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
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?
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’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.