On the 9th of February, I was in touch with Herman's wife Elly to see how he was doing and sent a photo of a Port from 1939 which I knew was his birth year. I learned that Herman's aggressive brain tumor had stolen his ability to speak and his memory was failing rapidly. Elly showed him the graphic of the bottle, and I hope he smiled, but she let me know that he was not able to respond.
We were in touch often, a few years before FTLOP was born, when I used to write about Port and Madeira for Robin Garr's website and he would always publish links to them. I loved his site and gleaned lots of great news and especially his digested version of IVP (back then) info on sales volumes and value. It was a tremendous resource and Herman devoted untold hours to pass along information to thousands who visited his site. I learned a lot from it back in the day. None of it was done for money, it was truly Herman's passion during his later years and he was sad when he had to stop putting out his monthly updates just over a year ago.
I was thrilled to arrange a meet up with he and Elly in the Douro during our 2006 Port Harvest Tour, after a fine day at Vargellas and Vesuvio. Lots of FTLOP'ers were on that tour, including Derek, Alex, Chris G., Stewart, David, Andy, Jay and others ... this was where they all met one another, on this trip. I had only met our Brit friends a year earlier after the very first FTLOP tour in 2005. Anyway, we had a noisy dinner across the river from Vesuvio after a most memorable boat ride in the dark and I do mean DARK on our way to meet this couple. Meeting Herman and Elly was such a great pleasure after years of emails back and forth and seemingly missing one another in Portugal on several occasions by days or a week. So it was a great privilege when we finally met, even though we never expected what was going to take place. At the restaurant which is adjacent to Quinta Senhora da Ribeira, the harvest crew came in and had just finished their last day of picking and night of treading. They were having fun, drunk heavily and were wild and loud and danced and played instruments, so hearing the quiet and charismatic man that was Herman, was difficult for all of us. I should look at my old computer to see if I have photos from that night. I believe I do, but would have to check as that was nearly seven years and many tours ago.
I knew from Elly's email a couple of weeks ago, that the end was near and it was very sad to read. As David mentioned, for Port lovers, the archived material of Herman's; will remain available thanks to the foresight and work of Derek. My thoughts go out to Elly and after a few days, I will likely email her with a link to this thread, so she can see how much impact her husband had on many of us here who shared their love of the Douro and Port.
Thank you to Derek for passing along the sad news.
Herman will be missed.
On Monday night, as Derek mentioned, I will lift a glass of fine Port in Herman's honor and in memory of a man who deeply loved Portugal and its most famous wine. I hope others will do the same!