A primer for Open That Bottle Night

If you plan to participate on Feb. 23, here is a mixed case of advice:

1. Choose the setting. We usually celebrate OTBN alone because we enjoy discussing the very special, intimate memories that the bottles offer. But many people have dinner parties and others take their bottles to restaurants that allow BYOB (and some restaurants have special OTBN promotions; if you know one that does, drop us a note). It's time to start planning.

2. Select the bottle. A huge part of the fun for us is choosing the bottle, pulling out these revered wines and remembering when, where and why we bought them. Each has a story. The point is not to show off with a great bottle or necessarily open the most prestigious bottle in the house, but to uncork a wine that holds cherished memories, the bottle that -- admit it -- you will never open otherwise. This is one case where it really is all about you, what the wine means to you, and not necessarily about its taste. We sometimes hear from people who don't have a bottle that they've been meaning to open. In that case, we'd urge you to buy a bottle of wine that has special significance for you, but that you don't often drink.

3. Stand it up. If you are going to open an older bottle, stand it up (away from light and heat, of course) for a few days before you plan to open it -- say, on Wednesday. This will allow the sediment, if there is some, to sink to the bottom of the bottle.

4. Beware of the temperature. Both reds and whites are often better somewhere closer to cellar temperature (around 55 degrees) than today's room temperature. Don't overchill the white, and think about putting the red in the refrigerator for an hour or two before opening it if you've been keeping it in a warm house.

5. Practice your technique. With an older bottle, the cork may break easily. The best opener for a cork like that is one with two prongs, but it requires some skill. You have time to practice using one. Be prepared for the possibility that a fragile cork may fall apart with a regular corkscrew. If that happens, have a carafe and a coffee filter handy. Just pour enough through the coffee filter to catch the cork's fragments.

6. Otherwise, do not decant. We're assuming these are old and fragile wines. Air could quickly dispel what's left of them. If the wine does need to breathe, you should have plenty of time for that to happen as you drink it throughout the evening.

7. Have a backup wine ready. You don't want to ruin a special meal, just in case your old wine really has gone bad.

8. Share. If you are having an OTBN party, ask everyone to say a few words about the significance of the wine they brought. This really is what OTBN is all about.

9. Serve dinner. Open the wine and immediately take a sip. If it's truly, irretrievably bad -- we mean vinegar -- you will know it right away. But even if the wine doesn't taste good at first, don't rush to the sink to pour it out. Every year, we hear from people who were amazed how a wine became more delicious as the night wore on. Is it the air changing the wine or the company changing the mood? Who cares?

10. Enjoy the wine for what it is, not what it might someday be or might once have been. This is critical. We know that many OTBN wines are old and tired, but this isn't about delicious wine, ultimately, but about delicious memories.

11. Let us know. Drop us a note at wine@wsj.com about your evening. Be sure to include your name, city and phone number, in case we need to contact you so that we can share your account with other readers.

12. See us online. This year, for the first time, OTBN will be featured at wsj.com, on the new Food and Drink page. You can check in -- and, we hope, contribute -- at wsj.com/otbn. Take a look.