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Wednesday 23^rd April 2014, the day before the BFT, the day after A Flight of 1966, and the same day as a vertical of Sandeman arranged by Stevens Garnier (busy week), folks gathered in The Bung Hole for 1960 versus 1963.

Shipper	1960	1963
Dow	a [/url]	e
Fonseca	b [/url]	b
Graham	f [/url]	f
Niepoort	h [/url]	h
Noval	g	g [/url]
Sandeman	c [/url]	c
Taylor	d	d [/url]
Warre	a	e [/url]

Links:

• Review of the event as a whole;
• • 1960 (a) and 1963 (e) Dow;
  • 1960 (b) and 1963 (b) Fonseca;
  • 1960 (f) and 1963 (f) Graham;
  • 1960 (h) and 1963 (h) Niepoort;
  • 1960 (g) and 1963 (g) Quinta do Noval;
  • 1960 (c) and 1963 (c) Sandeman;
  • 1960 (d) and 1963 (d) Taylor;
  • 1960 (a) and 1963 (e) Warre;
• Placemats (and parameters by which made);
• Planning and arrangements.

What a wonderful showing of port. Doff of hat to Tom for pulling so many great bottles. I am sure the relevant data will be posted in due course, but it was a close run thing, 60s narrowly shading 63s 301.5 to 274.5. I was very drunk by the finish.

Hi,

sadly I could not attend in person but had a lot of fun last night trying my way round. My WOTN was C italic which I believed was Ni60. Second best i saw E roman which I believed was F63 followed by D italic which i believed was an S60.
Generally all ports except H roman were very nice. Also I will going fwd based on this experience delay my voting on any port since after having gone through 3 times the line up quite a bit was changed on the way. So sorry I may become a little bit like AHB the 2nd!
For completness my guessing:

A roman -> W60
A italic -> W63
B roman -> T63
B italic -> T60
C roman -> Ni63
C italic -> Ni60
D roman -> S63
D italic -> S60
E roman -> F63
E italic -> F60
F roman -> N63
F italic -> N60
G roman -> D60
G italic -> D63
H roman -> G63
H italic -> G60

regards

WS1

Please could somebody who knows post what was what.

I think this was the line-up (note that the As and Es are not matching shippers, which was how it was revealed on the night):

A roman -> W60
A italic -> D60
B roman -> F63
B italic -> F60
C roman -> S63
C italic -> S60
D roman -> T60
D italic -> T63
E roman -> D63
E italic -> W63
F roman -> G63
F italic -> G60
G roman -> N60
G italic -> N63
H roman -> Ni63
H italic -> Ni60

Post edited to correct a mistake in the list

We can try and unpick the matching error potentially. I think there are only 2 possibilities:

• the cards were on the correct bottles but the carded bottles were then paired up incorrectly;
• the true bottles were paired OK but cards got muddled up going onto the bottles.

My theory is that the cards got muddled on A italic and E italic, and should be swapped, meaning that what we tasted as A italic was actually the W63 and what we tasted as E italic was D60. I'm basing this on the fact that I felt the As were similar and the Es were similar. Probably best to wait until a few have posted tasting notes.

flash_uk wrote:I think this was the line-up (note that the As and Es are not matching shippers, which was how it was revealed on the night):

A roman -> W60
A italic -> D60
B roman -> F63
B italic -> F60
C roman -> S63
C italic -> S60
D roman -> T63
D italic -> T60
E roman -> D63
E italic -> W63
F roman -> G63
F italic -> G60
G roman -> N60
G italic -> N63
H roman -> Ni63
H italic -> Ni60

This is correct according to my notes, save i had D roman as T60 and D italic as T63.

I don't particularly follow your next post - A roman was indeed W60 and A italic was D60 due to a simple error in the blinding process by an individual who will remain nameless on the public forum but who admitted it to all on the night! The error was corrected for the sample set that WS1 and Kevin received (with their A pairing being the Warre 60 and 63 and their E pairing being the Dow 63 and 60).

Due to the mis-pairing, the relative 60-63 scores that were initially taken for each pairing were unfortunately compromised. But there were some interesting scores from the WOTN voting (ex-scores from WS1 and Kevin). Scoring was the usual 6 point system (with no more than 3 points per port no less than 0.5 point per port), and there were 12 voters (max of 36 points per port).

