Wine consultant and educator Susan Richards writes this entry to our 2024 wine writing competition about a very large wine bottle. See our competition guide for more great wine writing.
Susan Richards writes Susan Richards is an experienced wine consultant and educator. She holds the Level 3 certification from the Wine Spirit Education Trust (WSET) and is a Certified Specialist in Wine (CSW). Susan is also a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and enjoys combining her expertise in food and nutrition with her wine background. In January 2023, she launched "Always Sharing Wine," and provides wine writing, education, and private tastings to inspire the joy of wine in others. Susan is also a part-time wine sales consultant and buyer at Savour Wine and Cheese in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Susan believes wine should be accessible to everyone, never intimidating, and that it brings people together
A Big Birthday Deserved a Big Bottle
I have always been fascinated by the oversized wine bottles you often see in wine shop windows for lavish displays. They look like malformed monsters. Is the wine just as good when put into a humungous bottle that can hold the equivalent of four, six, eight, or more bottles? How did you open one? Never mind, try to pour wine from it into a glass. I wanted to know. I wanted to experience a “big bottle.” So, when my good friend Rich offered his large format 1990 Chateau Meyney Saint-Estephe to celebrate my fiftieth birthday, I happily and excitedly accepted.
For my significant anniversary of birth, I planned a catered dinner party for twelve at my home—well, actually at the home of Rich and his lovely wife Margret, who lived downstairs from me in a Boston Brownstone. Rich said he wanted to contribute the bottle as it was the perfect time to “break out” a wine he had been saving for a special occasion. He told me he could not remember exactly where he had acquired the bottle, just that he loved Bordeaux and couldn’t resist this Big Old Bottle (he called it BOB).
It may be helpful at this point to understand wine bottle sizes and names. A typical bottle of wine is 750 milliliters, called a “standard.” A magnum, commonly found in most wine stores, is equivalent to two standard bottles. From there, the naming gets more interesting or confusing, depending on your perspective. A Double Magnum is, as it sounds, two Magnums or four standard bottles, followed by a Jeroboam (6), Methuselah (8), Salmanazar (12), Balthazar (16) on up to the largest, a Melchior (named after the king) which holds 24 bottles of wine. BOB was a Methuselah, also known as an Imperial, standing 20 inches high and 18 inches round, holding 6 liters of delicious (we hoped) 20-year-old Bordeaux red wine.
In the weeks before the party, I, Rich, and Barry, a fellow wine-loving friend who would be attending the soiree, had much discussion about when to open the wine for the party. We concluded that since it was old and in such a large bottle, it would need time to “breathe” and open up to be ready for drinking. So, we concocted a plan to open the bottle two days before the party, pour the wine into eight standard bottles, and seal them up with old corks, thus giving it a bit of oxygen and time to come to life.
It was a beautiful May evening in Boston when we lugged the bottle over to Barry’s deck to open and decant the wine. With Rich holding the back and me the front, Margret walked alongside us to manage the pedestrian and motorized traffic for the four-block passage. Barry had eight clean wine bottles ready to receive the soon-to-be-uncorked bottle’s liquid. We just needed to figure out how to get the extra-large cork out of the neck.
A standard corkscrew alone would not be up to the job. An Ah-so opener, the one with two prongs, was not wide enough. We determined that if we pulled the cork out partway with a small corkscrew, bent the prongs open on the Ah-so to fit around the partially exposed cork, and pulled really hard, it would come out. With the bottle resting on the deck floor, Rich did the honors while Margret, Barry, and I held tightly onto the bottle. A deep breath, then a big grunt, was followed by a loud “pop” as Rich stumbled back from his prey. The bottle was open, and anticipation of how it would taste was palpable.
Barry poured the wine into a carafe using a funnel, filling it halfway to the top. Proper Bordeaux glasses were ready to receive the aged nectar of the wine gods. I held my breath as the wine flowed into my glass and became lost in my own experience of the moment. The wine was deep ruby red with only a hint of brown on the edge of the robe. Dark cherry, black raspberry, and a hint of tobacco floated up to my nose. I took a sip; it was amazing. Lusciously silky in the mouth, bursting with fruit, with deliciously balanced tannins and acidity. I glanced up at my friends and saw a look of awe and surprise on their faces. They tasted what I did, and we couldn’t believe it. I will never forget that moment for the rest of my life.
We decanted BOB into seven standard bottles rather than eight, as planned, because of course, the four of us drank one bottle’s worth that night. How could we resist? But now we were concerned that we had opened the bottle too early. Would it still be as good in 48 hours? Two nights later, with BOB proudly displayed on the table, I poured the wine for my guests, and it was delicious, just different. The fresh red fruit flavor had morphed into baked preserves and had the rustic “barnyard” smell typical of Bordeaux. Everyone raved about it, and the seven bottles were easily consumed over the course of the evening. And it was left unsaid, just how good it was when we opened it.
At the end of the evening, everyone signed the bottle to commemorate the celebration and the bottle's significance to me. It sits proudly in my wine cellar today.
The photo, 'Big Old Bottle (BOB) helped celebrate my Big Birthday', is the author's own.