My Search for the Best Bottle of 1968 Red Wine

For as long as I can remember, I have given time-related gifts.

Finding and giving creative gifts wrapped in a meaningful relationship between a date and a gift recipient was a fun hobby. Most people would assume then that my tradition of "giving" was the reason for GiftDay.

It's not the whole truth.

The seed of GiftDay, ironically enough, was not planted in the warm feelings I had of giving to others but, instead, came from the frustrating experience I had of trying to "get" something for myself.

In late 2007, I was about to turn 40. I wanted to celebrate with something special. I'm a wine fanatic so it seemed like a good idea to google the best bottle of wine from my birth year, 1968. I sought out not a good bottle, but the best bottle. What better way for me to acknowledge middle-age than with some amazing wine?

But the answer did not come easily. France and Italy didn’t produce long-aged reds in 1968 due to bad weather. Time Magazine declared all of Europe’s vintage “awful”. And Australia hadn’t yet mastered the art of producing wines that would hold up for 40 years.

California appeared as saviour. Thank god for the 1968 Californians! The weather in Napa was fine that year.

The hunt revealed several wines that offered the promise of hyperbole. Heitz and Inglenook whispered my name. Beaulieu and Mondavi beckoned. But the only websites that made claims of knowing the best bottle of wine from 1968 had a conflicting interest because they were also selling those very same wines. How convenient!

I decided to dispense with the google search and developed my own kind of search engine. I analyzed magazine wine scores and researched online wine sites, blogs, tasting reports and scores. I charted winery and wine reputation. I asked knowledgeable wine store employees what bottle of 1968 wine they would drink if they were celebrating a major birthday.

I eventually crowned a winner: 1968 Beaulieu Vineyard (BV) Georges de LaTour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.

Proud of my research experiment's success, I bought every bottle left of BV on the planet I could find. I spent hours trying to locate them online at wine sites and auctions and visiting wine shops in person. I turned to friends’ private collections. And to the collections of friends of friends. And finally to some fairly fancy cellars of friends of friends of friends.

Where did the madness end? With a wine locker filled with more BV than I could personally drink by the time I turned 40!

I began to sell the wines and in doing so discovered that there were other people all over the country who were turning 40 and who wanted a good bottle of wine from 1968 with which to celebrate. I started emailing and calling and talking to a whole group of people who were all going to be celebrating an important milestone at around the same time. There was an undeniable feeling of comraderie that we all felt. We all shared a bond. We had gone through the same experiences, watched the same TV shows, kissed our first girlfriends or boyfriends at about the same time. We felt a tribal-like closeness to each other.

We are all connected to time and dates in a powerful way. And information and products and gifts that tie into these times is powerful and life-affirming "stuff". I only partially realized the power of this when I gave gifts to others. But it really hit deep for me when I sought out products for myself. The products made me feel alive, happy and celebratory. They also helped me feel special and important.

The powerful feeling that I felt looking for date-relevant products could be shared with others. I just needed to "bottle it" and set up shop. It was easy. The world is filled with billions of date-relevant products. I could provide the marketplace and a forum around which tribes could gather.

And so GiftDay was born.