Guest Author - Jim Fortune
We were having friends over and we needed several bottles of WOW!! We had not seen these friends in a while. They are probably 10+ years my senior and retired from the rat race in 1999 during all of the frenzy about Y2K.
They dropped out, is the best way to put it. They were over for dinner at our place. They told us they were going to retire and move someplace quiet while they got their thoughts together. We all laughed when they told us. I thought they were in the same financial position as us and we were not retiring and moving, so how could they? It sounded weird, but considering what we knew of them in the past, it really did not surprise us.
They left our place that night and we parted saying we would touch base again in a couple of months to see how they were doing. We got busy in our day to day stuff. We were busy working, and wrapped up in our "stuff" and got through Y2K without a scratch. The world did not end. We called them in 2000, after the holidays, and I got a disco message on their phone.
"That's funny.", I remembered thinking. We went by their house and knocked at the front door and this woman came to the door and said, "Can I help you?" That's when it hit us. Come to find out, they had already sold the house when we had dinner that night in 1999.
We got a Christmas card from them this past December. It was a nice card, but sort of vague. There was no postmark on the envelope, which at Christmastime is not unusual. We looked at the card, looked at each other and had a short laugh.
He called me on Valentine's Day, "Could we get together for a Dutch dinner and catch up" at our house? I checked and we had no plans - so it was on.
I wanted to have a really nice bottle of wine for dinner which was going to be pot roast. And for this occasion I chose Seven Oaks J. Lohr 2006 Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon.
Every time I have this wine, it brings back memories of old days, old friends, good times. It wsas the perfect wine for this dinner with friends we had not seen in almost 10 years.
Can I suggest that you find your bottle of WOW!! and have some on hand for those times, when you want a good wine that reminds you of good times? This past year, we have had more than a few bottles of wine that are in the WOW!! category, but when push came to shove, I bought two bottles of J. Lohr.
It is a consistent wine, and tastes the same year after year. The only thing that has changed is the price. I used to buy it in 1996 for $7.49 from Mark Dinerstein, a local wine store owner, who turned me on to some pretty good wines back in those days. The price is now $13.99.
Dinner? We caught up on what had happened with our friends. He made a ton of money in mining stocks out of Vancouver BC Canada and had been living on easy street ever since. We laughed when we made plans to get together again in ten years when we would be retired, if my IRA ever gets back to where it was a year ago.
Let me know how things are going with you, O.K.?
Jim Fortune, The BellaOnline Wine Guy
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