2019: October 29 - Phil's Birthday

[Alex Bridgeman]

Happy birthday Phil!

For the record, Paul's bottle (number 1) was decanted at 10.00 and my bottle (number 2) was decanted at 11.30. Both are in black blind-tasting bottle bags so if anyone else is using these, please don't use numbers 1 and 2!

I am also bringing a third bottle, just for a laugh (so if anyone can bring a spare blind bottle bag I can borrow, please do.)

[PhilW]

Voting

[PhilW]

What is it?

[PhilW]

Much thanks due to all for last night's tasting, with additional guests Paul and a surprise showing by Chris D. Particular thanks to JDAW for organising during my recent absence leading up to the tasting, and for preparing a most unexpected gift of the book of the evening - my very own special edition of Port Vintages for the ports present at the birthday tasting! Great job, and thank you again indeed.

The chosen theme was intended to allow a good variety of potential ports, and that turned out to have worked well; we had LBVs and crusted from '69, as well a broad range of VPs from '50 to '16 and a good variety of shippers also. One attendee's bottle disappeared on the way to the tasting, but another had a "spare" pre-decanted bottle; only in such a great group of geeks could we likely find such capability!

My personal favourites were the Noval '55 which some were less keen on than others but I though was superb (only fading slightly towards the end of the evening) and the Cockburn '50 which for me was a beautiful old, slightly tawnied/toffee'd vp - in fact I guessed it might be a garrafeira, though it was perhaps a little soft for that; and the Ck50 was indeed WOTN overall, just ahead of the F77.

This was also the first time I tried the W69lbv; I thought it showed well, now very mature and showing some hint of oranges (which fooled me into thinking Croft rather than Warre), but did seem to degrade significantly by the end of the evening so will perhaps be wise to use a short decant in future. There were two faulty wines, a Bb94 (of which I understand a previous bottle had a similar problem) and a heavily-VA'd GM90 - the latter a shame as that can be a lovely wine when showing well - but these things happen. In all, we had a great range of bottles (others I haven't mentioned above included CrR67, T69cr, W70, T92, BoS94(SW) and N16).

Overall it was a very enjoyable evening, and thank you to everyone for the organisation, their bottles, their excellent company, and for allowing me to use my birthday as the excuse for us all to get together

[Alex Bridgeman]

Does anyone know whether the bottle Tom had stolen en route to the Boot & Flogger was returned intact to his house while he was away?

[flash_uk]

We gathered for Phil's 50th birthday on Tuesday 29th October 2019.

Links:

• Review of the event as a whole
• 1969 Taylor Crusted
• 1969 Taylor Vargellas
• 1994 Broadbent
• 1955 Noval
• 1969 Warre LBV
• 1970 Warre
• 1967 Croft Roeda
• 1992 Taylor
• 1990 Graham Malvedos
• 1977 Fonseca
• 1950 Cockburn
• 2016 Noval
• 1994 Berry Brothers
• Planning and arrangements
• Placemats

[PhilW]

Interesting that you just necro'd this thread, as I was thinking about this tasting after yesterday's session where I again, against the crowd, liked the N55 very much, indeed my winner of the second flight despite the W55 being top notch. I must really like N55 for some reason...

[flash_uk]

Interesting that you just necro'd this thread, as I was thinking about this tasting after yesterday's session where I again, against the crowd, liked the N55 very much, indeed my winner of the second flight despite the W55 being top notch. I must really like N55 for some reason...

Commencing my long-postponed tasting note updates

[Alex Bridgeman]

As am I. My TNs are being posted now...