Barbara and I had lived in Korea for a year, so exotic Asian cuisine was not new to us, and our regular trips to Paris merely confirmed our attraction to the food. One of our favorite Michelin-starred Parisian restaurants proudly boasted a wine list that consisted almost entirely of the wines of Pomerol.

Barbara and I arrived in San Francisco in May 1970, two years after what was then known as the summer of love. We were returning to the states from Korea, after I had spent 13 months as a guided missile officer assigned to a unit near the Demilitarized Zone.

Over the intervening years, I’ve tasted a lot of wine, some of them as good as that legendary 1959 Ch. Haut-Brion. One that I’m particularly keen on now is the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon ‘Neyers Ranch’, a wine made by our long-time winemaker Tadeo Borchardt.

“A well known French winemaker once told me that he thought all wines should be bottled in magnums. When we opened this bottle recently, I understood just what he meant.”