Thursday 19th May 2016, 1966 @ 50

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50 years ago, the 1966 vintage was born. A few of us gathered at The Boot & Flogger to discuss the vintage.

• Review of the event as a whole
• 1966 Smith Woodhouse
• 1966 Cockburn
• 1966 Gould Campbell
• 1966 Graham
• 1966 Dow
• 1966 Warre
• 1966 Taylor
• 1966 Fonseca
• 1966 Croft
• 1966 Cálem Foz
• 1966 Noval
• 1966 Sandeman
• 1966 Messias Cachão
• 1966 Offley
• 1966 Rebello Valente
• Food order
• Placemats
• Planning and arrangements

[jdaw1]

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In the TN threads are pictures of the labels of 1966 Cockburn, 1966 Dow, 1966 Warre, 1966 Messias Cachão, and 1966 Rebello Valente.

[jdaw1]

A splendid evening, perfectly judged by our splendid organiser. The right number of people, the right number of bottles for them, many excellent, and even the weakest could be drunk with pleasure. And Mike really did everything: organisation, accounting, food order, placemats — our all-round hero.

[flash_uk]

And Mike really did everything: organisation, accounting, food order, placemats — our all-round hero.

Not quite correct - I decanted a few bottles, but Charles and Simon did the heavy lifting on bottle opening, decanting, pouring and glass layout. Thank you both.

[flash_uk]

Many thanks everyone for a great evening. A splendid showing from the '66 ports, with perhaps only a couple slightly off the pace but nonetheless still very enjoyable.

[Constandia]

Mike, and everyone assisting, thank you for organising a great event on Thursday. I was pleasantly surprised by the uniformity in colour as well as consistency in taste of all the bottles. Great timing to taste 1966- it was superb!

[PhilW]

My thanks to Mike for his organisation, and to all those who assisted (particularly with set up on the night); a fabulous tasting, with superb wines. I'll disagree with Julian on the drinkability of the Messias, but aside from that one (mushroom-scented) oddity, the wines were all in excellent condition and tasted superb. The commonality of flavour was interesting, being remarked on by several people, though there were clear differences in some cases also. A thoroughly enjoyable evening. Did anyone else notice that we assigned a total of 66 points to the '66s? Very apt I thought.

[Alex Bridgeman]

That was such an impressive tasting; thank you to everyone for being part of it and to Mike for leading the organisation

What a consistent set of quality ports. 15 shippers and 13 which I'd be delighted to drink. I was so taken by this fine array of mature port that the next day I put away my planned weekend bottle of Churchill 1985 and replaced it with the closest I had to another 1966 - a Sandeman 1970.

What great port. And with the added bonus that I am now up to date with my tasting notes - expect a flurry of postings from me over the next few days.

[idj123]

An absolute belting tasting, probably the best horizontal I have taken part in in my time on As has already been remarked, very difficult to differentiate many of the Ports (as can be seen from the scoring) but all peaking beautifully and with an en expectation of many more good drinking years ahead. Interesting to note how some of these changed in the glass over the course of the evening with, I thought, both the Taylor and Fonseca offering more at the end that at the start. My WOTN was the Noval which has still some years to go to full maturity but many were called and pretty much all stood up.

Great company as usual and despite it being quite a 'lively' night at the B&F, credit to the staff who very engaging and attentive and the food was spot on. Maybe we should have a few more Thursday tastings!