After three weeks of being sick, taking antibiotics and generally suffering, I am almost ready to have a bottle of wine again.  This puts some pressure on me!  Should I have one of the truly greatest wines in my cellar to celebrate?  Probably not, as I am not sure how well my taste buds are working yet and if my tasting palate is functioning at 100% or not.  I certainly do not want to waste a great wine if that is the case.

Should I have the wine with a meal and if so, should I be concerned about matching the wine to the food on offering?  That seems to be a bit restrictive .  And given I am coming off of illness, I should probably have a red instead of a white wine or sweet wine as there is documented evidence of the slightly further health benefits of red wine!  (Or at least I can use that as an excuse to drink a good red, not that I need any excuses!)  Should it be an organic wine to ensure I do not have any lingering reaction to sulphar dioxide or other additives in the wine?

I certainly do not want it to be one of my ‘last’ bottles of a particular vintage of limited stock as it is not that special an occasion.  I expect I will open the bottle before dinner, sometime in the afternoon and have my first sips while sitting in my reading chair, relaxing after a morning of errands.  Or if my bride is watching an afternoon movie, I may bring the glass of wine to our apartment unit library and read – that is always a special treat!

The common library in our apartment unit

Yes, I think that will be the venue – sitting in the common library with a good book on food writing “The Table Comes First” by Adam Gopnik.  And the wine will be an Australian Cabernet Sauvignon.  While I love my big tannin wines – especially Shiraz – I believe a slightly simpler and lower alcohol Cabernet Sauvignon is the way to go.  One possibility is the 2008 Stonefields Vineyards Arbitrage Cabernet Sauvignon from the Wrattonbully region in South Australia.  Wrattonbully has some of the best Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards in the world!  I have had numerous great bottles of Wrattonbully Cabernet Sauvignon for around $20 – $25 per bottle.  I have had a few bottles of this particular wine before, so I know it will be good.  (However, in reading the label on the bottle, I see the wine has a 14.5% alcohol content which is higher than I was expecting.)

I may also consider a bottle of the 1997 Lindeman’s St George, or the 2006 Coldstream Hills Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, but I would need to go the cellar to retrieve a bottle of those wines, while the Stonefields Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon  is right in front of me!

While I may consider a few other choices tomorrow, I believe the path has been set and it may take a bit more effort than I want to put into it to change course!  I will let you know my final decision and how it tasted in a few days.