1970 Horizontal, flights 1-4, Friday 3 October 2025

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1970 Horizontal - update

Hi everyone

On Monday 22 Sept I will publish the food menu and will be asking for food pre-orders - this needs a rapid response!
The menu will include some larger steak options which have a supplement cost which will be added to your costs.

Once I have a complete set of food orders, I'll let everyone know their cash contribution which should be paid in advance. For those without a mechanism for GBP payment, we can sort something else out - I'll be in touch directly.

Best
Mike

[jdaw1]

Links:

• Review of the event as a whole;
• Bottle pictures;
• Planning, flight 0, Thu 2^nd Oct 2025;
• Planning, flights 1–4, Fri 3^rd Oct 2025;
• Placemats;
• Flight 0 (Thu 2^nd Oct 2025):
  • Andresen;
  • Hutcheson;
  • Martins (Hutcheson);
  • Dalva (C. da Silva);
  • Dalva;
  • Borges;
  • Barros;
  • Cabral;
  • Diez Hermanos;
  • Feist;
  • Osborne;
  • Santos Júnior;
  • Dolamore;
  • Hunt Roope (Tuke Holdsworth);
  • Maia;
  • Pousada;
  • Thienpoint (Butler Nephew);
  • Mackenzie;
  • Messias Quinta do Cachão;
  • Royal Oporto Quinta das Carvalhas;
  • Graham tregnum; 
• Flight 1 (Fri 3^rd Oct 2025):
  • Quarles Harris;
  • Gould Campbell;
  • Gould Campbell LBV;
  • BBR;
  • Warre;
  • Dow;
  • Graham;
  • Smith Woodhouse;
  • Noval;
  • Noval Nacional;
• Flight 2 (Fri 3^rd Oct 2025):
  • Taylor Vargellas;
  • Taylor;
  • Fonseca;
  • Croft Quinta da Roêda;
  • Croft;
  • Avery;
  • Ferreira;
  • Sandeman;
  • Offley Boa Vista;
• Flight 3 (Fri 3^rd Oct 2025):
  • Martinez;
  • Cockburn;
  • Kopke São Luiz;
  • Rebello Valente;
  • Cálem;
  • Cálem Quinta da Foz;
  • Burmester;
  • Niepoort;
  • Sibio;
• Flight 4 (Fri 3^rd Oct 2025):
  • Ramos Pinto;
  • Delaforce;
  • Gonzalez Byass;
  • Poças;
  • Krohn;
  • Morgan Brothers;
  • Butler Nephew;
  • Royal Oporto;
  • Feuerheerd;

[Axel P]

Maybe some background info for the 1970 Avery Port from the company:

I have only found the "possible" blends for the 60, 63 and 66 I can almost say they are correct but every so often there is a note saying - also added...

- there are some hints at the 70 but not a "full" recipe

In the main they are all blends of Sandeman, Fonseca and Taylor - in that order of magnitude

Roughly 2-3 times as much Sandeman as Fonseca and a dash (portion of a cask) of Taylor

However what I can find for the 1970 is a pipe of Sandeman a pipe of Fonseca and 12 gallons of Taylor.

We may have made less '70 - for many reasons but I note that in

1960 a pipe of Sandeman was £175 and in 1970 it was £350...

Fonseca '60 was £190 and '70 was £500

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One or two bottles now standing up, awaiting decanting later in the week.

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Flight 1, decapsuled.

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Flight 2, decapsuled.

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Flight 3, decapsuled.

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Flight 4, decapsuled.

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[flash_uk]

Someone has devoted ~ > 40 hours of effort over the past months to prepare for this tasting.

[Alex Bridgeman]

Someone has devoted ~ > 40 hours of effort over the past months to prepare for this tasting.

Thank you Julian, it’s very much appreciated!

[Christopher]

I have informed our host seperately but infortuye I have had to drop out of this tasting. Very sorry about that and I hope you have a great evening

[PhilW]

Someone has devoted ~ > 40 hours of effort over the past months to prepare for this tasting.

Thank you Julian, it’s very much appreciated!

Hear, hear; the huge efforts involved in planning, preparation and logistics for this tasting are much appreciated.

[Mike J. W.]

Maybe some background info for the 1970 Avery Port from the company:

I have only found the "possible" blends for the 60, 63 and 66 I can almost say they are correct but every so often there is a note saying - also added...

