Your Most Prized Bottle of Wine

What is your most cherished bottle of wine? Maybe you’ve tasted it and have more or maybe you just expect it will be the best. Maybe it is old, expensive, rare or has sentimental value. It’s that bottle in the feature spot of your cellar. The bottle you know you’d not want to leave undrunk if the end were near. THAT bottle.

For me, a 1995 Chateau Latour. My wife bought it for me as a wedding gift (she’s a keeper).

Interesting question. Without any sentiment, it would be 2001 d’Yquem. I bought two bottles and drank one on release. I believe it to be the best wine in the cellar. With sentiment, it would be the 1996 Giacosa Riserva Barolo and 1997 Gaja Sperss, birth year wines for my kids that I hope to share with them someday.

Concur on the 2001 Yquem, even though all I could afford was a split. For sentimental value, Diamond Creek. My father’s favorite producer, and I’ve promised to open one for him every time he comes to visit.

1910 Inglenook Private Stock Port - rare, old, sentimental, pre-prohibition and diseases

Honorable mention:

2007 Mag Bryant Family Cab - rare and tasty
2001 Y’quem - birth year wine for first born
1970 Port Mags - Dow, Graham’s, and Fonseca - my birth year
1966 Krohn Coheita - extra tasty

09 Petrus. I only have one so it will be a hard decision on when to pull the cork.

Probably my '98 Mugnier Musigny.

1975 Mouton Rothschild autographed by Andy Warhol

A birth year Madeira, that also happens to be stupendous wine:

1950 Barbeito Terrantez “Fajã dos Padres.”

The wine: http://www.rarewineco.com/downloads/newsletter/archive/march2106.pdf

The vineyard: http://www.madeirawineguide.com/70guide_to_madeira_island/76vineyard_tours/

Storied vineyard, rare variety, important [ ] vintage, stunning result.

Unquestionably a lone bottle of 1990 Bonneau Celestins. It will probably outlive me so I can drink it any time in the next 40 years.

Any of the birth year wines for my kids

Mixed burgs/bordeaux '06 for my son Cage
'10’s for my daughter Jett

My personal would probably be '96 las cases

Not that hard. Wait another 20 years then open it.

My last '82 Mouton. It’s waiting for my single daughter to get married. Her sister and our best friend’s 2 kid’s marriages cost me the other 3 over the years. (not for the kids or the wedding, we drink them with our best friends)

I paid a lot for a '98 Screaming Eagle at a charity auction. Should I have good expectations?

Too many come to mind, which is a good thing: if the end is near, I’m going to have a great party.

My Ridge Monte Bellos–for both quality and sentiment.

1998 Petrus

My prized bottle is one that I only have two left in my cellar. It’s the: 2005 Bartlett Blueberry Winemaker’s Reserve.

My response will probably shock just about anybody accept those that have been fortunate enough to taste the wine…I have plenty of famous, aged, rare, or expensive wines in my cellar. Ponsot, Biondi-Santi, Dagueneau, Giacossa, or Billecart-Salmon.

However, none of them hit that sweet-spot like the Bartlett Blueberry does. It’s been my favorite wine to blind-taste people on. In blind-tastings of older vintages the '86 has bested Gaja, Penfold’s Grange (It’s a Doppelgänger of aged Grange), and other famous houses. The other truely great thing about this wine…is that you HAVE to go to the winery to buy it, way up here in Gouldsboro, Maine. I bought a six-pack thinking that would be enough to last me…and before I knew it. I was down to two bottles. What makes it even more bitter-sweet is that Bob Bartlett has been hinting year in and year out that he’s thinking about retiring soon. So in the near future there may not be a chance to get any more of ANY of his wines (His oak-dry blueberry is still a steal at $24 if you can’t get to the winery for the reserve). Summing it up, it’s not my birth-year '76 JJ Prum Gold cap, or the Magnum of '05 Dagueneau Silex, or even the '02 Ponsot that is truely prized in my cellar…it’s a little known Blueberry wine that EVERY wine-geek should be trying to get their hands on…and few will, due to the immense undertaking that a trip up to Gouldsboro, Maine where many passionate wine lovers are humbled when they are privilaged enough to taste such a rare and beautiful wine.

I would tell you, but I don’t want to make the other bottles jealous.

Bruce

I’d easily say the five pack of Pre-SQN Krankl wines in the locked metal display box with the scroll. Of all five bottles, I’ve only ever seen the Black & Blue elsewhere. I believe it is the last of it’s kind outside of the one Manfred owns.

One each 1990 and 1993 d’Yquem, for drinking on the wedding nights of each of our two daughters of the same vintages.

Any 2009 that I will get to drink someday with the little guys on the left.