Damien Galeone

The last Saturday in February – which this year happens to be February 28 – is Open That Bottle Night. This is a relatively young tradition in which people are encouraged to ‘open that bottle’ of whatever it is they’ve been saving. You know, that fancy schmancy bottle that no occasion ever seems to be quite special enough for.

Occasionally bottles are unearthed that fly in the face of this tradition. The still-intact bottles pulled out of tombs and mausoleums of the ancient world might serve to give us an eerie contrast to such a tradition. What could be stranger than holding a more than 1,700-year-old bottle of wine found in a Roman tomb in Speyer? I suppose it might be the more than 2,000-year-old bottle of wine found in a Roman mausoleum in Caroma, Spain. How about the jugs of beer and wine found in Ancient Egyptian tombs? On the bright side, these were meant to provide the respective tombs’ occupants with sustenance on the trip to the afterlife. But still, spooky.       

But if the motivation of OTBN is to remind us that we are gone all too soon and should have fun while we can, then an entombed bottle in a tomb next to an entombed person should help urge that forward. Though far creepier, blending into Twilight Zone territory, would be an unearthed tomb wherein the occupant had drunk the wine. Lots of questions there.

Perhaps making a stronger case for OTBN are the bottles found that were not intended for the dead on their journey. There are those intended for the journeys of the living. The bottles found on the Titanic should no doubt tell us that we have no idea what each day will bring – happiness, trouble, Leonardo DiCaprio, a badly placed iceberg. Then there’s the Heidsieck 1907 champagne bottles, which were on their way to the Russian Tsar in 1916 when they went down with the ship. They were recovered in 1998 and tasted, with 90 years in the cold sea providing a perfect aging environment. (Turns out 80–90 years at the bottom of the Baltic Sea’s constant temperature, total darkness, stable pressure, and minimal oxygen exposure made the environment perfect. When another wine was found ten or so years later in roughly the same pristine condition, it sparked a niche aging process among wine makers). No matter how you cut it, history is chock full of ‘open that bottle’ warnings to enjoy your life and to carpe your diem.

I don’t need these lessons at the moment. This is our first week back teaching after the testing period. My dog is in one of her charmingly random periods of constipation which finds her ready (then not ready) to poop at 2 am. And 3 am. And 5 am. Like someone out of an In Living Color skit in the 1990s, I have five to seventeen jobs depending on the month. It has been dark for four months. Yesterday, when I brought the dog out at 2 am, freezing rain was coming at us sideways – great for a constipated animal. Donald Trump exists.

This Saturday will not be ‘open that bottle night’ in my house. It will be ‘open any bottle night’ in my house.