Before I got into wine, I would have told you that my favorite holiday was Christmas. Now, a few years and a few thousand bottles later, it's Open That Bottle Night (OTBN). Celebrated annually on the final Saturday of February, OTBN was created in 2000 by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, long-term wine writers for the Wall Street Journal.
They recognized what every wine collector knows to be true: There are too many bottles waiting to be opened on "special occasions" that never come. Ask any wine lover, and they'll tell you that the best part of wine isn't the way it tastes or the fact that it gets you drunk. (Though to be clear, they are my second and third favorite things about wine.) No, the whole point of collecting wine is sharing an incredible bottle with the people you care about.
With wine, so much time is spent waiting for a specific bottle to mature that pulling the trigger and popping the cork can be surprisingly hard. It's easy to focus so much on waiting for the perfect moment with the perfect bottle that you end up missing out on the chance to drink some fantastic wines. I know all too well the disappointment of opening a wine that you've been saving only to find that it's past its prime. I can't count the number of times I've held a bottle only to put it back and say, "Tonight isn't special enough." Surely, if living through 2020 taught us anything, it's that we need to treat surviving each day like the accomplishment it is.
Thankfully, OTBN is here to save us and our cellars from heartbreak. Do you have a bottle you've been meaning to open for years? Are you in desperate need for a (socially distant) wine tasting with friends? Are you still frozen from the snowpocalypse and just need to drink a few bottles of the good stuff to finally warm up? Then this is the holiday for you. Thankfully, no tacky decorations are required.
What is required? Nothing but a good bottle of wine and, if you so choose, a few people to share it with. Last year I celebrated with a 1997 Salon, a Champagne that defies description, and a 1990 Les Fort de Latour, a classic from Bordeaux. In 2019, I marked the day with a 1974 Charles Krug Napa Valley cabernet sauvignon that was, for lack of a better term, absolutely bonkers. But that doesn't mean you can only join in the fun by spending a small fortune on wine. If your go-to is $10 at your local store, try spending $15 on something new. As much as OTBN is about the wine, it's less about what exactly is in your glass and more about sharing the transcendent experience of wine with others. Join in the fun by posting your OTBN photos to social media and using #OTBN.
Let me know how you're celebrating on Instagram via @sethebarlow by emailing me at sethebarlowwine@gmail.com.