Dear all,
As ever, a rather tardy note from me, to echo the round of thanks to Alex for a fab evening, wonderful ports, cheeses and a triffic barbecue too. I have a few photos but no idea how to upload them - any advice would be appreciated (assuming you'd like to see, for instance, how we got the best bit of a cow on the barbecue in one piece).
The ports had two notable things in common, which would not be expected from such a range of ages. Firstly, as Ben commented, they had a remarkable consistency of colour, with the youngsters (if we can call a port only a year younger than me a youngster) a similar pale brown to the more expected colour of their aged cousins. The other thing was the lack of much fruitiness. I'm a big fan of the knock-out fruit punch of a Fonseca or Taylor, but they bore the same sweet caramel features of the old Cockburn. A couple of the ports had a bit of a stale aroma, but none tasted at all unpleasant. You'd have been perfectly happy to drink any of them, and I was more than delighted to tuck into all of them!!
As mentioned, it was a blind tasting, and I take great pride in having correctly identified a 63 and a 58, though I got the shippers wrong. What is a tiddly bit less impressive is my call on the Cockburn 27, which I put down as a Taylor 70. We didn't compare predictions in total, but I'm fairly happy that no-one was wronger than me.
If I have a defence, it is that I refer the gentle reader to the previous paragraph, and the fact that none of the ports looked or tasted young, and the 27 was the one I had left to assign when I only had a 70 left with which to match it. I did guess that the 31 was a 27, so that was quite good, wasn't it? No, you're not going to let me off that mistake, are you?
The prediction thing was quite fun, and I'm sort of happy to know that everyone else was as pants as me, more or less. I suspect that that was more because it was hard to tell, than because I'm up there with Derek and Alex and Tom as tasting masters, but I can pretend.
Here's what might be most interesting - the things I'll remember from the evening:
1. Leaky port seems to lose its fruitiness and dark colour, and drift more towards caramelly brownness;
2. Leaky port is (on the basis of this tasting) generally a very pleasant drink, but not necessarily the one you might expect;
3. If you're barbecuing a fillet steak, why not do it in one piece and keep the tenderness in, until you cut it to serve?;
4. Old Croft typically has a flavour of mandarins (case in point - the Warre 58: "oh yes, definitely oranges - that's a Croft" said the experts!);
5. Taylor ports should be recognised by a flavour of violets, and Vargellas is foreign-speak for violets (never knew that!).
I remembered these last two points because I'm trying really hard to get the hang of the characteristic notes of the different shippers (hence my separate urge to organise a 'who is the best shipper' tasting). I wonder whether I might try to convene an informal get together to sample the quintessence of the shippers - so, for example, if Taylor is demonstrated by violets, who has some Taylor ports from a particular case where they've already had more than one bottle and they each particularly showed violetiness? If this may be a runner, I'm sure someone will help me by budding this off into another train.
Finally, for those of us who love our cheeses, what a delight to have Waterloo and Wigmore on the same plate! And What Trouble did I get in the next evening from the missus, for not taking her a little bit of each back?! After a couple of defeats in the last two face-offs, I think the Waterloo had it at Alex's, with a fantastic colour and consistency of rich custard, and a deep flavour of wonderful soft cheese. There were some other lovely cheeses there too, but the Waterloo was King.
Right, enough from me, surely. Alex, thank-you again. Everyone, I hope to see you soon.
Ghandih