A Pox on Our 2009 Open That Bottle Night

I hope you took the opportunity to celebrate Open That Bottle Night on Saturday! What wine did you open and what did you celebrate?

Today I'll share with you our OTBN celebration, which, for reasons I'll need to explain, actually happened one day later than the official February 28th date.

You see, a little over a week ago, I had the singularly bad luck of coming down with a case of the chicken pox. At age 39. And no, I never caught it as a kid.

This is a vile disease to get at any age. But if you have the unique misfortune of contracting it as an adult, what's most shocking about the chicken pox is how painful it can be. I graduated from Ibuprofen to Tylenol to Tylenol with Codeine and then to Vicodin in a matter of just three days. And I don't even like to take painkillers. At least, I didn't until this pox made me see the light.

And I've always had a great knack for timing too. You see, last week, Laura and I were supposed to relocate, temporarily, to Hawaii for a four month break. Yep. Last week. But getting on a plane in a state of peak pox contagion would have been unthinkable (and, not to mention, bad for my karma for a million generations hence). So, we rescheduled our flights for two weeks later. I'll probably look horribly pock-marked and scarier than ever, but by then I'll no longer be a health threat to my fellow passengers. But please, no jokes about restarting the leper colony on Molokai.

Unfortunately, when OTBN rolled around this past Saturday, I wasn't healthy enough to really enjoy a glass of wine. So, instead of pouring wine, Laura doled out more pain meds for me to take. And we waited.

Fortunately, the next day--Sunday--was a bit of a different story. For the first time I felt better than the day before, not worse. So Laura and I celebrated by reheating some take-out Chinese food and opening our OTBN wine just a day behind schedule: a half-bottle of Sauternes that Laura got me for Christmas.


As for how much this wine costs, Laura won't even tell me. Fortunately, Laura is more generous to me than I am to myself.

And what did we drink to? We drank to the traveling we've been lucky enough to do lately, including a recent one-month trip we took to New Zealand (more on that tomorrow), as well as a recent trip we made with a team of eye doctors to do eye exams in Guatemala.

We also toasted our upcoming trip to Hawaii, and to the sabbaticals we are both taking from the work world right now that will enable us to live in Hawaii until the end of June.

And we toasted to the glories of Vicodin and the fact that I'm at last starting to feel a little bit better.

Last but not least, let me make a final toast to you--my growing number of readers here at Casual Kitchen. I'm grateful to have you, and it's been an absolute pleasure writing for you for the past two-plus years!



Related Posts:
How to Start a Casual and Inexpensive Wine Tasting Group
Countdown: The Top Ten Alcoholic Drinks of Summer
Countdown: Top Ten Low Alcohol Drinks
Beef and Beer Stew
How to Be a Satisficer

How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by linking to me, subscribing to my RSS feed, or submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon.

Open That Bottle Night--February 28, 2009

I want to tell my readers about an important wine-related event coming up just a few days from now, on February 28th: It's called Open That Bottle Night.


Open That Bottle Night was invented by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, writers of the weekly wine column in the Wall Street Journal, as well as the authors of The Wall Street Journal Guide to Wine. If you haven't yet heard of them, they are two of the most wonderful and unpretentious wine writers out there, and they've been the spark for much of the interest in wine we have here at Casual Kitchen.

But back to Open That Bottle Night. In their column leading up to last year's OTBN, here's how Dottie and John described it:

"So very many of us have that special bottle -- from a departed loved one, from a visit to a winery, from a vacation -- that we're always going to open for just the right moment, but, of course, that moment never comes. So the wine sits and sits and sits and becomes more and more precious, so it sits and sits some more."

Do you have just such a bottle of wine, laying around, collecting dust, and waiting for a "reason" to be opened? Well, that's exactly what Open That Bottle Night is all about. This Saturday, February 28th is the night that you will simply open that bottle, enjoy it, and create new memories.

I love celebrations like this because they show us that great times and great moments are all around us. Open That Bottle Night actively encourages you to celebrate life now. After all, what's the point of waiting, passively, for memorable or celebratory events to come to you? Why wait to open a bottle at some point in the future when you can make memories today?

I've even started to think of OTBN as an annual holiday, since it always falls on the last Saturday in February. And OTBN grows each year in popularity--every year, more and more readers send their stories to Dottie and John of the special bottle of wine they chose, why they chose it, and most importantly, what memories they celebrated.

And Dottie and John always write a follow-up column sharing some of the best reader memories from that night. It's always one of their best columns of the year.

And if you want to add a little bit of extra fun to your evening, jot down the kind of wine you're drinking, the vintage year, and any thoughts on what you like (or don't like) about the wine. Keep the paper somewhere safe so you can use it to write down notes for next year's OTBN. Who knows, maybe this will be the start of an annual tradition for you!

At Casual Kitchen, we'll also be opening our own bottle of wine on February 28th, and I'll be sure to share the story with you. I also intend to use OTBN as a kick-off for a brief series of posts on wines at Casual Kitchen.

What are you going to do on Open That Bottle Night this year?

Related Links:
Dottie and John's Tastings Column in the Wall Street Journal

Related Posts:
How to Spend Exactly the Right Amount of Money For an Important Celebration
Countdown: The Top Ten Alcoholic Drinks of Summer
How to Be a Satisficer
How to Start a Casual and Inexpensive Wine Tasting Group



How can I support Casual Kitchen?
If you enjoy reading Casual Kitchen, tell a friend and spread the word! You can also support me by linking to me, subscribing to my RSS feed, or submitting this article, or any other article you particularly enjoyed here, to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg or stumbleupon.