Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, over at the Tastings column in the Wall Street Journal have announced Open That Bottle Night 5 (OTBN5). For those of you who are unfamiliar with the event, it is an opportunity (excuse) to get that bottle of wine you have been saving for a “special occasion” out of your fridge and finally drink it. The night is Saturday, February 28 — not too far away — so mark you calendar and make some plans to open that bottle.
Gretchen and I meant to do this last year but we missed the date. We ended up having our wine with a nice meal, just not as a part of the OTBN event. In fact, it convinced us that there isn’t any reason to save a wine for a “special occasion” because any event — say opening a bottle of wine with a nice meal at home — can be a special occasion. We learned our lesson so well that I will actually have to buy something for this year’s event. I think I’ll go for something unusual. Does anyone know anything about “Yellow Tail?” I think it is an Australian winery.
Now’s the time. Open That Bottle Night takes place this year on Saturday, Feb. 28, in homes and restaurants all over the world. Do it! Make a special meal and open that bottle. Here are some tips so you can make the most of Open That Bottle Night 5:
- Stand the wine up (away from light and heat, of course) for a few days before you plan to open it — say, on Wednesday, Feb. 25. This will allow the sediment, if there is some, to sink to the bottom.
- Both reds and whites are better closer to “cellar temperature” of around 55 degrees than at room temperature. Don’t overchill the white, and think about putting the red in the refrigerator for an hour or two if you’ve been keeping it in a 70-degree house.
- With an old bottle, the cork may break easily. The best opener for a cork like that is the one with two prongs, but it requires some skill. You have three weeks to practice using one. Be prepared for the possibility that the cork will fall apart with a regular corkscrew. If that happens, have a carafe and a coffee filter handy. Just pour enough through the coffee filter to catch the cork.
- Otherwise, do not decant. We’re assuming these are old and fragile wines. Air could quickly dispel what’s left of them.
- Have a backup wine ready for your special meal, in case your old wine really has gone bad.
- Serve dinner. Then open the wine and immediately take a sip. If it’s truly bad — we mean vinegar — you will know it right away. But even if the wine doesn’t taste good at first, don’t rush to the sink to pour it out. Give it a chance. If it isn’t completely gone, our guess is that it will be wonderful, in its own way, and reward you off and on during the night. Start eating, and slowly sip the wine. Over the years, we’ve heard from scores of OTBN celebrants who have told us about wines that tasted yucky at first, then became delicious. Is it the wine, or the warmth of the gathering as the night goes on? Does it matter?
- Talk about the person who gave you the wine, or the circumstances under which you received it. This makes the wine resonate in a very sweet and personal way.
- Enjoy the wine for what it is, not what it might be or might once have been.
- Save one last glass in the bottle.
- At the very end of the meal, after the dishes are done, pour the remainder of the wine into your glasses (you might pour it through the coffee filter if there’s lots of sediment, though, personally, we often like the gutsy taste of the wine with the sediment). Then drink up, and enjoy those very last moments of a special night.
And, of course, No. 11: Drop us a note at wine@wsj.com about your evening. If we include your name in our follow-up column, we’ll send you an autographed copy of our new book, “Wine for Every Day and Every Occasion: Red, White and Bubbly to Celebrate the Joy of Living,” when it is published in October by HarperCollins. [WSJ]