"Open That Bottle Night" 2017 - #OTBN

Photo taken from The New England Scholar under CCL

It's that most wonderful time of year again... No, not FA Cup 5th round weekend; not the qualifying rounds for the Eurovision Song Contest. But, Open That Bottle Night! 

Every year on the last Saturday in February, wine lovers from around the world gather their friends and families around them and celebrate that fact that you don't need a "special occasion" as an excuse for opening that particular bottle you've been holding, instead the opening of that bottle makes the occasion special - and it is always better to enjoy that wine with great company.

What are the origins of "Open That Bottle Night"?

A fair few years ago two journalists who worked for the Wall Street Journal, Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, were reflecting on an issue that they and others that they had spoken to had when it came to wine. They found that many people possess "special" bottles of wine: they could be from an auspicious year, perhaps one from a year that has some significance, or from a favourite producer or region. The bottle(s) sit proudly on the wine rack and await their moment of glory. The trouble is that the wine lover wants to celebrate a truly special occasion with this wine and nothing quite seems to hit the mark. The wine waits and waits, as the time passes the requirement for just how special the event is to merit opening the wine becomes greater and greater, and consequently the chances of the wine being opened get lesser and lesser. By the time the wine is eventually opened, it is invariably too late and the wine has spoiled, or else the poor wine lover finds that the wine was corked anyway... 

Gaiter and Brecher felt that rather than looking for a special occasion to open the special bottle of wine, the opening of the special bottle of wine should be an occasion in its own right. After all, what could be better for any wine lover then gathering around friends and family and enjoying that wine that we love so much? To aid this they decided that every year the last Saturday of February should be set aside as the date that wine lovers all around the world come together and open that bottle (or bottles) that they've been saving and spend an evening enjoying them. What a truly wonderful idea.

What am I opening for #OTBN 2017?

Once more I am fortunate in that I am able to celebrate OTBN with my brother and my sister-in-law as they are coming to visit for the weekend. On the Saturday, we have a lovely lunch planned at one of my favourite restaurants, Pollen Street Social; later on in the evening we will head back to my flat and I am planning for us to have a nice, rich Tuscan stew designed to showcase the prodigious wine for the evening, a 2012 Tignanello (Tuscany, Italy). I bought a bottle of Tignanello, one of the famed Super Tuscans, when I was visiting Tuscany last October. In truth, I'd love to hang on to this bottle of wine for a few more years to let it develop a bit further, but conditions in my flat are not perfect for ageing wines so I'd rather drink it now and avoid any chances of it spoiling.

What are you going to open for #OTBN 2017?

I hope that some of you will take this opportunity to open something special for OTBN. Please let us know what you are doing, tag us in photos on Twitter (@vinspireuk), tag me on instagram (@tjmilford) or tag us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/VinspireUK/). It will be great to see how everyone is celebrating...!