Six or seven or so years ago the founders of the hibernating Naughton Dining Club outdid themselves on birthday presents. We found bottles from birth years - brilliant bottles from some of the greatest names in the wine world - Krug, Dom Perignon, Pol Roger, Chateau Palmer & Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou. Sadly, not all of us were born in brilliant years, and our knowledge of vintage gems was not as encyclopaedic as it is now. All but one of the bottles has been opened now. Memories of my '76 Dom Perignon are still fresh and fizzy in my head. The pen-ultimate bottle, the Palmer '73, was cracked open New Year's Day.

Rusty on the eyes, stewed on the nose.

The palate is aged, pleasant but no great thing. It's tired, but charming.

It's probably only one star to be honest, but it brought on such a tempest of chat and reminiscence - when we all started off in the trade, those first days of discovering fine wine and the blistering enthusiasm we sought to learn everything we could. To score it only one star would be criminal. A bottle of wine is no more just about how it smells and tastes than it is just fermented grape juice.

Tasted 1/1/09 at Naughton