually, this isn’t the first time that I have ventured into this “holiday.” The concept was created by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher who were wine columnists for the Wall Street Journal and they picked out a night in February, one of the darker and colder months, to go into one’s wine cellar and open up a bottle that one has been holding onto, just for the right moment. A very worthwhile idea, because we are all guilty of saving some bottles of wine for a special moment, that just never seems to occur. I think the main reason that I don’t always participate in it, is that I tend to be rather unorganized when it comes to such things. We tend to have a couple of bottles of wine open in the house most days, but they are our “go-to” basic wines that don’t require a lot of fan-fare or hoopla, but somehow, I even joked at the end of the gathering that 2020 was actually an OTBN every night, especially for people like my Bride and I that sometimes think that a bottle is too good, and sometimes we just totally loose track of the wines.

Some days, I guess that I come out as brash especially compared to the evening’s host, but a true gentleman and a scholar as we used to say, is Anatoli Levine, who has basically followed me since almost day one of my writing, and I may say vice-versa, as well as beyond our blogs.  Anatoli writes a wonderful blog talk-a-vino.com with the ease and poise of a gentleman of the old school, and with a wonderful knowledge of wines. He always seems to find some of the most unique and interesting wines to make all the other wine writers drool after he announces these discoveries. He decided to have a Zoom session for OTBN and there must have been about fifteen participants, and it was like an adult version of “Show and Tell” when I was in primary school.  Of course, my Bride actually has been identified and actually has a name.  May I say, that he was a gracious host and made it a point to introduce everyone to everyone else, though my Bride and I were really the new kids on the block, as most of the participants knew each other from other blogger events.  He gave everyone a bit of a background about myself and remembered several facts and then he had me relate my story about having Screaming Eagle.  There were several very unique wines being “shared” and then there were several lively conversations, some wine and some not wine chats as well. 

Now to get to the wine of the moment.  I was looking at several options for the evening: Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1964, Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1973, Chateau Cheval Blanc 1992, Caymus Special Select 1995, Duckhorn Merlot Howell Mountain 1991, Opus One 1991 and Gaja Barbaresco 1982.  Now as the old expression goes “a happy wife, a happy life” my Bride thought that we should have our Cain Five 1992 that we bought from our tour at Cain Vineyard and Winery years ago.  Cain Five is definitely my Bride’s favorite wine, perhaps followed by the much more reasonable Cain Cuvee.  This particular wine was a blend of fifty-three percent Cabernet Sauvignon, thirty-four percent Merlot, nine percent Malbec, three percent Cabernet Franc, and one percent Petit Verdot.  The wine was perfect, everything was just totally balanced and we finished the bottle during the two-hour session.