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Our first Belfast event is just a few days away. We've got a full house, we've agreed the food that'll accompany the wines, and we have the ports ready to go. This being an introductory event (Port 101) we wanted to introduce the styles and keep it affordable - no point scaring everyone with a formidable array of stuff that you can't buy here.. To this end we have a white (Quinta de la Rosa), a 10-year tawny (Graham), an unflitered LBV (Croft 04), two vintages (young - Fonseca 00; slightly more mature - Malvedos 90) and a 20-year tawny (the TFP BOB made for M&S). And, most crucially, the placemats are ready to print.. Oh, and Alastair Bell, of the NI Wine & Spirits Institute, is bringing along a V 07 cask sample that was brought to Belfast by Tim Stanley-Clarke for a previous event.

Thanks to all here who've offered good advice and insight - RAYC, g-man, jdaw1, THRA, AHB, PhilW and DRT amongst others...

I'll post some details about how it all goes after Tuesday. And I'll see some of you on Thursday, and you can find out whether the Northern Irish port renaissance is about to begin....

(I'm pleased with the name for this event, by the way. Shame I didn't organise this last year, we could have tied it in with the Titanic centenary...)

djewesbury wrote:(I'm pleased with the name for this event, by the way. Shame I didn't organise this last year, we could have tied it in with the Titanic centenary...)

I'm not sure that a Titanic commemorative year would have been the best choice for the inaugural event of a new venture.

Good luck!

Sounds like you're getting things all sorted and ready; I hope it all goes smoothly, enjoyably and is a success for you - good luck!

DRT wrote: Good luck!

PhilW wrote:I hope it all goes smoothly, enjoyably and is a success for you - good luck!

Thanks. The power of P is strong in me this week....

Upon reflection, this range extended to include another white (Niepoort) and the Graham's Crusted. 8 bottles, pretty good VFM.

Sounds very exciting - good luck. I had not realised M&S had a 20yr - will have to give it a go. The Sainsbury's 10yr is another quality supermarket port if people like the style and want recommendations.

RAYC wrote:Sounds very exciting - good luck. I had not realised M&S had a 20yr - will have to give it a go. The Sainsbury's 10yr is another quality supermarket port if people like the style and want recommendations.

Thank you again.

The placemats, which only required 14 major drafts and several ".1.1.1" updates... I'm learning...

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=58189#p58189]Here[/url] djewesbury wrote:The placemats, which only required 14 major drafts and several ".1.1.1" updates... I'm learning...

And one bug fix in the code , and one new feature. No trouble at all.

Don’t trust the ‟FINAL” in the URL. They are never final until printed, and even then sometimes not final at least until the final reprinting.

jdaw1 wrote:Don’t trust the ‟FINAL” in the URL. They are never final until printed, and even then sometimes not final at least until the final reprinting.

Already amended and updated once...

At the risk of causing another amendment and reprint of the tasting mats, can I suggest that you add into the text of the circle where each port could be purchased - Graham 10 yo tawny from Waitrose, Graham 2004 Crusted from Sainsbury, Croft 2004 LBV from Tesco etc. so that if your customers like a particular port they can take their tasting mat away with them and have a record of what can be bought from where.

8 bottles between 12 people (15 people with all the extra guests) is probably into "over the limit for driving" territory. Have you made arrangements for spitoons or at least warned attendees that they should be using public transport?

I also note that your titles overprint - the end of "www.thegalleycafebelfast.com" overprinting the first word in "The Port of Belfast" on the tasting notes sheet.

Thanks Alex - much appreciated...

AHB wrote:At the risk of causing another amendment and reprint of hte tasting mats, can I suggest that you add into the text of the circle where each port could be purchased - Graham 10 yo tawny from Waitrose, Graham 2004 Crusted from Sainsbury, Croft 2004 LBV from Tesco etc. so that if your customers like a particular port they can take their tasting mat away with them and have a record of what can be bought from where.

Not printed yet, so will play around with this today...

AHB wrote:8 bottles between 12 people (15 people with all the extra guests) is probably into "over the limit for driving" territory. Have you made arrangements for spitoons or at least warned attendees that they should be using public transport?

Yep, all in hand. 14 is the maximum number; the extra blank is to replace a named guest who fails to attend and is replaced by an unnamed.

AHB wrote:I also note that your titles overprint - the end of "www.thegalleycafebelfast.com" overprinting the first word in "The Port of Belfast" on the tasting notes sheet.

Now I remember why I omitted Julian's URL the first time round (because the Galley's fitted only on the right-hand side). This will be remedied.

Placemats updated:
Solved problem with getting headers to print differently on each of the /Glasses pages, and on the /TastingNotes page;
Deleted PlaceNames for reasons of table space;
decided against including retailer in /Circles for reasons of (a) brevity and (b) time - need to get them printed!

