ThePortForum.com

Vintage Oddities at 30: NYC Nov 14 2010
Tasting Review
1975 Ferreira Vintage Port
1983 Niepoort Vintage Port
1984 Dow's Quinta do Bomfim Vintage Port
Organization
Placemats

When: November 14, 2010, 6pm.
Where: Beacon Restaurant, 25 West 56th Street, New York, NY 10019 (Reservation made)*.
Attendees (5): SushiNorth, g-man+1, dolcetours+1 (please respond asap so i can make us a reservation)

Theme:
[*] Option1: 1983 (with surprises welcome)
[*] Option2: Unusual Eighties

Wines TBD

* The restaurant makes a point that it's dresscode is "smart casual"




----------------Orig below ------------------
There will be a tasting in NY on Sat Nov 13.

Y is away on business, I haven't had enough port recently, and it's mid Nov.
Theme & Location suggestions please?

How about a Magnum party and divide the cost difference so there is not too much port?

i like it!

okay what magnums are we going to get?

http://www.malloysfinest.com/sku33134.html
83 smith woodhouse

http://www.klwines.com/detail.asp?sku=1 ... nesearcher
83 grahams

http://www.beekmanwine.com/
85 warres

http://www.chambersstwines.com/
85 grahams

I'm not sure i see the point of a magnum party...
80's are far too young for them (they age more slowly than regular bottles) and we've only got four people interested in attending. That's about 2 mags.

with full bottles, we get to taste 4-5 bottles, with half-bottles, 8-9.

the 83s were kinda weak and drinking well now

why not he SW and the Grahams with some steaks.

g-man wrote:the 83s were kinda weak and drinking well now

why not he SW and the Grahams with some steaks.

Well, an alternative might be 83's and steaks. I have plenty of SW83 750 bottles, at about 1/4 the price of that mag, but i ALSO have an 83 Niepoort that i've been waiting to open...

83 party sounds good.

Price of admission is to have a mullet.

g-man wrote:Price of admission is to have a mullet

, legwarmers, a skinny tie, or skinny jeans. (or all of the above)

Yes, for Nov 13. My husband is definitely interested, and I might come too, if I don’t go to the American Wine Society conference that weekend in Cincinnati.

Meanwhile, on other subjects you raised:

I have a half bottle of 2007 Taylor in the cellar, but that’s it. Beyond that, we’d have to go shopping.

For ideas for the future:
Do you ever do tawnies? Personally, I’d love a survey of 20 Year Olds, my favorite (affordable) category.

And how about something that looks at the new generation of Port houses that emerged upstream following the 1986 change in regulations? Places like Quinta do Tedo, our friend Quevedo, Body + Soul, Passadouro, and others? (If we can’t find their Ports in NYC, perhaps Claudio and I could pick up a mixed case when we’re on tour in Oporto next spring and everyone attending that session could chip to pay for the wine & shipping.)

Finally, for the Dow tasting, I’m willing to host in the late winter ”“ say, the latter half of February (after a flurry of writing deadlines settles down). I have a Brooklyn brownstone apartment, so the most we can host is 11 or 12, including me and Claudio. But I don’t know if that’s too small for this Port group, not having attended anything yet!

Hi! Welcome!!! So happy to have more port tasters in NY.

dolcetours wrote:Yes, for Nov 13. My husband is definitely interested, and I might come too, if I don’t go to the American Wine Society conference that weekend in Cincinnati.
I have a half bottle of 2007 Taylor in the cellar, but that’s it. Beyond that, we’d have to go shopping.

Generally the way we do the tastings, we split the cost of the wines by everyone bringing a relatively comparable bottle. Now, in situations where folks don't have a bottle, they contact someone else coming who has announced they have multiple bottles in the category, and the two do some kind of private arrangement ("adopt a bottle"). 1983 is an undervalued and readily available vintage, and if we go with it I suspect our crew has an extra bottle you can adopt

dolcetours wrote: I have a half bottle of 2007 Taylor in the cellar.

My ears have perked up! Did you see the 2007 half bottle tasting that differentdave was planning? I'm looking forward to that tasting, it'll be an opportunity for us to evaluate the vintage (inexpensively) so we can do some 2007 purchasing in a couple years (when the prices level out). I'm going to try to get myself a Fonseca2007 for it

dolcetours wrote: For ideas for the future:
Do you ever do tawnies? Personally, I’d love a survey of 20 Year Olds, my favorite (affordable) category.

We did a 20 year tawny tasting a year or so back, g-man led the charge on it and it was a lot of fun. I'm sure we'll do another in due time. As for it being affordable... It is, but personally I like VP over tawny (with few exceptions), and I keep my eyes open for exceptional VP deals. g-man and I found a silly pricing for some Croft 2000 (like, $24/bottle) and bought up 2 cases of the juice

dolcetours wrote: And how about something that looks at the new generation of Port houses that emerged upstream following the 1986 change in regulations? Places like Quinta do Tedo, our friend Quevedo, Body + Soul, Passadouro, and others? (If we can’t find their Ports in NYC, perhaps Claudio and I could pick up a mixed case when we’re on tour in Oporto next spring and everyone attending that session could chip to pay for the wine & shipping.)

