It is hard to believe that my Bride has let me be pampered for over a month of my self-appointed celebrations, and actually there are still more stories to come, but I digress, which is quite often for me.  For my celebration I had posted a cryptic “story” post on social media, that most people did not catch.  

We had a quiet dinner for the two of us at home.  She made some of my favorite dishes and indulged me.  We started off with my new favorite salad (which should be her award winning from scratch Caesar), but we did find a new salad that was just called a Spring Mix Salad and it consisted of a Heart of Romaine Salad with Pomegranate Seeds and Strawberries served with a Champagne Vinaigrette.  She then made Braised Short Ribs with root vegetables.  For part of the braising process, she used a bottle of Sterling Vintner’s Collection Meritage Central Coast 2010 from a stash that I found half forgotten, as I have been reorganizing the cellar.  The wine was still very hardy, and I had to decant it, to eliminate the acquired sediment; we had originally bought about three cases of this wine, after tasting a bottle, as it was being sold by a local grocer for less than ten dollars a bottle plus case discount.  I do ramble when I get going.  She also made Roasted Shishito Peppers and of course Armenian Pilaf.  Then we had a Grand Marnier Soufflé as she wanted to make one, before she had to make it for a dinner party.

I had gone into the cellar to select my birthday wine and of course she was very curious as to what I would select.  I think that she figured that I was going to select another Meritage wine to keep in the theme of the dinner, and in a way I did.  I went and washed out one of our decanters, polished a couple of Riedel Crystal glasses and my Durand Corkscrew, which is one of the best wine tools we have ever bought.  My Bride looking at the bottle that I had brought up earlier to stand erect, before I decanted it, asked what the price of the bottle would be.  I said does it matter, that is why I started the collection when I was in high school, and it was one of my prized wines that I moved from two other basements in my life.  When I removed the capsule seal, the cork was still pristine, with no evidence of ullage seepage, and the fill line was just under the capsule edge.   

I did open my Chateau Mouton Rothschild Pauillac 1964 with a label of distribution by Dourthe Freres, Negociants a Moulis-Medoc (Gironde).  For those old enough, you may notice that there is no indication that Chateau Mouton Rothschild was even part of The Classification of 1855 for the Medoc.  They were listed as the First of the Second Growths, and they felt that because of politics, they weren’t listed as a First Growth, this was later corrected in 1973.  The chateau was originally Brane-Mouton and was among the best of the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, and then the quality fell in the 1840s.  The property was then bought and renamed in 1853, and the quality was restored, but not in time for The Classification.  Baron Philippe de Rothschild took the reins in 1922 and introduced chateau bottling in 1924.  At the end of World War II, they began commissioning a different artist for each vintage and the 1964 label is by the English artist Henry Moore.  The estate is eighty-four hectares on gravelly soil.  The estate is planted at eighty percent Cabernet Sauvignon, sixteen percent Merlot and small plots of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot; the average age of the vines are about forty years of age.  The fruit is hand-harvested, undergoes fermentation in oak vats and then is aged for eighteen months.  I decanted the wine for about two hours prior to dinner, and the wine was still a rich garnet-ruby to dark brick color with no visible foxing and offered notes of dark cherries and blackberries, mushrooms, old leather, earth and spices; though initially hesitant, the nose became much more striking after the first hour and even better at the second hour.  On the palate this full-bodied, well-balanced wine still displayed tones of tart cherries, dried fruit, spices that blended with fully integrated tannins with still some refreshing acidity that ended with a long-count finish of fruit and rich minerally terroir.  I am glad that I had it now, though I am sure that it would have been strong for another five years.