As you know, I stated earlier this week that I wanted to drink wine from 1985 on my birthday. Well, my birthday wish came on my half birthday. Here’s a little backstory:

Last night, I attended a blind tasting at a fellow blogger’s home. Adam is nice enough to hold blind tastings every so often, and when I get an invite, I get so excited and it’s too good to turn down. The theme last night was 2007 Southern Rhone, so that in itself made it exciting. The tasting itself was a challenge to me. A number of the wines were very similar so it was difficult to pick out scents, flavors, and differences sometimes.

I forgot my score sheet (I think you’ll understand why) so I can’t tell you the exact wine that I loved the most, but it was very interesting that the highly priced Chateauneuf-Du-Papes weren’t the top three picks in the room. It’s been that way during both blind tastings I’ve been to and is pretty interesting to me. When the exact details of a wine are taken out of the tasting, I feel that I’m able to better judge what I like and don’t like and it’s a thrill when the ones I like are actually in my price range.

Anyway, between tasting groups, Adam showed a number of us his cellar. While there, my birthday wish was brought up. Without hesitation, a 1985 Lynch Bages was pulled out and we were set to drink it following the blind tasting.

I was floored. But even crazier was after we had poured the 25 year old Bordeaux for party goers, the offer was made to pick out another 1985 wine. I brought up a 1985 Chateau Montelena because though the Bordeaux was wonderful, I wanted to experience something from another area of the world. (FYI, while writing this right now, I’m still kind of in awe that this even happened)

Since the wines were being opened because of my birthday wish, I had the honor (curse?) of opening them. I knew the corks would be soft, but I still managed to break both of them. Fortunately, there was enough expertise in the room that the corks were pulled out fully without little cork bits falling into the bottle.

I was surprised that both of the wines still had some awesome tannins and I thought they both drank really well. I mean, they’re the oldest wines I’ve ever had, so I was impressed. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but they were more than I had anticipated. They weren’t massively huge wines, but they were solid.

I had a smile a mile wide the whole rest of the evening. I think it only got bigger when I was told that I could, indeed, take the bottles home with me. Wow. Not only did I get to try them, but I got to keep the bottles. (See, leaving with two bottles from 1985 made me forgetful and I didn’t bring my tasting notes.)

In leu of this situation, I think I wrote my post about generous wine people a day too early. Pulling two 25 year old wines out of your personal cellar to make some girl’s wish come true and to drink it with a few cool wine enthusiasts is an amazing act of generosity. I’m not even sure I can fully thank Adam for the evening and opportunity. However, from the stories I hear, this type of thing is fairly common. That’s why I’m convinced at this point that wine people truly are an amazingly generous lot.

Not only did I get to enjoy wine with some seriously incredible people, my birthday wish came true six months early. To be honest, though, I still really want to get something cool and special to open on my actual birthday in September. I haven’t had my fill, so the quest to find my birthday wine presses on.