That's a good idea. I'd like us to get back up to 6 tastings per year, and having a theme makes it more interesting. Shall we put that on the calendar for Apr2011?

dolcetours wrote: Finally, for the Dow tasting, I’m willing to host in the late winter ”“ say, the latter half of February (after a flurry of writing deadlines settles down). I have a Brooklyn brownstone apartment, so the most we can host is 11 or 12, including me and Claudio. But I don’t know if that’s too small for this Port group, not having attended anything yet!

For a big tasting like the Dow tasting, we generally get 10-14 people. 14 is the absolute maximum, as beyond that, there's not enough pours in the bottle The tasting is a little different from most as we've sourced most of the bottles already. We're probably going to just split the cost evenly amongst all participants. We will need a place to host it, so thank you for your offer, and we should talk more about the logistics. First, though, let's get you two to a tasting

Thanks for all that feedback! I'm en route from Italy-->NY this weekend, so I'll get back to you when I have a moment to digest it all more fully.

Any news on the Noc 13 tasting? I've decided to stay in town, and both my hubby and I are interested.

Yes,

Let's get this started,

Theme the 1982/83 vintage.

Location: TBD, we would need to find a location that might work for everyone and allow us time to run an actual tasting.

Drinkers:
g-man
sushinorth
dolcetours + 1
Tbird? - i think he may be away on vacation.

acutally

anyone care to repeat the london's are we wasting our money tasting?

can source some lbv's very easily.

As it turns out, my husband won't be back in the US until the day AFTER the tasting. So if it's on Nov. 13, it would be just me.

If we can postpone it to the following Saturday (Nov 20), Claudio could come.

More importantly, I could host it on Nov. 20, which wouldn't be possible on Nov. 13. I'm in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Is that convenient to everyone else? Of course, I'm assuming that you're looking to have this at someone's home, as opposed to a restaurant, but I could be wrong... I'm a newbie.

pat

dolcetours wrote:As it turns out, my husband won't be back in the US until the day AFTER the tasting. So if it's on Nov. 13, it would be just me.

If we can postpone it to the following Saturday (Nov 20), Claudio could come.

More importantly, I could host it on Nov. 20, which wouldn't be possible on Nov. 13. I'm in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Is that convenient to everyone else? Of course, I'm assuming that you're looking to have this at someone's home, as opposed to a restaurant, but I could be wrong... I'm a newbie.

pat

that does sound liek a plan

g-man wrote:

dolcetours wrote:As it turns out, my husband won't be back in the US until the day AFTER the tasting. So if it's on Nov. 13, it would be just me.
If we can postpone it to the following Saturday (Nov 20), Claudio could come.

that does sound liek a plan

I've no problem holding a second tasting, but i'd really like to hold a tasting on this particular weekend. I've done some searching for BYO $0 corkage locations (as the scene has changed a little since the last tasting)

As always, small places like La Sirene are still available, but they don't like us showing up on fri/sat for 2.5 hrs.
Here are a few other such places:
Antibes
A Cafe & Wine Room
Tartine

There's also Petite Crevette out in Carol Gardens.

Now, a different option is that Beacon Restaurant offers a BYO on Sundays. It's a bigger place, with foods that match nicely with Port. I've never been there, but Yelp likes it.

If we'd like to do a tasting soon there-after, we could certainly spin that off into a different thread and start planning in parallel.
Thoughts?

I'll go with the flow. I don't know the places you mention, except for Tartine, which is SMALL! So I'm not surprised they don't want people occupying a table that long on a weekend night.

How many people are actually interested in doing this? I feel like a voice in the wilderness.

pt

dolcetours wrote:I'll go with the flow. I don't know the places you mention, except for Tartine, which is SMALL! So I'm not surprised they don't want people occupying a table that long on a weekend night.

How many people are actually interested in doing this? I feel like a voice in the wilderness.

pt

we can do it the week after in brooklyn on the 20th,

you want to ask Deb or anyone else?

Alright, so based on a discussion between g-man and myself yesterday, it sounds like we will do a small tasting this weekend, preferably at Beacon Restaurant on Sunday or we can explore A Cafe and Tasting Room for saturday.

Let's try to nail down a definitive list of attendees by end-of-day tomorrow:

Who's up for 6pm on Saturday?
Who's up for 5:30/6pm on Sunday?

I can do either. If it's six of one, half-dozen of the other, I'd vote for Sunday. The restaurant will probably be quieter and happier to have us.

Alright, so it sounds like we have a date, a location, and attendees. If we can settle on wine, that makes a tasting:

When: November 14, 2010, 6pm.
Where: Beacon Restaurant
Attendees: SushiNorth, g-man, dolcetours (please respond asap so i can make us a reservation)

Theme:
[*] Option1: 1983 (with surprises welcome)
[*] Option2: Unusual Eighties

Wines available in the theme:
Niepoort 1983 (1,2)
Smith Woodhouse 1983 (1)
Burmester 1980 (2)
Gould Campbell 1980 (2)
Churchill 1985 (2)
others?

sorry, can't do the 14th. the giants have a 4pm game.

could have done the 13th tho.

i'll be in carolina the 18th-22nd, so the 20th is out, and a damn shame, as i am in park slope too!

have fun!

ps - if one day you do a park slope thing and need a nearby-ish restaurant, this place is new and byob and getting great reviews:
http://www.brucienyc.com/

also fyi, mid-week, i have a friend of a friend who has been allowing us byob at al di la for a set $15 corkage fee, as many bottles as we want to bring in. BAM!