New Segment for the Newsletter

[Roy Hersh]

Reward: A pristine magnum of 1977 Gould Campbell from my cellar.

Delivered by June, anywhere in the world. Sooner if within the USA.

Mission: Simply come up with an idea for an inspired newsletter segment which can be used on an ongoing basis. If it is something I adopt, the bottle is yours.

I look forward to giving it a worthy new home. Please leave your suggestion(s) right here in this thread.

[Peter W. Meek]

"A Day (or a week) in the Life of an FTLOPer."

Members of this forum who are not actually in the port trade do interesting things to promote port. Why not share them?

A bit of background, and then details of a particularly 'rich' day or week as they do things that advance the understanding and appreciation of port.

[Glenn E.]

"This Month in Port"

I think that most of us know a little bit about what's going on in the Douro on a monthly basis, but I doubt that any of us really know what's going on all year long. (Well... except for Oscar and Cynthia and everyone else actually involved in the Port trade. ) I'd love to see a segment that explores what's actually going on in the Douro and/or in VNdG every month. It could even be from the perspective of a particular producer - sort of a guest segment, if you wanted.

[Bradley Bogdan]

A couple ideas:

You could have a "legendary wine" segment, where you tell the story of a particularly interesting bottle, young or old. It could include the details of the growing season, production, reception and the time and since. Decanter does something similar to this and I look forward to it each month.

You could also have an auction news/advice section, as this seems to be an area that many people seek advice in and is a common route to acquire older vintages.

[Christian Gollnick]

Portourism:

The Douro becomes more and more interesting for tourists. There are many places where tourists can stay, be it Quintas, hotels or little bed & breakfast places... Some Quintas have constantly great programs for visitors... for other places you need appointments... Many of us members travel regularly to the Douro - and we are always open for a new hotel recommendation or a new restaurant...

So every edition of the newsletter could focus on one town... The best hotels, restaurants and things-to-do in Pinhao... the next month's edition focuses on Regua, then Lamego etc... When all important places have been introduced, the newsletter would just focus on general tourist-news from the Douro... Newly opened restaurants, new tourist offerings etc.

The Douro and port wine are of course strongly connected - if one does well, so does hopefully the other... If we promote the Douro, then we also promote port...

[Andreas Nielsen]

Port quotes - a monthly quote on port from port persons, literature etc.

Vintage in focus - each month you choose a vintage that you "drive into". Besides the obvious (the great things about that particular vintage, top wines that year etc.) you could elaborate a bit on the historical circumstances at the time, interesting things in the development of wine (port) making etc.



Andreas

[Daniel R.]

"Port History"

There is so much history to be told: persons that changed the trade; trivia; technical stuff; important dates. There is so much information that it would be interesting to create a section dedicated to history, which could even be "outsourced" on occasion to experts (such as historians, regulators or ultra-geeks).

[Rob C.]

I must say i think Christian's idea is great. Particularly as the Infoportwine tourism pages, which were immensely helpful when i went to the Douro, are probably now getting a bit out of date in some places.

[Derek T.]

The Month in the Douro
This would need the co-operation of some of your contacts in the Douro, on a rotational basis so that it did not take up too much of their time, so that each month you could have some first-hand descriptions of what is happening in the Douro in terms of the activity in the vineyards/winery, the weather, etc. In effect, this would be drawing together the sort of information that appears in various blogs into one place so that it could be read by people who don't have the time to monitor multiple forums/blogs to find out what is going on. I'm not suggesting re-publishing the blog content, just drawing an analogy to the type of content that would go in the article.

To be effective it would have to be current and topical. For instance, there would be little interest in reading about what happened in December in the Douro in May Newsletter

Some months could cover activity in Oporto rather than the Douro, such as the bottling of the vintage, the boat race, etc.

[John M.]

I like Christian's and Bradley's ideas--both are solid, interesting and can be sustained indefinitely.

[Phyllis D]

Guest Corner:

Each month there is an article or several very short articles in the news letter from “guest writers.” This section would be open to a myriad of people and topics. There could be limits such as maximum number of words, timeliness of subject, and of course would have to pass the editor’s review.

Just think of all of the topics people would come up with.

[Roy Hersh]

Dear Phyllis,

We already do that.



To all who have participated so far:

I am open to more suggestions when the ideas come to mind over the next month or so. I like many of the great ideas here, but so far none that have my diving in to add them to the newsletter. Yet. I believe the winner is still out there, with a suggestion that has yet to come to the fore!

By the way, should I find two or three ideas that I incorporate, I am happy to provide a magnum to each person who has made a suggestion I use. I do not want to put ANY limits on this and I have more mags of Port than I will likely get to, so again, keep your ideas flowing.

[Eric Menchen]

Yes, good ideas. WRT to Christian's, however, I must say that instead of having this spread over every newsletter, I'd rather have it concentrated. I want the info, but when I'm planning my trip I'd like to have it all in one (or a few) place(s), instead of having to grab a section from each newsletter. Just my humble opinion.

[Rob C.]

Eric--

Agreed. But there's no reason why they couldn't be collected over time in a single place.

I guess the reason for having it in a "subscriber-only" section is to make people a bit more comfortable with disclosing their "inside secrets" whilst knowing they are shared only with a select group of port enthusiasts and not for all that can simply work google to see. But I would also understand Roy"s sensitivity on this given his port tour business.

Roy - fair enough! I'm sure everyone will put their thinking caps on after your generous offer!

[Phyllis D]

Dear Phyllis,

We already do that.

Dear Roy,

OOPS!

You found me out. I only read several of the news lettes, and they didn't have the guest corner.

Looks like I'll have to start the beginning and work my way forward.

[Don M]

Hi there,
I'd like to see recurring segments on new houses in the Douro (or outside the Douro) producing Vintage Ports. There are quite a few smaller growers which have started producing their own ports instead of operating as growers. It'd be nice to feature one in each newsletter in greater detail. I expect the perspective of these houses may be quite different from well established names, providing an insight into different production techniques and business methods, some of which may go against the grain of older houses. Certainly, these folks will have a large impact on the industry as time goes by. Understanding their perspective may allow greater appreciation of their output.

[Stewart T.]

Every month you could feature a Famous Poem About Port! :)

I'd love to see "Lifecycle of Port" (or something similar with a more catchy name). Every month you could focus on a part of the Port production process
Some ideas you could cover:
How the vines are tended throughout the year leading up to harvest
How the producers gear up for harvest
How they go about picking at the right time + logistics of getting the fields in
The actual crushing /fermenting process + how the winemaker knows it's ready
Where the wine goes from there
How the winemaker decides what the wine will be when it grows up (vintage vs. tawny vs. cheapo bulk wine)
Maybe touch some on aging

You know, lifecycle of a Port....

[Andreas Nielsen]

'Port and Food'
A monthly column about great courses to match with port and/or something about how to incorporate port more often in every day cooking.
I need some inspiration on that matter for sure.

Andreas

[John M.]

Lots of cool ideas already here and perhaps one topic/concept is too limiting. Since we already have a Guest Corner, how about a Geek's Corner where you can rotate a few of the better topic ideas...Travel, History of a particular Port (Wouldn't it be cool to find some early TNs on say some 1955s? I mean, a lot of ports we taste we never tasted on release, and a lot of those we taste on release, we may not be around to taste in 30-50 years--think it would be interesting to see what was said then about some of these.) other Historical Things, etc..

[Andreas Nielsen]

"Port Gadges/tools/accessories"
All the really cool and geeky things that we port lovers can't live without and also the extra things we don't really need It can be old classic things like a port tongs, decanting funnel etc. and/or new state of the art port equipment.



Andreas