The Last Bottle

Well, there it goes. Long time family friends Steve and Irma Cunningham saved some of Dan’s first private vintage, a 1992 cabernet sauvignon which was then called Vallon. Each bottle was hand-etched with the name and given or sold only to family and friends. Over the years, we’ve enjoyed a few remaining bottles, but we were pretty sure we had consumed it all until Steve (right, Dover Dan center) decided to surprise us with one more bottle.

It’s amazing how many winemakers have no patience for a wine library, Dan among them. "There, I made it," they say. "Now sell it. Drink it!" And yet they’re always pleased and surprised to discover an old bottle in the cellar when entertaining special friends. I guess they just get so accustomed to having wine inventory underfoot all the time there is no allure to maintaining a wine library. The magic is in working with the grapes and the actual craft of working with the wine from harvest to bottle. After that, eh, it’s just a beverage. A winemaker’s mental tentacles are firmly wrapped around the present and the future. And that’s enough to keep five normal people busy—planning vineyard work around the weather, property improvement projects, gophers, regular racking and sampling of wine in barrels, gophers, blending, winemaker dinners and appearances, bottling logistics, government paperwork, gophers.

Although we have about 800 bottles in our personal cellar, including some older Dover Canyon vintages, we also leave a few cases of some releases at the warehouse—to avoid the temptation to open them. However, there are always some wines, like this year’s releases of 2003 Cujo Zinfandel and 2003 Old Vine Zinfandel, that simply disappear. Entirely. I feel like clutching my chest and dropping to my knees, imploring Bacchus, "Please, please don’t let Dan give it all away." Too late. The demand for these wines was so insistent that neither one of us could bear to turn an earnest and imploring customer away. Which means there’s none for me to drink. Damn it! Oh well, it isn’t as though I don’t have a wine wardrobe to choose from. Now that the Old Vine is gone, I have turned my affection to the 2002 Alto Pomar.

Fortunately, Dan has finally decided to offer a Rare, Reserve & Estate shipment each year in February. Which means he will now have to set aside some rather large library deposits for future releases. But until then, if you encounter a bottle of 1992 Vallon, or a 1995-1999 Dover Canyon, it just may be the last bottle.