Couples that order a wedding wine from us reorder, in a pattern we did not anticipate but now plan around, at approximately year five. Not year one, when the bottle of the original wedding wine is still in the cellar and the date feels fresh. Not year three, when there are still bottles. Year five. The original cellar has run down to a single bottle they are saving. They order the same label, with the new vintage stamped on the back.
Two years later, year seven, the second case is also running down. They reorder again. By year ten, the family has had ten consecutive vintages of the same label sitting in the cellar, in some kind of rolling stock. By year fifteen, the first child is old enough to understand that this, pointing at the rack, is the family wine, and that there has been a bottle of it on the table every Sunday since before they were born.
We did not write the program to do this. The program is two cases of custom-labeled estate wine. The pattern emerged because it turns out that the right wine, ordered annually, with a stable visual identity, becomes, without anyone deciding it should, the household's marker wine. The wedding bottle does not retire. It quietly takes the seat at the head of the table and does not get up.