Cellaring

I attended a little Christmas function yesterday evening, in the hopes of getting a) free booze, b) free food and c) a chance to discuss the preparations for the 2005 teaching program with some of the academics.

Unfortunately the booze was being supplied by the Head of School, and he was running about an hour late. After three quarters of an hour I was getting desperate, so when the 6th Year Coordinator mentioned that he had a bottle of wine in his office, I bid him fetch it with all speed.

It turned out to be a '93 Cabernet Shiraz that had been sitting in the corner when he moved into the office in 1995, and hadn't been shifted since. It hadn't been stored on its side, and the climate control in the office isn't the best, so there were no surprises in its roughness. But it was drinkable.

Or at least it was to my palate. While I was pouring the contents of my glass down my booze hole, one of the vascular surgeons was swirling it in his glass, sniffing at it with a slightly worried frown then, after sipping it, giving it the same unimpressed stare he gives to the suturing efforts of particularly incompetent 4th Years.