- there are some hints at the 70 but not a "full" recipe

In the main they are all blends of Sandeman, Fonseca and Taylor - in that order of magnitude

Roughly 2-3 times as much Sandeman as Fonseca and a dash (portion of a cask) of Taylor

However what I can find for the 1970 is a pipe of Sandeman a pipe of Fonseca and 12 gallons of Taylor.

We may have made less '70 - for many reasons but I note that in

1960 a pipe of Sandeman was £175 and in 1970 it was £350...

Fonseca '60 was £190 and '70 was £500

If I did my math right, that would be roughly 68 pence per 750 ml bottle for the 1970 Fonseca (assumes a 550 liter pipe). That's crazy.

[hadge]

Someone has devoted ~ > 40 hours of effort over the past months to prepare for this tasting.

well done and huge thank you to both of you for all of your hard work in pulling this together! I'm very excited by this tasting!

[flash_uk]

Now that The horizontal has happened, I thought I'd jot down some thoughts on planning, structure and approach, just in case anyone does something like this again.

What proved useful and what went well?

• assembling bottles well in advance was crucial
• having a proper cellar near the event proved to be more important than I could have imagined
• Julian's "decanters" were perfect: ~100 washed, dried and de-labelled screwcap wine bottles
• Bottles stood some days in advance of decanting, allowed sediment to settle thus reducing time to decant each bottle
• Bottles decapsuled some days before decanting, reducing time and effort on the day of decanting
• lots (~20) of funnels for decanting - can decant 20 bottles before needing to wash any funnels, and then funnels get washed quickly in one go
• 12-bottle carry bags used to carry bottles with decanted port - no risk of bottom of box falling out or some other box mishap
• a 6-person decanting team made it through 71 bottles in about 2 hours
• a fabulous breakfast cooked by an angel, sustained the morning decanting team
• tasting room layout with a long table and attendees down each side. See comment below about backup bottles and flawed ports
• each flight of 2 bottles of each of 9 or 10 shippers had a pouring team of two pairs of two people - one pair for each set of 9/10 ports
• each set of 9/10 ports in the flight had the same coloured decanter label i.e. a set of 9 with say a green label and a set of 9 with a pink label
• having backup bottles for each port (although none were used...but see below...)

What might be changed?

Timings on the day
Ports in the first (and even second) flight would have benefited from some more time in the glass. Could have perhaps done this with the first flight, by pouring 30-60 minutes in advance of sitting down. Not so easy to achieve with the second flight, without adding more overall time to the event, or having a whole extra table for 26 in a nearby room.
Original plans to have lunch and dinner in between flights went out the window as it ended up not really fitting in with kitchen timings.

Backups
At the time of decanting, we were not able to detect any bottles that had flaws, and so did not open any of the backup bottles. Of course some ports showed flaws (TCA in all cases if I recall correctly) later when tasted, as can often be the case.
Bringing 36 unopened and undecanted backup bottles to the event was just a logistics and capacity bridge too far.
What proved very helpful however, was the pouring approach whereby one bottle was set out down one side of the table and the other bottle down the other side of the table. This meant that any port with a flaw was clearly confined to an identifiable set of tasters. And also allowed those with the flawed port to be offered a sip from the other side of the table if they so desired.
With hindsight, I don't think I would now want to do anything different to try and tackle a flawed bottle. Things were busy enough on the day, without adding a mid-flight decant, pour and distribution of another set of glasses along a crowded table.

Flighting
We had four flights of 9 bottles. Could also have done three flights with 12 bottles. Three flights of 12 would have perhaps allowed some lead-time for port to better open up in the glasses, but on the other hand would have made the overall timetable a bit odd unless lunch could have been delayed until say 2.30pm.

Scoring
Scoring was done electronically using a cobbled-together mobile app. Thinking being that the timetable was tight, and the usual TPF shout-out-your-scores approach could take too long and be challenging in a room of 25 people.
Not all attendees loved the use of the technology, some perhaps even appalled. One alternative that could perhaps have worked would have been for the scorer to walk around and note down scores on the paper scoresheet.

Final thoughts...
This was always hoped and intended to be a bit of a wild and mad event. I think all those who attended had a splendid time - I certainly did! Anyone repeating something similar, be under no illusion - a tasting of 36 wines in one day for 26 people is not x2 the effort of a tasting for 13 people. More like x6.

