Wine writer aging pretty well himself

Dan is about to turn 40.

Krista tries to be nice and say his graying hair looks “distinguished,” but he knows it no longer qualifies as “salt and pepper.” Instead, it seems shocked with gray. And he is shocked every time he sees it.

And shocked is the word that seems to best sum up the situation for him: shocked that it is happening; shocked that despite everything else in life seeming to roll his way this milestone has happened anyway; shocked that it seemed to have happened so soon.

The ravages of time haven’t ravaged him too badly – at least not yet. Hopefully none of his high school classmates will see this, but his 20-year reunion last year showed that, by comparison to much of the class of ’88, he’s been aging like a fine wine: mostly gracefully, developing a maturity that can only come with time and gaining a refined complexity. Although, to be perfectly honest, like some wines he, too, does show a bit of flabbiness about the middle. And some have argued that his “dumb period” has lasted about, oh, 39 years or so. (In wines, a “dumb period” is a stage aging wines often go through when they just taste terrible. Before that, they’re too young, and afterward they’re sublime. Let’s just say Dan’s still working on becoming sublime.)

The question, then, is whether Dan will be celebrating this birthday or bemoaning it. And the answer is … celebrating.

After all, he does have a lot to celebrate.

He has a wonderful wife and two wonderful kids and two wonderful, if slightly psychotic, dogs. He’s got a wonderful, historic house with a big, delightfully disorganized wine cellar in the basement.

On top of all that, he gets to help Krista write a wine column. What’s to complain about?

There’s something else, too. This summer, his favorite college rock band got together for a reunion concert, and in the midst of all the reminiscing and “boy, this really takes me back,” he realized that if he had a choice between his life 15 years ago and his life now, he would choose now.

Not that he would change anything, not that he wouldn’t do it all over again, but because it is better to be old.

There, he said it.

It’s better to have seen the things he has seen, been through the things he’s been through, experienced the things he’s experienced. The whole rotten lot of it. The good, the bad and the ugly have made for an incredible ride and one he wouldn’t give up even for his youth.

If nothing else, think of the wines he’s had: when we drank our way across Rome; when we tasted our way across northeast Ohio; when we tasted our way through every winery in the Traverse City, Mich., area (note: before kids, and there were fewer wineries then); the wines celebrating the births of our children; the sparkling wine at our wedding reception; the 30-year-old dessert wine he bought Krista for her 30th birthday; and hundreds, if not thousands of others over the years. And then there’s the special one that will be consumed soon – a 40-year-old port that Krista bought him to celebrate this milestone.

Those experiences can’t be replaced. They can’t be bought. And although they come with the price of age, they are a worth it many times over.

There’s no telling what the next four decades will bring, but rest assured that Dan will be raising a wine glass in toast to them and saying, “Bring it on!”

Cheers!