Madeira Tasting in San Francisco - May 17-19, 2013

[Eric Ifune]

5ish. I'd be driving to San Francisco from Fairfield. I know most of the Madeira tastings start in the afternoon with dinner in the evening.

[Timothy B.]

You'll be working 'til 4ish both Saturday and Sunday?

[Eric Ifune]

Unfortunately yes!

But, Sunday night I then fly to Kwajelein Atoll to do some work. How bad can the south Pacific be?

[Roy Hersh]

Catching up and thank you Mark, I have received your email and appreciate it very much.

At the beginning of next week, I have a longer time scheduled with the head of the restaurants' banquets to further pursue discussion on a variety of topics.

The venue(s) are locked for us, but I still have yet to give them a final decision on which restaurant or both, that we will go with. I'll have to look over the list and see how much duplication there is between the two groups.

Sadly, (for my friend Mr. Ifune) like so many of these type of Madeira events, the tasting will begin in the early afternoon, followed by dinner in the evening. I have not locked in specific times yet, but I don't know how we could do it all, if we began at 5 p.m. or later. I am a purist with Madeira and Port and believe that having a meal ahead of time, will change the dynamics of tasting the wine, so I am going to stay true to my typical formats and apologize to Eric because I realize this means he will not be able to join us (which is a bummer for me to not have him join us, as his knowledge on Madeira is quite remarkable!).

More info soon. My focus at the moment is on finishing the newsletter by this weekend, setting appointments for an upcoming tour, locking in arrangements for 30 year retrospective that is in a couple of weeks etc. Next week finish off taxes, schedule another tour and finalize the two Madeira events. All in good time.

Once the venue/menu/dates/times are finalized for the Madeira weekend, I will put very specific parameters in place for each of the events and will likely handle Madeira and dinner wine dynamics by personal email rather than here publicly. Thanks for your patience, I can assure you these two events will be wonderful and you'll just have to trust me, that this will all come together pretty quickly from here.

[Eric Ifune]

Sorry I'm going to miss it, my timing sucks!

I'll have to celebrate in spirit with something.

[Roy Hersh]

Moving forward:

Saturday, May 18th - 12:00 start time at CAFE DES AMIS for "high bar" Madeira tasting. It will likely take an hour for set up from there unless people can show up closer to 11 a.m. and we can get glassware and bottles ready for pouring. Dinner @ Spruce, begins at 7:30 sharp. That should give us a full six hours to do the tasting.

Sunday, May 19th - 12:00 start time for the "lower bar" Madeira tasting at CAFE DES AMIS. Dinner @ 6:30 p.m. at Cafe des Amis.

The venues are carved in stone. The Madeira glassware is being investigated at this time. Menus will be finalized and in place within the week. As this is a not-for-profit event that everyone contributes to; I will provide a net price for each event as we move closer and will ask all participants to "pre-pay" the restaurant a week or two in advance, by credit card.

I do NOT want to discuss individual bottles being brought ... in this thread, only by email.

But first it will be necessary to set minimum requirements.

I will set those bars at the end of this week. Until then, please do feel free to offer up suggestions on the minimum for each event. This should be a dollar figure based on current selling prices of the wines. That being said, there will be "best effort" to obtain fine bottles for each event. But if one person offers up a $1000 bottle and another a $750 bottle, there will be no compensatory payments in either direction. This will be solely based on individual's personal generosity.

Sound good? If you have a better idea, I am all ears. Speak now or ...

[Mark L]

Thanks a million, Roy! It all sounds great to me.

It had previously been suggested $300 min for the 'lower bar' and $600 min for the 'higher bar'

It's probably a decent place to start. We could possibly inch the higher bar up a bit... maybe a $300 and a $700 ? I realize my original intent of the "lower bar" tasting was to make the tasting more accessible to a broader group of people, but it sounds like the VAST majority of people will be attending BOTH tastings... so at this point, the difference in price point is actually more about creating a totally new group of flights for all of us to try.

