Last Wednesday was my 15th Anniversary of being married to my best friend, the love of my life, and my Own Personal Train Wreck (TM).
I guarantee a handful of people laughed out loud when they read that, including the wife 🙂
To celebrate, a surprise Anniversary party at our dear friends’ house. It was easy to get Tracey there under false pretenses, as their daughter’s birthday is the same day as our Anniversary, so we told Tracey we were going over there for a kids’ birthday party. That’s not quite what happened.
I had been planning this party for years, and had been squirreling away a bunch of wine from our wedding year: 2004. Our hosts kindly cooked a beautiful spread of dishes to pair with them. Let’s see how the wine held up at 15 years of age (spoiler alert: PRETTY DAMN GOOD). Interestingly enough, 2004 doesn’t seem to have been a really stellar year anywhere in the wine world. Oh well.
To begin the festivities, a little bit of the bubbly.
Next up, we started with the only white of the evening. This was paired with a salad that was SUPPOSED to be dressed in a Meyer Lemon vinaigrette, but some idiot (ME) forgot to bring the dressing. So we used whatever they had, and not surprisingly, it was not a brilliant pairing with Ranch or Thousand Island!!
Up next, Chrissy Tiegen’s Rotochick Soup (if you like to cook, and you haven’t bought her two cookbooks yet, DO SO. You will thank me, even if it is just for her outstanding soups), paired with a little California Pinot.
At this point, I’ve honestly forgotten what we paired with what. We had some spectacular meatballs, a mushroom risotto (my only contribution to the evening aside from the wine), spaghetti cooked in red wine (DELICIOUS!), and filet mignon in a whisky pan sauce. EVERYTHING was really, really good. And the wine didn’t disappoint.
There were seven people in attendance, so we got a decent pour of each wine, but not so much as to be drunk by the end. Pretty perfect night all around!
But that’s not quite it, dear readers! Yesterday was the annual BC Liquor Store Bordeaux release, so we stayed overnight at the Shangri-La Hotel in Vancouver so that I could get up realllllllly early and get into line at the store at Alberni and Bute, which is just around the corner from the hotel, to make sure we were able to purchase everything we wanted. I was successful at being first in line, but I clearly overshot things a bit, as I arrived an hour and a quarter prior to the guy who showed up #2. Next year, no need to go quite so early.
On Friday night, we finished off our Anniversary week with dinner at Market by Jean-Georges, in the hotel, and in honor of the Bordeaux release, ordered this little beauty:
And so ends Anniversary week. After picking up 3 cases of Bordeaux yesterday, we are confident that we are going to be drinking spectacular wine well into the next decade!
Next up: Trying to find some time to wrap up our Okanagan trip from the summer!
Confessions of a Huge Wine-R 