It is coming up fast, so I thought I’d pass on the tip.

If you’ve been holding on to a bottle or two of wine or Champagne, waiting for that “Special Occasion”, or the “Right Time” to drink it – then wait no longer. In truth, that event or moment very often never materialises, and worse, you could ‘accidentally’ get so frustrated waiting for it to come along that you open it and then realise you have to drink it alone, from a styrofoam cup and match it to take-away pizza – somewhat like a distraught Miles in Sideways.

So, Open That Bottle night (OTBN) was dreamed up in 2000 to create that moment, to place a marker in the diary that means that you will always have a “drink by” moment for those wines. That date is the last Saturday in February, which means 28 Feb 2009. Not only that, but others are doing the same, so you are really taking part in a global quality wine drinking occasion that you can share on Twitter, Facebook, Snooth, Adegga and many other wine social media platforms.

I had planned on doing this on Saturday with a bottle of 1981 or 1982 Rioja from my cellar, and may still do so, but as it happens, the idea of this event prompted me to dig out some bottles and invite some friends over to share them – and beat the deadline. I had a stunning bottle of Nicolas Catena Zapata 1999 (elegant, cassis fruit, soft tannins and wonderful concentration and length, but still with a decade or more in front of it) and even crack open a bottle of Leacock’s Verdelho Madeira from 1971 given to me as a gift (incredible complexity of caramel, banana fruit, nuts and an acidity that smacks you in the mouth and leaves your head spinning and drooling … in the most wonderful way of course).

So, I’ve opened my bottles. What bottles are you tempted to open on Saturday?

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