Open That Bottle Night Date in the current year: February 24, 2024

Open That Bottle Night was created by Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher, a wife and husband duo of American journalists, authors, and wine critics, who used to jointly write the wine column for The Wall Street Journal. They launched it in 2000 by urging their readers to open a symbolically important bottle of wine and then share the story behind the bottle. Although Gaiter and Brecher haven’t been writing for The Wall Street Journal since 2009, the holiday they came up with lives on.

The point of Open That Bottle Night is to remind people that wine is more than just a beverage; it helps us create good memories with our friends and family. This is why you don’t have to drink your most expensive wine; you’re supposed to open a bottle that has a special meaning to you. Maybe you purchased it in a special place, maybe it was a gift from a special person, maybe it reminds you of your first date with your partner or another important event in your life, maybe it’s from the country you’ve wanted to visit for a long time, etc.

You can celebrate the holiday by yourself, have a romantic dinner with your significant other, or invite your friends over for an Open That Bottle Night party, where everyone is expected to bring a bottle of wine that they consider special and share it with friends. Remember that good wine is meant to be consumed, but great wine is meant to be shared with the people you love, so even though it is perfectly okay to walk down the memory lane alone while enjoying some good wine, it’s much better to cherish a special bottle with your friends and family and make new memories together.

If you don’t have any special bottles saved, this is not an excuse to skip the celebration. You can buy wine that brings out good memories or, example, a bottle of wine from the country you want to visit, go out to a restaurant or a wine bar, attend a wine tasting event, read Love by the Glass: Tasting Notes from a Marriage or Wine for Every Day and Every Occasion by Gaiter and Brecher, or watch a movie about wine and vineyards, for example, A Good Year, A Walk in the Clouds, French Kiss, Sideways, or The Secret of Santa Vittoria. And don’t forget to post about the holiday on social media with the hashtag #OpenThatBottleNight.

And one more thing before you close this article and go open that bottle. With older bottles, there’s always the risk that the wine has gone bad, especially if you don’t have a proper wine cellar, a wine fridge, or a temperature-controlled wine cabinet (and most of us don’t). So we recommend that you buy a backup bottle that you can open in case the bottle you’ve been saving has indeed gone bad. And if it hasn’t, you’ll have a bottle of wine for the next Open That Bottle Day, isn’t it great?