charliejulietwhiskey, I would rather fly with you than an 'old hand' that hasn't flown for the Winter anyday.
On the whole, I find that currency is more important than total experience. It's a close call (obviously total time being conductive to total experience), but in general, I've felt totally safe with somebody who is relatively inexperienced but has done a lot of recent flying and is very self critical.
Some of the moments during which my pants became most brown occurred when I was sat next to one of your 'old hands', with whom complacency had obviously set in and regular items were being forgotten until prompted by myself. Flaring at 20 feet, speed to 50 kts on final (PA28), flaps staying down until climbing past 3,000 feet, no regular checks (FREDA etc), the list goes on.
We're all guilty of forgetting, and leaving things a little late sometimes, but it's easy to identify the ones with further 'issues' that need addressing.