Real Men Drink Port

[Alex Bridgeman]

On Friday, three of us attended the launch party of Ben Howkin's latest book Real Men Drink Port, held in the cellars below Berry Brothers & Rudd. We also used this as an excuse to have dinner at The Crusting Pipe - which was extremely busy with every table having been booked for at least part of the evening!

Ben very kindly provided a case of Croft 1977 from his own cellar to share with those attending the launch. Uncle Tom and Rob also provided bottles of Niepoort 1968 colheita, a magnificent Sandeman 1970 and a Vesuvio 1991 for the post-launch drinking. I clearly owe these splendid gentlemen some return hospitality.

[RAYC]

A good fun launch with a very interesting speech by Ben Howkins, and we did our best to taste our way through a "single case horizontal" of the Croft 77 kindly provided by Ben (purely for research-purposes and in the interests of furtherance of port-knowledge, of course!).

Clearly i am not a real man as i was already slightly wobbly on leaving BBR. TCP finished me off, and for the second time in a week i ended up under the table. JacobH joined us late-on, i believe, but even the vegetarian tasting platter with beetroot-flavour hummus could not save me!

I enjoyed the Niepoort 68 colheita immensely and was suprised by the youthfulness of the the Sandeman 70. The Vesuvio 91 was good, but for current drinking purposes i did not derive as much pleasure from the other two.

AHB did not mention a bottle of 1961 Lynch Bages brought along by Tom, which really would have made for very distinguished post-launch drinking but which was, alas, sadly shot and completely undrinkable.

The Croft 77 sparked an interesting debate as to what case you would choose to provide for your own book launch...i think we came to the conclusion that it was a good choice - with the big name/big vintage cache that is likely to impress, it being mature enough to stand pop and pour style drinking, and not being too OTT in terms of cost.

[Alex Bridgeman]

AHB did not mention a bottle of 1961 Lynch Bages brought along by Tom, which really would have made for very distinguished post-launch drinking but which was, alas, sadly shot and completely undrinkable.

I had forgotten that! It was opened with great excitement, and decanted with mounting disappointment, being the colour and texture of liquidised french onion soup. The cork was covered in black slime and was totally unreadable.

The Croft 77 sparked an interesting debate as to what case you would choose to provide for your own book launch...i think we came to the conclusion that it was a good choice - with the big name/big vintage cache that is likely to impress, it being mature enough to stand pop and pour style drinking, and not being too OTT in terms of cost.

I think I came to the conclusion that mine would have had to have been the Churchill 1985, that being one of the few ports that I have in multiple case quantities and which was likely to show well. If, for any reason, I couldn't have used the Ch85 I think sheer number of bottles required would have forced me to offer Croft 2004 LBV in halves! At least they could have been served by taking the stoppers out of the bottles, putting a straw and a little umbrella in the neck of the bottle and allowing punters to walk around the room sipping away at their own port straw. Can't be that bad a thought - didn't Sophia Coppola do something similar with Champagne?