Open That Bottle Night coming up Saturday

Former Wall Street Journal wine columnists Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher used to designate the last Saturday in February as “Open that Bottle [of Wine] Night”. The idea was to get you into the framework of actually enjoying what you’d bought, for whatever reason. You make a meal around it, open it and drink it, for heaven’s sake.

It’s a great concept, and one I think people should take up. Including myself.

I was reminded of this last week, when I looked at six bottles of dessert wines that friends had given me long ago. Those bottles went from Virginia to Great Britain, to Virginia, to Washington and then to California over a number of years. The thing is, I don’t really drink dessert wines, and I’ve never had an occasion where it seemed right to announce to dinner guests, “Well, let’s just have a splash of really sweet alcohol, shall we?”

Anyhow, I looked at them and thought, “You guys are dead, aren’t you?”

That suspicion was confirmed when every single one of the corks (except the sole plastic one) crumbled when I tried to pull them out. The wines poured out brownish, like water out of long-disused rusty pipes, or from your bathroom tap at a Sochi hotel, as I dumped them down the drain.

With the last one, it occurred to me that, since I don’t drink this stuff, maybe it hadn’t actually gone totally, you know, off. So I poured some into a glass and tasted it. I think it took a few layers of enamel off my teeth, but I dunno—maybe that’s what it does?

But then I looked at it in the light.

If it were a nice fresh craft ale, I think this would present an excellent appearance. But I just had a Bad Feeling about it, so that bottle-load followed the other four.

I feel really bad about it—there’s nothing at all good about dumping wine. But since the smell of the stuff filled my flat for a few hours afterward (cathedral ceilings and all), I think I made the right choice in the circumstances.

A better one, though, would have been to open and share them while they were still drinkable. So—heads up for this Saturday: open that bottle and enjoy it while you can.