Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
While I write a wine blog, I don’t often dive deeply into individual bottles. I love wine, but I’m not a professional critic or writer like Jancis Robinson, Kermit Lynch, or Jason Wise. Wine is an intensely personal journey, and your own palate decides whether you’ll love or loathe a particular bottle. Still, I certainly have opinions to share.
Recently, I celebrated a big birthday—a day meant to slow down, enjoy my family, and mark the moment with a special dinner. I wanted a meal worthy of my all-time favorites: the Black Isle duck at Glen Mhor in Inverness in 1993, or the octopus at VII Coorte in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood in 2022. Dining out was always an option, but I can’t imagine a better evening than planning, prepping, and cooking at home. Over the years, my patio and kitchen have become my favorite “restaurant,” where the process is inseparable from the pleasure. It certainly helps that my wife is a fantastic chef who relishes the ritual as much as I do.
Planning
For this dinner, I aimed for a simple but varied menu that would pair well with different wines: mussels, pasta, and steak. Even the planning is a thrill for me. It’s a mental workout as I map out courses, wine pairings, and timing. First, I sketch the menu and decide which wines best complement each dish. Then my inner project manager takes over, eager to choreograph the evening’s logistics. When should I decant the reds so they have time to breathe and open up? When do I start the pasta and sauce so they’re ready just after the mussels? How do I time seasoning the steaks and starting the potatoes so everything lands on the table at once?
Designing the game plan—plating each dish at the ideal temperature, sequencing every preparation step—feels like solving an intricate puzzle. It keeps my mind sharp and fully engaged. As I work through each detail, I can almost feel my senses waking in anticipation of the aromas and flavors to come, much like a wine unfurling after it’s been decanted. Who says retirement can’t be demanding and delightfully complicated?
Chablis
A few weeks ago, I drove from Fishers to San Diego with my son as he started a new chapter of his life. His passion for wine has rubbed off on me, so we turned those 30+ hours of windshield time into a vinous education with Kermit Lynch’s *Adventures on the Wine Route*. Lynch’s stories about Chablis inspired me to explore more white wines and finally try the classic pairing of Chablis and shellfish.
Chablis, a renowned region in northern Burgundy, produces exceptional dry Chardonnay. Its cool climate and distinctive limestone and marine-fossil soils create the flinty, mineral character and bright acidity that make it such a natural match for shellfish. On the recommendation of my friends at Tasteful Times, our local wine shop, I chose the 2020 Domaine Laroche Chablis Saint Martin. As someone new to this style, I’m now a convert. The synergy between the Chablis and the mussels was undeniable—a truly heavenly pairing—and the wine was a refreshingly crisp way to kick off our patio dinner.
Course II
For the second course, we prepared fresh pasta with homemade sauce—a tradition we’ve cherished ever since taking a cooking class in Florence. There’s a particular satisfaction in making pasta from scratch. The simple acts of mixing, kneading, and shaping the dough create a tactile connection to the ingredients, and that hands-on care yields noodles with incomparable texture and flavor when cooked properly. It elevates the enjoyment of the entire meal.
To keep the evening flowing smoothly, we prepped the pasta and sauce in advance so everything would be ready to serve after the mussels course. Timing is crucial when orchestrating a multi-course meal at home. For the pasta’s wine pairing, I chose the Il Grappolo Brunello di Montalcino Sassocheto 2015—a bold, age-worthy red from one of Tuscany’s most prestigious appellations. I purchased three bottles of this vintage in late 2023, allowing them some cellar time to develop greater complexity.
I chose the Brunello for two main reasons. First, I wanted a wine with a bit of bottle age, one that had time to evolve and integrate its flavors. Brunello’s stringent aging requirements before release mean the wines already possess excellent cellaring potential. Second, Brunello’s power and depth of flavor make it a natural partner for a rich, hearty pasta dish. Its firm tannic structure and concentrated notes of ripe black fruits, dried herbs, and earthiness create a striking and harmonious pairing.
Final Course
For the grand finale, the main course was thick, dry-aged New York strip steaks grilled to perfection over our Green Egg’s natural charcoal and smoke. This primal cooking method over live fire lets the intense beefiness and mineral complexity from the dry-aging process truly shine. To match those rich, concentrated flavors, I chose a powerhouse wine: the 2012 Château Pichon-Longueville Baron from Pauillac in Bordeaux.
A Deuxième Cru Classé (Second Growth) estate in the famed 1855 classification, Pichon Baron has spent more than three centuries crafting some of Bordeaux’s most coveted wines. I bought this 2012 back in 2021, and it turned out to be the ideal bottle to crown our celebratory evening.
One of the joys of opening an aged wine is anticipating its evolution. Whenever I decant an older bottle, I begin with a small taste to see where it sits in its development. That first sip of the 2012 Pichon Baron—just 14 years from vintage—was already immensely rewarding: layers of ripe black fruit, graphite, tobacco, and forest floor, all woven together in seamless harmony. I knew we were in for a vinous treat.
By the time we savored the last bites of our dry-aged steaks after finishing the pasta course, that glorious Pauillac had enjoyed about four hours to open up and fully blossom in the decanter. The transformation was striking. What began as a taut, coiled wine had unfurled into a complete expression of Pauillac’s gravelly terroir. Each sip proved more compelling than the last as new facets of spice, earth, and fruit kaleidoscoped across the palate. It was a quintessential mature Bordeaux, hitting all its high notes.
Dessert
Though dessert hadn’t been part of the plan, the evening was far too enjoyable to end with the main course. We gathered our wine glasses and decanters and moved to the patio’s cozy lounge area to savor the remaining bottles at a more leisurely pace. With the fire pit crackling (as much as a gas fire pit will allow), we opened the patio to friends and invited them to join us in our unhurried indulgence.
Over the next few hours, we wandered that path together—sipping and swirling, opening another bottle or two, and exploring the nuances of each wine. The journey of those bottles—from the terroir that nurtured them to the hands that crafted them and the quiet years of maturation before they reached our glasses—reminded us that wine is so much more than what’s in the glass. It is a time-honored tradition, a celebration of nature’s bounty, and a passport to distant places we can visit with a single sip.
As the night wore on, we felt deeply satisfied: minds broadened, palates indulged, souls nourished by an unforgettable evening. The food was outstanding, the wines exemplary, and the company even better. Yet it was the experience as a whole—the journey we shared through the vines and valleys of the world’s great wine regions—that made it truly special. This is what the joy of wine is all about.
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