A colleague of mine recently sat down to interview an importer of French wines. They discussed some of the great wines in her portfolio, which included prestigious selections from Burgundy, Champagne, and the Loire Valley, wines which are among the most revered, expensive, and highly sought-after in the world. Near the end of the interview she was asked what sort of wine she likes to open for a typical evening meal. Her answer, without hesitation, was Beaujolais.
This struck me as a startling admission. Here was someone who could theoretically drink a bottle of great Burgundy every single day of her remaining years on the firmament, someone who without a doubt had a cellar full of Grand Cru, in great vintages, and yet most nights she was perfectly content to open a wine from a relatively unheralded region well south of where her heart lay. No Grand Cru excursions, no peak experiences; just a bottle of good juice and good night.
I came away with a new respect for the importer, and, needless to say, for Beaujolais as well. But I wondered if there was another reason for her choice; did she suffer from the sort of anxiety that regularly afflicts me — the anxiety of opening? Does her Cru collection gather dust because she’s fearful of parting with it? Does she defer the experience of a wine she wants to savor for some lesser experience, perhaps no less satisfying, but with a decidedly narrower window to the profound?
Those of us who collect wine do so for the pleasure it has in store for us, and it is ours to decide when: either right away, or at some point in the future. But each evening, as I gaze upon the racks in my cellar and wonder which bottle I’ll open, my eyes invariably stray to the rare ones, the coveted ones, the three or four older Bordeaux I somehow find myself in possession of; the twelve year old Shiraz whose ‘right moment’ regularly eludes me, the ’93 Spätlese I’ve held onto for so long that I’ve probably missed its peak; the extremely expensive bottle of Napa Cabernet that, though I’m dying to know what it tastes like, I can’t quite bring myself to open — I can’t bear to face the hole in my collection once it is consumed. How much better it is to have the wine on hand for when I’ll really need it?
And when, exactly, would I really need it? Well, you know, there’s going to be one of those occasions someday where it will be the perfect wine. As good as it would be today, it would be so much better next year, next month, next decade, next week. Then there is the very sticky issue of whether I’ve ‘deserved’ to open this wine — whether the meal I’m preparing, or the day I’ve had, or the life I’m living, is worthy of the experience (needless to say, I was raised a Catholic). Of course by the time you’re down this road you know the bottle is going to stay on the rack where it is.
These are the sorts of bottles to share with friends, of course. But it would really have to be the right friends. They’d have to be close friends, dear friends, not just anyone. They’d have to be friends that appreciate a wine this special, with its pedigree and its price tag and its impossibly long legs and elegant tannins and fond memories and storied history and unalloyed prestige and — I could go on and on. They’d have to really want it. They’d have to be able to marvel with me every step of the way as I luxuriated in its elegance. They’d have to come up with words to describe it, beyond ‘wow’ and ‘yum.’ (How many times have I been crushed by my friends’ less-than-rhapsodic response of a wine I’ve put in front of them, when they’re just not that into it?) In short, they’d have to deserve it.
Even in the best of circumstances none of this is guaranteed, so I wait.
One way around this problem comes from a friend who threw a dinner party last year in Seattle. Six of us were led to the basement to a small table. Twelve bottles had been pulled from their cellar, and as a group we were asked to pick four to have with the meal. These were exquisite pre-selections, and I’d have happily tried all of them, but the experience of arriving at a consensus together, weighing the merits of the 1998 Mascarello Barolo with 1998 Chave Hermitage or the 1995 Ridge Geyserville, was invigorating — and very cleverly, our host had transposed whatever anxiety he may have had to us, where it was easily dissipated. In the end our group wine selection amounted to one of the more thoughtful and provocative moments in the meal — it certainly contributed to a memorable evening.
So what am I waiting for? I don’t think of myself as particularly selfish, but I admit to holding back bottles from guests who might not appreciate them, only to feel mildly guilty when the wine I’ve poured isn’t as grand as it could be. A friend of mine with whom I was discussing my anxiety helpfully pointed out that it’s not something you can necessarily control. ‘You never know when someone is primed for their first transcendental wine experience,’ he said, ‘one that changes their relationship to wine.’ He’s right. Obstructing a peak experience should not be a part of your legacy.
The Anxiety of Opening, Part I
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