My PostScript skills developing exponentially are.

djewesbury wrote:Placemats updated:
Solved problem with getting headers to print differently on each of the /Glasses pages, and on the /TastingNotes page;
Deleted PlaceNames for reasons of table space;
decided against including retailer in /Circles for reasons of (a) brevity and (b) time - need to get them printed!

My PostScript skills developing exponentially are.

A nitty point but it is simply Graham's "Malvedos 1990" rather than "Quinta dos" Malvedos 1990 (circlearray text). The vineyards that make Malvedos port were not fully incorporated into the Quinta until mid-90s, hence the first truly "single quinta" Malvedos was 1998 (or - at least - that was when the name / label change occurred: i don't know whether the 95/96 Malvedos ports could technically qualify as "single quinta" vintage ports...)

RAYC wrote:

djewesbury wrote:Placemats updated:
Solved problem with getting headers to print differently on each of the /Glasses pages, and on the /TastingNotes page;
Deleted PlaceNames for reasons of table space;
decided against including retailer in /Circles for reasons of (a) brevity and (b) time - need to get them printed!

My PostScript skills developing exponentially are.

A nitty point but it is simply Graham's "Malvedos 1990" rather than "Quinta dos" Malvedos 1990 (circlearray text). The vineyards that make Malvedos port were not fully incorporated into the Quinta until mid-90s, hence the first truly "single quinta" Malvedos was 1998 (or - at least - that was when the name / label change occurred: i don't know whether the 95/96 Malvedos ports could technically qualify as "single quinta" vintage ports...)

Yes, of course - I knew this; stupid of me.. In fact, this is 'Malvedos Centenary', which is now used in the corrected placemat.

djewesbury wrote:My PostScript skills developing exponentially are.

I liked the reverse-Polish joke.

jdaw1 wrote:

djewesbury wrote:My PostScript skills developing exponentially are.

I liked the reverse-Polish joke.

Interesting discrepancies:

Wikipedia, [url=http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation]here[/url], wrote:The description "Polish" refers to the nationality of logician Jan Łukasiewicz, who invented (prefix) Polish notation in the 1920s.

Whereas

Learn Postscript, [url=http://learnpostscript.wordpress.com/2007/06/05/reverse-polish-notation/]here[/url], wrote:The term Polish in ‟reverse-polish notation” refers to the fact that operators and operands are kept to one side or another. Postscript finds the operands to the left.

I thought it was because programs written in Reverse Polish were about as hard to read as Polish (for whichever non-Pole invented the ‘joke’).

Placemats printed on lovely white 120 gsm. Please, if there are any other errors, do not tell me.

jdaw1 wrote:Don’t trust the ‟FINAL” in the URL. They are never final until printed, and even then sometimes not final at least until the final reprinting.

djewesbury wrote:Placemats printed on lovely white 120 gsm. Please, if there are any other errors, do not tell me.

Now the placemats are ‘candidate final’.

jdaw1 wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:Don’t trust the ‟FINAL” in the URL. They are never final until printed, and even then sometimes not final at least until the final reprinting.

djewesbury wrote:Placemats printed on lovely white 120 gsm. Please, if there are any other errors, do not tell me.

Now the placemats are ‘candidate final’.

Turns out I missed an error; in my joy at mastering the postscript for the header substitutions I failed to notice that the right-hand headers are used in the wrong order: the one on the tasting notes pages should be on the second glasses page. That way the glasses sheets would have both the galley's URL and JDAW's; and the tasting notes would have just the galley's.
Heigh ho. No one need know....!
Placemats all trimmed and taped. Checklist assembled.

That’s minor. You’ll probably get away with it. Better than the spelling error in jdawiseman.com/port/20090130_1970.pdf.

jdaw1 wrote:That’s minor. You’ll probably get away with it. Better than the spelling error in jdawiseman.com/port/20090130_1970.pdf.

Gonzalez. Took me a while....

djewesbury wrote:Took me a while....

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=21865#p21865]Here[/url] DRT wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:People are asked to be polite by not noticing the spelling error in the placemats. (They’ve been printed too late to repair.)

I can report that normal service has resumed. I checked them as carefully as I could and can't spot the error

jdaw1 wrote:

djewesbury wrote:Took me a while....

[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=21865#p21865]Here[/url] DRT wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:People are asked to be polite by not noticing the spelling error in the placemats. (They’ve been printed too late to repair.)

I can report that normal service has resumed. I checked them as carefully as I could and can't spot the error

Success! Much enjoyment all round. Report follows.

Only problem; they were too polite, sippers really, and there is now much uncle tom-style minesweeping to do. Sigh...

Full review, with links to pictures, posted here.