Tomorrow night is the last Saturday night in February. Apropos of nothing, it’s time to go crazy. Do something… questionable.
Grab that bottle of wine in your home that’s sufficiently expensive, rare, and/or tasty that you’ve been saving it for a special occasion. You know the one.
Tomorrow night, get a corkscrew and open it.
It sort of feels like impulsively pulling the fire alarm on the dormitory wall, doesn’t it? Oh, you little devil -- what have you done?
Open That Bottle Night is an informal holiday devised by celebrated Wall Street Journal wine scribes Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher in 2000. It offers would-be celebrants an annual excuse to say, “Screw it – let’s uncork the big one, baby.”
Open That Bottle Night is actually pretty practical. If you wait long enough for that graduation, birthday, anniversary, honeymoon, etc., to uncork your prized wine, you may wind up waiting too long, and find that your coach has sadly turned into a pumpkin.
Christina Edwards, the founder and “Head Wino” of the STL Wine Club, says, “I’ve been one of those people who has saved wine a little bit past its prime, and now I’m starting to get to the point where I collect more, so if I hide it well, I may just forget about it. We tend to hoard nice things, to put them on a pedestal. Then you start to question whether any event is good enough for a special bottle.”
In that spirit, Edwards says she is celebrating OTBN. “This Saturday we are going to have dinner with some friends from the wine club and grill up some lamb,” she says. “We have a couple contenders for the wine. With the lamb, we can go full-bodied or fruity. We’re looking at a 2003 Kenwood Artist Series Cab, or maybe a Duckhorn Merlot.”
“The Bordeaux,” she adds, judiciously, “we’re not gonna open, probably.”
Edwards recommends heading to the cellar at Balaban’s Wine Cellar & Tapas Bar in Chesterfield if you don’t have a special bottle, because, well, they do.
Young wine enthusiast Josh Davis is turning 30 this weekend, so Open That Bottle Night is unnecessary, but the celebration rolls on regardless. “We will probably do two or three small-release big Cabs that we ordered directly from the winery, and aren’t commercially available,” he says. “Maybe a Herb Lamb or a William Cole Cab. I like younger wines. I think ’02, ‘03 and ‘04 are drinking awesome right now. They’re fruit-forward, even though some people might wait for 20 more years for them to become more refined.”
Ah, the headlong boozing of youth…
Davis, a member of an informal wine group, adds that “pretty much every weekend is an Open That Bottle Night for me. Saving bottles of wine is about investing in good times with your friends, and we don’t hold any good bottles back.”
Bill Burge--opinionated eater, drinker, Slow Food advocate and occasional food writer for St. Louis Magazine--seems to be in agreement. “There is a hoarding and collecting mentality with wine,” says Burge, “but let’s face it, it’s something you’re supposed to consume. Sometimes you even save a bottle for a special occasion, and it doesn’t work out. I have a friend who took a really good bottle to Niche to drink with their tasting menu, and it wound up not going with any of the food.”
Still, tomorrow night, Burge plans to splurge. “One of my favorite wineries is Saxum; I purchase it at auction occasionally. I’ll probably open one of those,” he says. “I tend to selfishly not share with people except my wife, so if I share one of those bottles with someone, I must think an awful lot of them.”
Similarly, Scott Cullman, who works for an area wine distributor, says “if it’s a hundred dollar bottle of wine, I would want to make sure I open it for people who will really appreciate it.
"I think there are certain bottles that you can definitely save for a special occasion,” he adds. “There’s enough wine out there that most of us have all kinds of bottles we can open.”
Bon vivant Darryl Vennard of Wine Pros Midwest -- who, we have heard, has been known to sneak wine into the Cards game in his “winoculars” – says he celebrates Open That Bottle Night “every week.” This Saturday, though, is special.
“We have an extraordinary bottle this year for Open That Bottle Night that a dearly departed friend of ours gave my wife Sue on her 50th birthday,” he says. “It’s a great Bordeaux from the fantastic ‘82 vintage, from Chateau Leoville Poyferre. It will be a special remembrance of our friend and we expect it to be phenomenal.”
In the spirit of absent friends, the big cheese here at Relish, our own George Mahe, plans to open a big wine on Saturday.
“We’re thinking about a 2002 Cloud View Cab/Merlot blend,” says Mahe. “We met the winery’s founders, Linda and Leighton Taylor, at a tasting at Grapevine Wines several years ago, and decided to splurge for a bottle. We plan to remember the Taylors fondly -- we hope!”
For Robust owner Stanley Browne, the plan is “maybe a 2001 St. Supery Cab from Dollarhide Vinyards in Napa,” he says.
Finally, Chesterfield wine bar owner Bryan Herr at Naked Vine says he’s not particularly concerned about OTBN. “Do I have a cellar at home, yeah,” he says, “but do I save anything for a special occasion? No, because I might get hit by a truck tomorrow.”
