Lots of new faces ... please introduce yourself

[Andy Velebil]

I've been off for a few days and I'm proud to see several new members have joined in my absence. I want to welcome everyone to the forum and I hope you have a blast with us.

[Mark D]

Hi there. New to the board, though not too new to port! I live in south east London and have only been collecting wines seriously for a couple of years, mainly Port as well as my favourite red Chateau Musar.
I'll try to put some retrospective tasting notes on here in the near future.

[Andy Velebil]

Hi Mark,

to the forum, it's great to have you with us. We have a number of members from the UK who gather often to share Port and are true Port lovers in every sense. So keep an eye out for any offlines they have. Oh, and I too love Musar wine's..the guy makes some pretty awesome ones.

[Espen S.]

Welcome to the board, Mark!
You'll have a lot of fun here.

[Roy Hersh]

Hi Mark,

Welcome belatedly to FTLOP. I am sure you are already having fun and we appreciate your joining us here. I hope you will have a blast in joining us for some great conversations on Port wine and other topics here.

[Raul Valle]

Hello everyone!
My name is Raul and I work in the port wine trade, more specifically at Graham's!
I had the plesure to meet Roy and his group trough a very big friend of mine, Gustavo Devesas.
I love port wine and my participation here will be as a port aficionado.
Roy has the trip to Porto went ok? As I promised I already signed in the forum and I promise I'll write much more!

Best regards to everyone!

Cheers!

[Eric Menchen]

Welcome Raul. We welcome one and all around here, but it is particular nice to have people from the trade

[David Spriggs]

It's great to have you here Raul! I look forward to having you participate in the forum!

[Andy Velebil]

Raul! Great to have you with us and I'm glad you got to meet Roy and some of the other FTLOP members recently. I look forward to hopefully meeting you in person when I head back to Portugal for the harvest.

[Roy Hersh]

Hi Raul,

Although you and I have met in past years, this was the first time where we got to hang out for awhile and do some drinking of Douro wines and Ports. Your group of friends was a lot of fun on that Sat. prior to the beginning of the tour. 3 a.m. and closing down the club ... not bad for an old man eh? Great to see you again and it is our good fortune to have you posting here too!

[Raul Valle]

Hi Roy and Andy!
It was about time for me to join this forum that is turning into one of the bibles of port wine!
I'm looking forward to see you both again here in Porto and me and Gustavo what to do, Porto stylw!
Roy you behaved like a warrior! You are the living proof that port wine makes people look younger every day!
Andy, i'm looking forward to meet you in person!

Speak to you soon!

Best regards and Cheers!

[Andy Velebil]

Raul,
About time you got here, I figured Gustavo would have forced you here sooner

Seriously, glad you finally joined us and I look forward to learning more from you. See you soon!

[Roy Hersh]

Raul,

It was great to hang out with you and party with your friends at that late night club, after a wild dinner in Gaia. Thanks for coming by here and joining us. I hope you will have much to share with all of us. Sorry I did not see this earlier. I am in Madrid at the moment and rooting for Portugal (of course) in the World Cup. Feel free to share your Port wisdom with us anytime.

For those that don't know Raul, he works for the Symington Family Estates and is a great guy and loves his Port ... and beer.

[Gustavo Devesas]

OMG, Raul is here....call security!

[Monique Heinemans.]

My name is Monique Heinemans, I'm 50 years "old" and live in the Netherlands. I work parttime in healthcare, are married, have two children, run the dog 3 times a week, like gardening (yes Roy, it's me ) and I lóve wine and port!! Fortunately I have a cellar underneath my house, so I can buy and store young wines myself.
I have started to drink, like and collect port for about 8 years ago. I have a small range of colheita's and vp from 1977 to 2005 and don't expect to buy new vintages anymore, as I probably won't be around by that drinking-time anymore...
As English isn't my mother language it's a bit difficult for me to write TN's as I even don't make them in my own language. I can tell you what I like, but don't ask me wether I taste raspberries or tar, because I just don't taste or know how to describe it... So occasionally I hope to share my experience of a nice port with you, but please don't expect a specified TN, as it just doesn't work for me.
I do hope to learn a lot from you and also hope to be able to make some usefull contributions myself.

Kind regards to all of you, Monique.

[Glenn E.]

Hi Monique, to !

[Eric Menchen]

Welcome Monique! The more the merrier. Roy might push people to write tasting notes, but I think any and all contributions are worthwhile. He'd probably agree with that too. Your English is already far better than my Dutch, and yes, I did try to learn a little bit of Dutch a while back. I lived in Delft in the early 1990s. My wife, Marijke, used to live in Houten. A good friend of ours that we often share Port with, Doedo, is from Groningen. Where in the Netherlands are you, if you don't mind me asking?

[Monique Heinemans.]

Hi Eric and Glenn, thank you for welcoming me.

To answer your question Eric: I live in the most southern part of the Netherlands, near Maastricht. About 5 min. from Belgium and 10 min from Germany, so pretty central in Europe. Groningen is about a 3 to 4 hours drive. To us that's a uge distance, for you that's peanuts??

Best regards, Monique.

[Glenn E.]

I have friends in Maastricht! We visited last fall and I had a great time. I found a nice running route next to the river that crossed a couple of bridges and was very pleasant.

[Monique Heinemans.]

That's a shame, whenever you visit our area again, please be welcome in our house and we'll have a glass together!