It was a great birthday. I spent the morning at church. It's my month to keep the sidewalks clear of snow and I was expecting to find a mess leftover from the last storm. To my great surprise, someone else had come along and cleaned away the snow. That was a great birthday treat!
After church, the family let me sit on the coach and read the paper. "Tora, Tora, Tora" was on TV, one of my all-time favorites. As good as the movie was, I had no trouble failing asleep within minutes. At one point, Bjorn woke me up to ask if it was o.k. if he changed the channel. Eventually, Anne woke me up as it was time to head over to my parents house for my birthday dinner.
I have a stash of wines in the temperature-controlled wine room at the restaurant that I pull from for special occasions like birthdays. I don't keep very many bottles of wine around the house except for the handful of things I would be scared to let fall into the hands of others. Just before heading out for dinner, I decided to grab a bottle from the "home stash."
I went to work for the California Cafe Restaurant Corporation in the spring of 1993. The following Christmas, the company gave each of its restaurant managers a magnum of wine in a custom printed wooden box. In all the moves I've made since then, I carefully transported this bottle of 1987 William Hill "Reserve" Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley, California. My 37th birthday seemed the appropriate moment to open it up.
Opening it proved to be a little more difficult than usual. As the wine has been laying on it's side since Christmas of 1993, the cork was spongy. In fact, the cork had been stained red along the bottom edge as the wine layed down. I carefully screwed in a hand-held wine service but as soon as I started to pull on the cork, it just disinigrated into tiny pieces. I was able to extract most of the larger pieces of cork and decanting the wine through a cloth removed the rest (plus some of the sediment).
The first smell had me wondering if all the years of traveling around had not been kind to the wine. I've learned not to make these kinds of judgements too quickly. After about 45 minutes, it was time to sit down to dinner. Mom served her lasagne, something I've loved since I was a kid. I finished of the last swallow of a 2004 Tapiz Cabernet Sauvignon from Mendoza, Argentina (opened in preparation for my trip to Argentina this week) and filled my glass with William Hill from the decanter.
Wow. Not only had the wine survived 19 years of aging and moving around, it still had plenty of life left in it. The fruit was well rounded and there was a wonderful smokiness that played off of the subtle earthiness that gave the wine contrast. I would highly recommend this wine. Easy thing to say since I wonder how much 87 William Hill Reserve is actually out there.
I sipped on the wine throughout the evening. It was Oscar night and even though most of my picks didn't win, with this glass of wine in my hand I didn't seem to mind. It was a great birthday!
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