Dear Wine Girl:
I have a big dinner meeting soon and I was hoping to bring something special. What would you think about a 1970 Lynch Bages? (Here are the tasting notes from the retailer I was thinking of buying the bottle from. It’s $299.) If I brought that to dinner would you be sufficiently impressed?
Signed,
Only dates women with “C” in their titles

For my surprising — and cost-efficient — recommendation, click here:

Dear C-list groupie:
Undoubtedly I would be impressed by the Lynch Bages, which is an older Bordeaux from a very well-respected chateau. But I would not recommend that you bring such an old vintage to an important dinner meeting. If you were attending a tasting among Bordeaux aficionados (or coming over to my house, hint hint) the Lynch Bages would be the perfect selection. But at your Fortune 500 dinner you will be enjoying food, so I would bring a special wine that you are confident will not be over the hill or spoiled, which unfortunately is a risk you run with a bottle with that kind of age on it. That way your associates will be both impressed and well fed and watered.

Why not impress them with a rare bottle of something up and coming and sexy? I was totally blown away the other day by a 2004 Fiddlehead “Seven Twenty-Eight” pinot noir from the Fiddlestix vineyard in Santa Rita Hills, which comes from the hot new pinot spot, and is only made in very limited quantities. (We ordered ours at one of my favorite local restaurants, Absinthe, in half-bottle for about $35. You should be able to hunt down a full bottle for about $40.) Something like that … unless these people are complete Bordeaux snobs, but even then you should splurge on something a bit younger so you can be confident that it’ll be drinking well.