I also agree that it is simplest to keep compensatory finagling or adjustments out of it. If the minimum is $600, and I bring a bottle valued at $900, I should not expect a check coming my way from someone who brought a less expensive bottle.

If we are hard-fast with the minimums, then we'll surely be getting wonderful wines that will exceed the minimums; and we will all be proud and thankful for all the wines to grace our palate. After all, what better group of people to share an amazing bottle from your collection with than a room full of madeira lovers?

Can't wait!

[Marc R]

I agree that it all sounds great, and the price points make sense to really have the experience be wonderful enough to support the travel effort/cost for some that it appear may be coming from far away.

[Reidar Andersen]

Thanks a billion.. Looks great...

[Roy Hersh]

Yikes, now late in the game, I am being pushed hard re: corkage fees. Might be a deal breaker but I'll wait 24 hours to go back at this issue and will quickly look at options, just in case. Too much work into this already, so I hope a compromise can be reached.

[Mark L]

I hope they aren't trying to pull the whole $60 per bottle corkage fee on you, Roy, considering the business you are giving them!

[Roy Hersh]

Would rather not air dirty laundry here, but let's just say that I am glad I have not yet signed a contract.

[Reidar Andersen]

Maybe we should post hotel tips, so those at the same hotel can plan taxi for the first tasting ? Like we did at TTTT..

No good deals, so I am at Hilton Financial District ( formerly Holiday Inn )... Near Chinatown... One year ago we had much better prices...

But it is always smart to check the hotel you have booked for lower prices closer to arrival.. Then you, cancel and rebook....

[Roy Hersh]

Although at the end, the restaurant was willing to waive corkage, mysteriously that morphed into a $1500 charge for using the space during the day time and includes nothing beyond servers. That raised the price to over $300 per person including dinners, seriously putting me in a "lose situation" which I found unacceptable. They took a hard stance and would not let us use the room without paying this charge even though I told them it was a deal breaker. Today I just went back and gave them the official "TBNT."

Calling in all SF-based resources (from Bay area winery owner friends) in the past 24 hours, I've now been in touch with two outstanding restaurants ... but I'll now only use one of them, and will have this wrapped by in the coming week. Lesson learned. The requests for proposal already have been launched with the two new venues, and should elicit responses by Monday.

Thanks for being patient while this all gets reworked from scratch which is frustrating, but I won't let us get ripped off like that and I do have your backs! I know you are likely upset to read this on again, off again nonsense, but if you give me a week ... I can assure you this will all work out. Lots of extra work, but what else is new?

Thanks for understanding!

[Eric Menchen]

I'm not even going, but I want to post a "like" for Roy on this.

[Bret Davis]

Agreed. Roy, thanks for all of your work and heavy lifting on this!

[Marc R]

We appreciate you fighting for all of us. It's going you be a great weekend whatever the final location.

[Llyn Strelau]

Roy thank you for leading the battle.
If you want me to contact the Marine club for a possible backup I can do so on Monday.
Llyn

[Roy Hersh]

Thanks guys, starting over has been really painful. Fortunately, I have two excellent venues to choose from now. I've been to one about three years ago when they were still new, and it has amazing food but is kind of out of the way, so I am keeping it as a reserve for now. I have reached out to both, but have a strong preference for the other which is more centrally located (by comparison). We'll see how they play nice. So far so good and we understand one another's overall issues. Monday or Tuesday latest, they'll make their proposal and we'll see how it goes. I know others who say the food is excellent (Italian) but we may wind up having to order dinner wines off the list as their corkage (none for the Madeira) at dinner would be $30/bottle. Ouch. Anyway, so far, that is the only draw back. More anon.

I appreciate your support and understanding.

[Timothy B.]

Thanks for doing all this, Roy.

I'll say the Italian restaurant is no issue for me, because with two full days of tasting fortified wine, I'd be fine completely passing on wine with dinner.

Also, all you are going through makes me think that I'd be happy to host a tasting in So Cal. Then the only issues are glass rental and catering in dinner.