[flash_uk]

Did I miss mentioning anything above?

Do any non-attendees have any questions about any aspect that I haven't commented on?

[jdaw1]

The summary is very fair.

But the best advice about doing this is just don’t. Sixty shippers? Easy: four separate events, weeks apart, fifteen shippers at each. Maybe even some shippers appearing twice in even more events.

This was always hoped and intended to be a bit of a wild and mad event. I think all those who attended had a splendid time - I certainly did!

I did too.

• Julian's "decanters" were perfect: ~100 washed, dried and de-labelled screwcap wine bottles

If repeating this, be warned that the gathering and delabelling of screw-cap bottles is a multi-month project. Shout-out to hard-drinking folks on my road who donated many bottles. Delabelling entails much soaking and scrubbing and resoaking and rescrubbing. About a quarter of bottles had glue that was too tough: after much scrubbing they went in the recycling (though their caps were retained). So if you need 100 bottles, target 150+.

[Glenn E.]

All of your notes sound familiar to me.

I have organized and helped run several events with a similar number of Ports, but never with that many attendees. I can confirm that as soon as you make the leap to "multiple sessions in one day" that the complexity goes up exponentially, and that's without factoring in such a large gathering. Congratulations on pulling off such a large, complex event!

For our larger tastings, we usually have 2 or 3 people decanting, and a team of 4 people distributing glasses once they are poured. We can pour and distribute 15-16 bottles in about 25-30 minutes, so 71 bottles in 2 hours sounds very efficient.

[cem]

The event was mad and I loved it. Thank you for all the hard work that was put in.

[Alex Bridgeman]

I vaguely remember 12 years ago when I organised a tasting of 44 different shippers from the 1963 vintage. That was arranged as 3 flights of 15 (dinner Friday night), 14 (Saturday lunch) and 15 (dinner Saturday night).

The larger flights worked quite well and gave a decanting team of 2-3 people enough time to decant the one bottle of each wine we were using. There was then a pouring team of 2+2 at the venue where we were eating and tasting.

What made life so much easier was that there were only 14 people drinking Port plus 6 other halves who were doing a separate Champagne tasting.

Additional people tasting Port, and hence additional bottles of Port to deal with, just multiplies the complexity and challenge.

I tip my hat to Mike, Julian and all the others who helped organise, print, decant, drive, carry, pour, layout, setup, feed or otherwise help to deliver an amazing and memorable tasting.

[hadge]

Mike thank you for your points on this. I would have had only a couple of changes, overall i think that you nailed it.

Timings on the day and Flighting
I would do 3 flights and do the flights in the otherway around, starting with flight 3 and finishing with 1. it would have given more time for tasting each flight. I think that with this, lunch could have been at 1:15pm, but not sure if that would have worked with the kitchen.

Backups
I would have only had these for flight 1, but most likely just too difficult to manage in the end. therefore agree with your view.

Overall,
This was my level of crazy event and a huge amount of fun. enjoyed the scoring system and it added to the fun and games.

[Glenn E.]

Scoring
Scoring was done electronically using a cobbled-together mobile app. Thinking being that the timetable was tight, and the usual TPF shout-out-your-scores approach could take too long and be challenging in a room of 25 people.
Not all attendees loved the use of the technology, some perhaps even appalled. One alternative that could perhaps have worked would have been for the scorer to walk around and note down scores on the paper scoresheet.

Is this available for others to use? The end output is very nice.

[flash_uk]

Scoring
Scoring was done electronically using a cobbled-together mobile app. Thinking being that the timetable was tight, and the usual TPF shout-out-your-scores approach could take too long and be challenging in a room of 25 people.
Not all attendees loved the use of the technology, some perhaps even appalled. One alternative that could perhaps have worked would have been for the scorer to walk around and note down scores on the paper scoresheet.

Is this available for others to use? The end output is very nice.

In theory, yes. In practice, not as it stands, as the app would need to be adapted to have some sort of acccount-based functionality. It was thrown together for the '70 horizontal, and as it stands it is "open", so anyone who accesses it can do pretty much anything with it, including messing around with scores etc. A next iteration would be non-trivial, and almost certainly trigger data protection things like GDPR. I may tackle this at some point, but not right now!