These are it for me, both me and my wife’s birth year. Plus Concannon is a couple blocks from my house. They’re not what they used to be, but still holds a special place for me. I have some hopes for this wine. Color and fill look good, and it’s a good vintage.
I was worried when I saw the color of the Ch. d’Yquem but friends have assured me it should be fine. The £4.25 price tag is good for a laugh too.
Along the lines of rare, I also have a bottle of 2009 Copain High Rock Ranch, which AFAIK is done from a private estate and friend of Wells. I don’t think it’s ever released. I try to not covet bottles but this one will be difficult to open.
I remember one of these that you opened at an event 10 years ago or more now, Leonard. It was one of the most memorable California wines I’ve had. Thanks again for sharing it with us!
When Bear Stearns was collapsing in March of 2008, a departing CLO trader gave me a leftover but pristine bottle of St. Francis Pagani Vineyard Zinfandel 2002, etched to commemorate a particular 2005 CLO deal.
His wine gift was ironic, on many levels.
Bear Stearns had just re-hired me (I also worked there from 1993 to 1996) at the eleventh hour, to try to value and mitigate its esoteric, illiquid, mortgage-related trading risks. My first accomplishment was to find that trader and his boss to be over-marking their super-senior CDO/CLO tranches, by several hundred million dollars (the unveiling was unforgettable). The CLO trader was quite skeptical about why I had just left RBS after only a six-week tenure, and he apparently had voted against my re-hiring. As the firm fell into the arms of JPMorgan and the New York Fed, he jumped to trade CLOs and mortgage derivatives at a different bank…RBS.