WOTN:
1) F63 - 14 pts
2) Ni60 - 12.5 pts
3) N60 - 9.5 pts
4) W60 - 8 pts
5) N63 - 7 pts
6) D63 - 5 pts
7=) S60 - 4 pts
7=) S63 - 4pts
9=) D60 - 2 pts
9=) T63 - 2 pts
9=) W63 - 2 pts
9=) G63 - 2 pts
NR: F60, T60, G60, Ni63

Shipper of the Night
1) Noval - 16.5 pts
2) Fonseca - 14 pts
3) Niepoort - 12.5 pts
4) Warre - 10 pts
5) Sandeman - 8 pts
6) Dow - 7 pts
7=) Taylor - 2 pts
7=) Graham - 2 pts

Vintage of the Night
1960 - 36 pts
1973 - 36 pts

RAYC wrote:......

Vintage of the Night
1960 - 36 pts
1973 - 36 pts

It is 1963 or ?

Wow! So with both vintages being at 36pts does this mean the crunch match tasting ended in a draw? I can only say based on the 3 times Kevin and I went through the line up the difference between 60 and 63 is fairly marginal these days. The 63s have a tendency to be a bit longer in the finish but only just (in my personal opinion). Other than that it must also be said most 60s have held together better than their 63 counterparts!

regards

WS1

RAYC wrote:This is correct according to my notes, save i had D roman as T60 and D italic as T63.)

Ah yes, I misread my notes. I will correct this in the post above.

RAYC wrote:I don't particularly follow your next post - A roman was indeed W60 and A italic was D60 due to a simple error in the blinding process by an individual who will remain nameless on the public forum but who admitted it to all on the night! The error was corrected for the sample set that WS1 and Kevin received (with their A pairing being the Warre 60 and 63 and their E pairing being the Dow 63 and 60)

In that case, the first option I suggested is the case: "the cards were on the correct bottles but the carded bottles were then paired up incorrectly". So in fact all bottles had the correct labels, it is simply that two were sitting on the wrong circles on the placemat.

First post amended to add letters. Somebody please check.

Two conclusions.

• Whoever did the mess-up should recuse himself from such activities in the future.

• We should be less ambitious about our ability to self-blind. The more complicated the required self-blinding, the more steps must be done by people acting unsupervised by others, the more likely is a mess-up.

jdaw1 wrote:First post amended to add letters. Somebody please check.

Two conclusions.

• Whoever did the mess-up should recuse himself from such activities in the future.

• We should be less ambitious about our ability to self-blind. The more complicated the required self-blinding, the more steps must be done by people acting unsupervised by others, the more likely is a mess-up.

The self-blinding process was a simple one requiring only two steps, and would have been done in pairs (ie not unsupervised) had lunch not over-run. Whoever did the mess up is not regularly involved in set up of these tastings. But it was not a big deal. Also "roman" and "italic" elicited some comments about why it could not have been 1a 1b, 2a 2b or or something similar.

Pairs of ports poured immediately before first tasting them (while the next pair sat on ice to cool) was amongst the best formats I have experienced, and worked well in this case with 12 portions being self-poured around the table.

jdaw1 wrote:First post amended to add letters. Somebody please check.

In B, c, f and h you have the pairing listed the wrong way round - the 63 was the first port of the pair.

RAYC wrote:In B, c, f and h you have the pairing listed the wrong way round - the 63 was the first port of the pair.

I have checked it against Flash’s amended post, and my list agrees with that. And I’m unsure what you mean by “first port of the pair” — do you mean Roman? In which case Flash’s post is also a mess-up?

RAYC wrote:Pairs of ports poured immediately before first tasting them (while the next pair sat on ice to cool) was amongst the best formats I have experienced, and worked well in this case with 12 portions being self-poured around the table.

That bit does sound good, but is conceptually separate from the blinding arrangements.

RAYC wrote:The self-blinding process was a simple one requiring only two steps, and would have been done in pairs (ie not unsupervised) had lunch not over-run. Whoever did the mess up is not regularly involved in set up of these tastings.

But things do over-run, go wrong, are missing, whatever. The process wasn’t robust to that.

RAYC wrote:But it was not a big deal.

It resulted in people not knowing which of the listed competitors had won, the incorrect understanding being cited by one attendee at his BFT talk.

RAYC wrote:Also "roman" and "italic" elicited some comments about why it could not have been 1a 1b, 2a 2b or or something similar.

A gently done illustration of a supervised process (placemat construction) not being perfect. I smiled.

Most of the TN threads are empty. Please could people post.