Most of us have one or two particularly prized bottles in our collection.
Even people with stellar cellars can have clear favorites, not always based purely on cost. For various reasons, enthusiasts like me can be rather picky over when and where to drink these bottles.
We can attach quite a lot of meaning to both the wine, and the circumstances of drinking it, to the point of creating a microcosm of how we see our life, our priorities, our past, present and future. But in the Covid world of 2020, this will have been simplified for some. "Carpe diem" seems more apt than ever.
The thought of kicking the bucket with good wine undrunk has spurred many of those in lockdown into action – whether or not they are in imminent personal danger. While New Zealand has got off relatively lightly, various friends and colleagues in other territories have shared on social media their sustained, admirably disciplined, assaults on their wine stash. Several are seizing the day on a daily basis, and their Number One Bottle is under threat.
My most prized bottle is a 1995 Chave Hermitage, bought around 2005. Often described as the Northern Rhône's greatest wines, it is in the conversation for not just world's best Syrah/Shiraz, but world's best red – even above its big brother, the Cuvée Cathélin.
For many Northern Rhône producers, the 1995 vintage, considered particularly outstanding for Côte Rotie, matches up well against the legendary wines from 1990. This particular wine has a more-than-promising Wine-Searcher aggregate critic Score of 95. The few remaining bottles sell for the equivalent of $400 and more. If the bottle was stored well (and my track record is okay in this respect) it should not be on the decline, maturation-wise.
The personal touch
As much as this is a classic wine in any circumstances, on a personal level it also carries plenty of nostalgia. Its purchase dates back to a time when things were a bit of a struggle. I'd temporarily left a full-time career in the wine trade (in search of a decent salary, naturally) and was generally knackered, stressed, and much less contented than I am now. I'm going to drink it in my happy place.
I did run some wine tastings on the side to keep my eye in. I optimistically burned the credit card on eight bottles of Chave Hermitage (two white and two red vintages) at prices that I could in no way justify for personal consumption. The tastings never happened and, for a few years, those eight wines represented about a third of the value of my 90-bottle collection.
I eventually managed to fit some of the wines into other tastings. Now one bottle of red remains with me in New Zealand, though there might be a bottle of 1992 Hermitage Blanc left in my parents' garage, which will get opened on my next visit – whenever that might be.
The picture of that 1995 red arriving in Auckland a few years back is my most popular Instagram post. Which obviously rubber stamps the opening of it as a big effing deal. And reminds me of the key "Best Wine Bottle" questions.
Should I drink it alone, with one friend, or more? Does that friend need to appreciate it enough – will they show enough reverence? Should I drink it with a colleague (or colleagues) of similar wine-nerdiness. Or should I be a little less of what my brother calls, poetically, "a wine ponce".
There's a little extra emotional investment here. I had promised, in passing, to share it with a particular friend. But this hasn't happened as we are not now in less-frequent contact. I will feel a bit disloyal if I drink it with someone else, though I'm sure that person wouldn't be hugely offended (and has drunk many fabulous wines). Anyway, this wine is 25 years old and the clock is ticking…
I do not have a partner to offend, either, and my family are on the other side of the world and firmly in Covid isolation. The curmudgeon in me wonders if I like anyone else enough to share a $400 bottle.
Maybe opening the Chave might be an awesome first-date option with a fellow wine enthusiast. Attractive companions never hurt the taste. It would set an expensive precedent though, and I don't want to get involved with someone who only loves me for my full-bodied reds.
Timing is everything
Talking of numbers, how many wines are we going to drink? Should we focus on the star or make it part of a larger tasting. This risks your pride and joy being overshadowed by a bottle bought the night before. Or everyone being three sheets to the wind by the time you try it. I'm not sure which is worse.
Food matching isn't really one of these Big Questions to mull over, however. As far as I’m concerned, the rarer the wine, the simpler, and more sympathetic the food. A BYOB restaurant might be an option for the "where" but, in Auckland, that usually means spicy Asian food… No, that question is relatively easy to answer.
Back to the carpe diem thing. The more one thinks about these things, the more likely it becomes that you miss the "drinking window". I'm certainly wondering about that '92 Hermitage Blanc back in the garage. My 50th birthday comes up next year. Perhaps I'll save the Chave '95 for then. On the other hand, this year marks the wine's silver jubilee...
More generally, the longer one spends gazing at the unopened bottle lying on its side, the greater the potential for anti-climax. There's nothing worse than opening a bottle you've nurtured for a decade or more, to discover it left the winery corked to buggery.
Around 10 years ago I opened one of two bottles of 1996 Tignanello I'd purchased around a decade earlier. It was deflatingly mediocre, to say the least.
Forward to 2017, when the second one was opened as a farewell to an Italian colleague; my expectations were low and I had another bottle on standby. It was stupendous, full of vibrancy and clearly in a peak stage of evolution. One of the best reds I've ever drunk. The first bottle had obviously been faulty. No offence to Giacomo, my erstwhile colleague, but with the benefit of hindsight I'd rather have drunk the second one with a pretty girl at sunset on a veranda overlooking the Hibiscus Coast.
When that (hopefully) epic bottle of Rhône Syrah gets emptied, I’ll add a postscript below to say whether this story ends with fireworks or a damp squib. As for the future, well the title of Prime Bottle of the Jarvis Wine Collection will be inherited by a bottle of 2004 Ridge Montebello.
July 03, 2020 at 07:01AM
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The Agony of Opening Your Favorite Wine - Wine-Searcher
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