One day, I marched into office and told my colleague: “it would have been better off if I got married 1 month later!”
She looked at me curiously…
“2005 seems to be a better year for anniversary wines.” I explained.
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When you reach a stage of your wine journey, there is this thing called “anniversary wines”. And it could become a little bit of an obsession. It is like the unlocking of a certain level in a RPG, and you start using this ability to source & keep wines from a particularly important vintage.
Here are some typical types of “anniversary wines”:
Wedding anniversary wines – wines made from the year you got married, will need variety.
Your own birth year wines – more difficult to source & very likely more expensive.
Your child(ren)’s birth year wines – will need long life, at least 18 years!
In my 40-bottles limit wine fridge, a good percentage of the bottles lying there is from 1 vintage, 2004, the year I got married.
The plan is this, each year on our wedding anniversary, we will open a bottle of 2004 wine to enjoy, just the 2 of us. To do that, we will need a good variety of wines, from mid-term drinking to age-worthy ones. And so, I am constantly looking for good deals for any 2004 wines. Of course, collecting & buying such wines require a fair bit of research.
That’s not all. For me, which country/region’s wines were good for vintage 2004, and how age-worthy are they? I know, in Australia, 2004 is a good year for Cabernets from Coonawarra & Margaret River, Shiraz from Barossa & McLaren Vale, and generally across Victorian regions. Grange 2004 & Bin 389 2004 from Penfold’s will be solid bets. In Europe, 2004 will be very good for vintage Champagne, and it seems to be a cracking year across Italy, particularly Barolo and Chianti Classico. German Rieslings are good choices too.
I have 2 sons, how can I not consider their birth year wines too…. (here I go again!)
Do you have your small (but growing) collection of anniversary wines?
How’s your research going for it? Would love to hear your thoughts… 🙂
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