...that Jean and I were married. To celebrate our 20th anniversary, we exchanged gifts (Jean getting a diamond ring that she'd picked out and me getting a double magnum of '89 Veuve Cliquot La Grande Dame, the wine that Jean opened to propose to me in '88). We also cooked a dinner of mesquite-grilled ribeye steaks, basmati rice, sautéed shi'itakes, sugar snap peas and grilled onions, with which we opened arguably the only bottle of wine left in our cellar that predated our marriage:
1983 Ch. Margaux color: dark garnet center going slightly brick at the edge nose: initially, a bit reticent, cedar, dark fruit, turning more toward mushrooms and soy sauce and... dammit... the unmistakeable odor of cork taint palate: medium body, deep fruit, still fairly primary and TCA
I bought this wine at Garnet in NYC in '88 as a graduation gift for Jean the day she defended her Ph D. This bottle followed us from NYC to Berkeley to Indiana, suffering at times from less-than-ideal storage conditions. The cork was saturated but intact, but the subtle cork taint was obvious to me. I asked Jean about it, but she didn't get it, so I just put up with it (and for once the cork taint didn't spoil the wine entirely). Some day, perhaps, I'll taste an untainted version of this wine, but even if not it was a memorable experience. The double magnum of '89 Grande Dame will be opened on Saturday during our big anniversary party on Saturday.
Mark Lipton