Wine Advisor Stories: A Golden Goodbye

A Golden Goodbye
A Gift to Capture 25 Years of California

Best friends James and Alex had met on a hiking trail just north of Big Sur. James, a brand-new California transplant from the East Coast, had taken a wrong turn on his first solo hike. Alex offered him a granola bar and to guide him back to the ridge. A few miles later, they were talking about everything except wine: jobs, music, college football. Happy to have found a new friend, James invited Alex and his wife to dinner the next week to thank him for the assist on the trail.

It was only a few minutes after they arrived for dinner that the doorbell unexpectedly rang again.

James looked embarrassed. “Sorry, I think that’s the movers. They said they might drop off a few boxes tonight, but I didn’t think they’d actually show.”

Alex waved it off. “No problem.”

But when the door opened, it was actually the movers James had hired to ship his wine collection cross-country. Case after case came through the door, each labeled with vintages, vineyards, and regions that made Alex’s eyebrows shoot up.

“You collect?”

James smiled, a little sheepishly. “More like…I’ve been building something over time.”

Alex stepped forward, reading the side of a wooden crate. “Wait…is this a vertical of Monte Bello?”

They never stopped talking about wine after that.

So when James was offered a promotion he couldn’t pass up (one that would bring him back East), Alex wanted to send him off with something that mattered.

He called us.

“We’ve shared some incredible bottles over the years,” he said. “But I want to give him something that speaks to his 25 years in California and reminds him that I’ve got the next glass waiting for him when he visits.”

Together, we curated a gift worthy of the moment: three exceptional bottles each tied to a memory, a milestone, or a shared experience.

• A rare vintage from an impossible-to-get-into Sonoma winery they were lucky to visit together.
• A 100-Point Napa Cab from from the vintage they met. We had to go to an auction in L.A. to get it for him!
• A Meritage blend that no self-respecting wine lover would open for at least another 25 years.

While we hunted for the perfect bottles, Alex worked with a local carpenter to craft a custom wooden box, engraved with the approximate coordinates of the Big Sur trail where their friendship began: 36.2704° N, 121.8081° W.

When James opened the gift at his going-away party, he didn’t say a word. He just turned to Alex, lifted his glass, and nodded.

It was everything a great gift should be: personal, rare, and impossible to forget.