Wine for Putting in an Offer

Making an offer on a house is a little bit like asking someone to the prom. You spend a long time imagining your dream date, and once you find him (or her), you spend a while feeling sick at the thought of asking if said dream date will want to go with you, if they have already been asked by someone else, if they are waiting for someone better to come along, and how to make it clear to them that you are the best option for a prom date they are going to get.

The whole issue of what you're going to wear, whether or not you should rent a limo, or what you're chances are of getting lucky at the end of the night all have to wait until later.

The lead-up is the worst part; pacing back and forth in your room, deciding on just the right moment to ask, and of course, how best to phrase the invite, checking your breath. Then finally, taking a deep breath and just going for it.

Then once the question is out there in the ether, there is the pause, that awful pause while you wait for them to say something....preferably yes. That pause where you wonder if they are pausing because they are so excited by your invite they can hardly breathe, or pausing because they are thinking of the six other people they wish had asked them before you, or pausing because they don't know how to tell you that that horrible zit on your nose has just burst.

All this is to say that this morning we put in an offer on a lovely condo, and we are currently waiting to hear if our offer will be accepted. There are two other offers on the table from two other buyers, so we'll see if we wind up being the ones they want to dance with or not.

My Wine for Putting in an Offer is a 1975 Petrus. Now this is not a wine I will probably ever be able to actually be able to buy, as it would cost about $2,000 a bottle. But one of the wonderful perks of my current vinternship at Masa's Restaurant is getting to taste some extraordinary wines.

This particular bottle was brought into the restaurant by a man who was celebrating his 60th birthday and had saved the bottle since he purchased it 12 years ago for this very occasion. He and his wife were extremely sweet; he even wore a tux. He was so excited to share the wine with Alan, me, and the chef.

I had never tasted such a mature wine prior to this, nor a wine from such an iconic house. Chateau Petrus is one of the legendary Chateaux of the Pomerol region of Bordeaux France, known for making some of the most wonderful Merlots anywhere.

This wine had an amazing nose of cherry, evergreens, cedar, earth and mushroom, with a lovely round mouthfeel and slightly drying tannins at the finish. The palate was a rush of milk-chocolate-covered cherry followed by tobacco and earth.

But probably the most wonderful thing about tasting this wine was knowing that this wine had been waiting in bottle essentially since I was born, having its own journey, going from France to any number of any other countries to wind up in the US where it was purchased by our diner, who then kept it in his home for 12 years (when I was living in Brooklyn), only to be opened and shared by total strangers at a San Francisco restaurant a few weeks ago.

That wine waited almost my whole lifetime to be uncorked and drunk at this man's 60th birthday celebration, constantly maturing and changing in the bottle. That is one of my favorite things about wine: they take their own journey, and they are a part of the journey we take.