Thu 17 March - the 4th Annual Doty Cup

[Alex Bridgeman]

A big congratulations to Simon for becoming the fourth person to win the Doty Cup. Even bigger thanks to Chris for continuing to generously sponsor the event.

I thoroughly enjoyed the presentations, which covered:

• Gravity waves and how they are formed and detected
• The History of the Doggett Badge
• Arsenal FC - glory and despair
• Artificial Intelligence: symbiosis or threat, and
• Primark or H&M, which is the better investment?

The wines were delicious and varied. No-one picked the over-riding theme which was "the imposter". Each of the four flights of three wines comprised a pair and an odd one out. The flights were:
Flight 1: Nyetimber Classic Cuvée 2010, Dom Perignon 1996, Nicolas Feuillate 2000
Flight 2: William Fevre Chablis 2013, Craggy Range Sauvignon Blanc 2014 (New Zealand), Samuel Billaud Chablis Grand Cru Les Preuses 2013
Flight 3: Chateau Musar 1983, Chateau Gruaud Larose 1983, Chateau Musar 1982
Flight 4: Dow 1983, Smith Woodhouse1982 LBV, Warre 1983

The food at the Square was as fabulous as ever and the service impeccable.

And finally the company was great. I managed to catch up with Chris in the early afternoon and everything fell into place - approaching event organisation a la CSD is well outside my comfort zone but the evening was a great success.

We didn't do a wine of the night vote but my favourite was the Musar 1983, which was just sublime.

[flash_uk]

What a very fine evening! Enormous thanks to CJD for his kind generosity.

The presentations were all marvellously informative and served to foster excellent conversation and debate. Wholeheartedly agree that the food and service from The Square was outstanding.
My wine guessing was less than spectacular
I did mange to identify the country, year and varietal of the imposter in the whites. Other than that, ermmm, I got the decade right for the reds and correctly spotted that flight 1 was sparkling and flight 4 was port!

[jdaw1]

Another splendid Doty Cup, not won by me for the usual reason (good talk, wine guessing not so much). Again, much thanks to our host with the most, the great Chris Doty. And a pleasure to hear the other talks, and meet friends old and future.

[Doggett]

BOOM!

No-one is more surprised than me!

Firstly some thanks... To the King for being a fantastic host, very generous with the wines and for a wonderful evening. Huge thanks also to Alex for fantastic organisation and for buying a 'leftfield[/bank]' wine that I was able to recognise! Thanks are also due to my fellow competitors this year, who might have been few, but were certainly fine company and all had great and interesting presentations.. It was an honour to win but the real honour was the evening itself.

The wine flights were all wonderful, and appropriately my wine of the night was the Muser 83 that had a wonderfully big, slightly sweet follow through on the finish. The food was amazing and the guys at The Square were fantastic, even if they kept trying to help Chris with visible clues to the blind wines. The wild boar was particularly sublime.

The cup is safely home on the mantlepiece and I shall enjoy the honour for the year until it is time for me to assist Chris with the 5th Doty cup in 2017.

Thanks again to all...and especially to Mr Doty.

Simon
(Doty Cup winner 2016)

PS. if I don't get sucked into a black hole generated by a depressed Gooner (as it is March), I am off to buy some shares in retail to make some money so I can enjoy some more fine wine before the world is ended by skynet.

[Chris Doty]

BOOM!

spoken like your 2016 Doty Cup Champion!

Congratulations Simon - way to show 'em how it's done.

Excellent presentation, nailing the Musar (I would never permitted them, great proof that the flight was blind to myself as well!) and was generally merry and awesome.

Looking forward to seeing the newly engraved trophy when it is ready, and to your co-organization at next year's cup!

Speaking of organization - sincere thanks and debt (of all sort) to AHB for splendid dexterity , creativity and spirit in his co-hosting / judging / etc this year's event.

Thanks to all who made it out and helped celebrate the objectively awesome!

See you in 2017! though likely not the square : ( http://tinyurl.com/zu6jg5f

[jdaw1]

Ah ha! The popular science press has noticed the Loeb paper that was the subject of my talk. Even though a different Scientific American article, from a week before, blithely assumed that “The two black holes detected by LIGO had probably been losing energy in this way for millions, if not billions, of years before they reached the end.”