My 88 year-old dad isn’t a hoarder in the reality TV/objects piled in the hallways, sense of the word. However, his track record with food and drink is on that spectrum. He’s one of those people who won’t throw out that last bite of something, even though it’s destined for a fuzzy fate in the back of the fridge until someone discovers it during a compulsory cleanout. He says he’s a fan of leftovers, but I have never witnessed that they get eaten. My friend Jason once remarked that my parents have “grandcheese”. In 2005, when they made the major move back to full time New York City apartment living from a house in Connecticut, Reagan era (now mostly thawed) frozen chicken and fish stock was in one of the boxes I unpacked, prompting me to quote one of my favorite lines from the 1990s TV series Mad About You: “It’s a freezer, not a scrapbook!” 

When guests come to dinner at their place, the food is fresh (as far as I know, and I have good intel). However, the wine is another matter. My dad bought a lot of wine—mostly Bordeaux, but also some Burgundy, Rhone, Tuscan, Northern Italian, Napa, German, and Austrian—in the 1980s and 1990s that he stored, but mostly didn’t open until the last decade or so. Whenever he uncorks one now, it’s a game of bottle roulette. His latest bet was on the last remaining bottle of Châteaux Margaux 1981.