Perhaps 18 months or so ago I had a thought: For my 30th birthday, I wanted to serve wines from my birth year. But where to get 30 year old wine? Certainly not something I could easily procure from a local wine shop. Good thing the internet answers all questions and brought me to Wine Bid. Now, I must admit to being skeptical. Buying wines, at auction from random people’s cellars didn’t exactly seem like the best way to purchase to me, but I gave it a shot and now that we’ve tasted those wines, I must say I’m thrilled.
Wine Bid described the condition of each bottle you could bid on, fill level, seepage, condition of the label, cellar conditions it was removed from, etc. Over the course of a year I won auctions for 6 bottles of wine from various CA wineries. We opened them all this past Saturday to share with friends and family at my birthday party and I am happy to report that there wasn’t a single corked bottle in the lot! And in fact, some of them were downright good, 30 years having treated them well.
If you are looking for something fun and a little different for your next big birthday, anniversary, or whatever celebration, I highly recommend trying to hunt down wines from the important year. Everyone had a lot of fun with it and not many people have the opportunity to taste multiple 30-year old wines side-by-side, so it was a different experience for them.
This one with the retro orange label was the best in the bunch. Seemed like it still had years ahead of it to me. Great color, nose, and palate. Some of the others had aged a bit past their potential, but this one shone.
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Wannabe Wino Wine Blog 
Fantastic information. Never heard of this site but will definitely check it out!
A Happy Belated Birthday!
I love it! For my 30th (almost 2 years ago) we bought and drank a 1978 Chateau Haut Brion to celebrate. It was just hubby and I so 1 bottle of my 30 year old wine was enough. We did it 3 years earlier for his b-day too. That time a 1975 Chateau Lafite Rothchild. We bought both bottles on Wine Bid and both were in great condition. Such a fun experience.