stags leap

Wine should be joyful. If you ever think it becomes routine to people in the industry, we’d urge you to look at the picture of Marcus Notaro as he celebrates Open That Bottle Night. Notaro is the head winemaker at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars and quite famous, but when it came to OTBN, he was like a kid in a candy store and it shows on his face.

“I enjoy celebrating Open That Bottle Night each year. I chose the 1997 S.L.V. as it’s from a benchmark vintage in Napa Valley and the wines in the mid-’90s are in a sweet spot right now,” he told us. (His lovely video of tasting the wine is on Twitter @StagsLeapCASK23.)

(Marcus Notaro)

Winemakers from all over – Singlefile Wines in Australia, Domaine Gayda in Languedoc – opened special bottles, too. And it wasn’t just winemakers, of course. OTBN was celebrated by regular wine-loving folks from El Salvador, to Chicago to South ...

"We invented OTBN in 1999 because it seems like everybody has that one bottle of wine that’s too special to open. So we said, fine, on the last Saturday of February, let’s all corkscrew up our courage and do it together." Dorothy J. Gaiter & John Brecher

“I love what I do. The name says it all, Mi Sueño—which stands for ‘my dream’—and it’s a great honor to live the true American dream in something you love." -Rolando Herrera