Gerade erst hier genörgelt, schon auch in der FTD. Geteilte Vorbehalte sind doch verstärkte Vorbehalte.

Aus der Palm-Version des WSJ unter der Rubrik At Leisure stammt übrigens die nette Idee von OTBN: Open That Bottle Nights. Leider nicht online verfügbar, daher hier Grundlegendes & Wesentliches:

Finally, it's time for Open That Bottle Night.

[...]

Consider Gladys and George Walker's 1963 Chateau Lafite Rothschild. It was the favorite wine of a dear friend's husband. When the husband died, the friend gave it to the Walkers with the admonishment, "save it for some very special occasion." Later the friend died, too. "As time went on," Mrs. Walker, of Clarksdale, Miss., told us, "I was never sure if it was 'still good' or 'too good.'" Their 50th anniversary passed last year — and still the bottle waits.

The First Time Around

So for the first observance, we decided that on Sept. 18, 1999, all of us, at once, should make the bottle itself the special occasion and open it. [...]

We conducted OTBN 2 in 2000 and quite a few restaurants took part, including Windows on the World in the World Trade Center, which waived corkage fees during the week of OTBN 2. [...]

During the past several months, we have received many notes from readers asking when OTBN 3 would take place. We wrote back to Karen Stearns of Houston to ask why she was looking forward to it. She responded: "I have read with great fascination the myriad of OTBN stories and anecdotes that your readers send in. While I could certainly empathize with the stories behind the bottles — how wonderful to celebrate these amazing memories with friends and family — my husband and I felt we had no prized bottle worthy of such a special event. Last time, we decided to go through the motions anyway. We didn't have a special bottle, but we had special friends. So we invited our favorite couple to bring a bottle of their favorite red, we chose a bottle of our favorite white, and we began planning the dinner to accompany these treasures." [...]

"So we had no lost love to toast, no memory of a parent to reminisce over, no moment of time to recreate — but we had the most fabulous evening with two good friends and some great wine."

The Main Event

All of this goes to our basic point that special bottles of wine should be opened and enjoyed, not just revered. Find occasions all through the year to savor life a little more with that very special bottle of wine. But we also understand that some bottles are simply so remarkable — because they were given to us by a favorite uncle, or remind us of a great vacation, or were served at our long-ago wedding — that it does take an extra push to open them. So mark this date: Saturday, Feb. 23. That will be Open That Bottle Night 3. To prepare, follow these steps:

1. Stand the wine up (away from light and heat, of course) for a few days before you plan to open it — say, on Wednesday, Feb. 20. This will allow the sediment, if there is some, to sink to the bottom.

2. If the wine is white, put it in the refrigerator two hours before you plan to drink it. If it's an older red, say at least 10 years old, put it in the refrigerator about an hour. A youngish red can cool for around two hours to get it down toward cellar temperature.

3. With an old bottle, the cork may break easily. The best opener for a cork like that is the one with two prongs, but it requires some skill. You have three weeks to practice using one. Otherwise, be prepared for the possibility that the cork will fall apart with a regular corkscrew. If that happens, have a carafe and a coffee filter handy.

4. Otherwise, do not decant. We're assuming these are old and fragile wines. Air could quickly dispel what's left of them.

5. Have a backup wine ready for your special meal, in case your old wine really has gone bad.

6. Serve dinner. Then open the wine and immediately take a sip. If it's truly bad — we mean vinegar — you will know it right away. But even if the wine doesn't taste good to you right away, don't rush to the sink to pour it out. Give it a chance. If it isn't completely gone, our guess is that it will be wonderful, in its own way, and reward you off and on during the night. Start eating, and slowly sip the wine.

7. We've found that talking about the person who gave you the wine, or the circumstances under which you received it, makes the wine resonate in a very sweet and personal way.

8. Enjoy the wine for what it is, not what it might be or might once have been.

9. Save one last glass in the bottle.

10. At the very end of the meal, after the dishes are done, pour the remainder of the wine into your glasses (pour it through a coffee filter if there's lots of sediment). Then drink up, and enjoy those very last moments of a wonderful night.

And, of course, No. 11: Drop us a note at WINE@WSJ.COM about your evening. If we mention your name in our follow-up column, we'll send you an autographed copy of our new book, "Love by the Glass: Tasting Notes from a Marriage." If your restaurant is planning something special, such as waiving corkage fees, drop us a note about that, too.

(by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher)