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The crew gathered on Tuesday 4 June 2013 at the Bunghole to open up some bottles and bid farewell to CRS and RJS in the appropriate manner before they head back down under. Some fine ports and wines were opened. As well as a couple of duds!

• Review of the evening as a whole
• 1959 Niepoort Colheita
• 1960 believed Sandeman
• 1970 Dalva
• 1970 Cockburn
• 1970 Fonseca
• 1970 Berry's own selection
• 1970 Niepoort
• 1977 Delaforce
• 1985 Warre
• 2011 Quevedo
• 2004 Noon Solaire
• 2004 Noon VP
• Organisation thread
• Placemats

What a fantastic evening!

Four bottles i thought were really superb:

- surprise of the evening was a quite outstanding Cockburn 70 that was probably a good 3 or 4 points above any other Ck70 i have ever had. just wow.

- another bottle of F70 to convince me where the 2013 Christmas bonus will be spent!

- I was pleased the Niepoort 70 lived up to its reputation, and look forward to seeing a pic of the lamp that RJS intends to make with the bottle.

- English-bottled 60s really can be very good.

I would love to come back to the Quevedo 11 with a fresh palate as it seemed extremely promising, but leaving it until last amidst a bunch of 1970s made it difficult for me to assess. That won't stop me trying to secure some to buy in the meantime!

Otherwise i really enjoyed the 59 Colheita (which seemed to gain in excitement and complexity through the evening), the Df77 and W85 both provided much pleasure and the pair of Noons (one fortified, one dry - from the same vineyard in the same year) were fascinating to try alongside each other.

Bon voyage Griff & RJS!

RAYC wrote:What a fantastic evening!

Indeed! However me falling asleep on the train and needing a cab home from Northampton was really not needed and spoiled the morning a bit!

regards

WS1

I have successfully reactivated my account after a change in email! Phew. Now that I can speak again, may I say that this was a most wonderful night with glorious ports. Sadly my affliction was to leave my tasting notes and score sheets at TBH. However I have photos of the score sheet at least and I shall attempt to post soon. The 1970 Niepoort was the star of the show for me and most others but there were a trio of 1970's that were most excellent. Having said that the most pleasing thing was there were vanishingly few ports that I wouldn't want to imbibe that night. Thank you chaps for a wonderful sendoff! The 1970 Niepoort dumpy bottle made it safely to Sydney and is currently awaiting its transformation into an enlightening device.

griff wrote:Sadly my affliction was to leave my tasting notes and score sheets at TBH.

Hehe, of course none of the rest of us have ever done that...

ws1 wrote:However me falling asleep on the train and needing a cab home

Oops - haven't done that one yet...

It was a very good evening, in particular the mini-70-vertical which had three ports (Ni,F,Ck) which showed tremendously and were absolutely delicious, and two total duffers (W,Da - the latter being my contribution hey ho, sorry); In addition the Ni59 colheita provided by Griff was also very tasty. I had to make a relatively early exit, but was happy to have been able to be there to see Griff and RJS off and hope that their travels all go as smoothly as possible.

I've finally caught up with my notes after having completed my 2011 extended review and posted my thoughts from our farewell to Mr & Mrs Griff. It was a tremendous evening with some really impressive ports. By pure coincidence we ended up with a terrific mini-horizontal of the 1970 vintage.

It was great to have the chance to say farewell (for now) the proper TPF way. Hopefully Australia will be as full of port and company as was the UK.

Not so full of port (although I did pick up a 1944 Royal Oporto colheita last week) but plenty of fortifieds. Lamp production still in progress.

cheers

Carl