November 6th - London Port Offline - Details of the Day
Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2005 1:11 am
OK folks. We now have 12 people who have said they will attend the tasting I am organising in London on the afternoon of Sunday November 6th. This is the number I was aiming for, so I am really pleased. We can probably squeeze one or two more people round the table if anyone is desperately keen to be there, just let me know.
The venue will be the Crusting Pipe wine bar in central Covent Garden (one of the Davy's wine bar chain). The manager there is a VP fan and will be joining us for the tasting. I also like the Port theme in the name and the fact that Ian (the manager) offers a wider selection of VP's by the glass than I normally find in a wine bar - Dow 1970 by the glass, for example! Nearest tube stations are Covent Garden (Piccadilly Line), Leicester Square (Piccadilly Line and Northern Line) or Charing Cross (Northern Line and Bakerloo Line). The full address of the Crusting Pipe is 27 The Market, Covent Garden, WC2E 8RD. Essentially, it is a sunken courtyard in the middle of the market square. You can access their website through http://www.davy.co.uk and then selecting the Crusting Pipe from the wine bar drop down menu.
Cost will be £50 each, payable on the day. This will cover the venue costs, a three course meal, glass hire, bottled water and corkage. In addition, each person will need to bring with them an opened and decanted bottle of VP (check it's not corked when you decant it). I will work through the private message system to agree with each person attending which wine they will bring. More on this further down the posting.
Dress code will be casual. I will be in jeans and my trusty dark red shirt.
I will visit the Crusting Pipe on Thursday and will pick up a menu, which I will post on the forum for people to review. If you have any special dietary requirements, then please let me know as soon as possible.
The theme for the day will be "Four Decades On - Give or Take". The intention is that we will taste wines from the same four producers from each of the vintages 1963, 1966 and 1970. This will allow us not only to look for the "house style" that each label works for but also to compare vintages against each other. Please would you drop me a private message through the forum to let me know which wines you have from these vintages where you would be willing to contribute a bottle for the tasting. I will then take on the challenge of shuffling the emails to try and come out with the same four producers for the entire tasting. I'll start the ball rolling by saying that I can contribute one of the following bottles: 1963 Taylors, 1963 Fonseca, 1963 Sandeman or 1966 Fonseca. I hang my head in shame and confess that I have no wines from 1970!
We will aim to start at 2pm with the meal. (Derek and Jo are having to travel quite a distance to get to London and so will be relying on the rail system to deliver them to King's Cross on time to be able to make a 2pm start - having our meal first gives them the chance to be delayed a little but not to miss out on the tasting. If they arrive on time then we may eat each course of the meal between each of the flights of wine). We will follow the meal with the tasting in the form of three flights of four wines with each flight corresponding to each vintage.
After that comes the opportunity for free-form gossip. We have our table until the restaurant closes at 8pm and have to leave the venue entirely when the wine bar closes at 9pm. I would estimate that we would have finished the tasting by 5pm so if people had far to travel or had to leave shortly after 5pm, that should not be a problem.
And finally, if the day is a success, I will try to organise another tasting in Spring 2006 to coincide with Roy's next visit to London. The theme of that tasting will be "A Complete Vertical of 13 Vintages of Vesuvio - 1989 to 2003".
Alex
The venue will be the Crusting Pipe wine bar in central Covent Garden (one of the Davy's wine bar chain). The manager there is a VP fan and will be joining us for the tasting. I also like the Port theme in the name and the fact that Ian (the manager) offers a wider selection of VP's by the glass than I normally find in a wine bar - Dow 1970 by the glass, for example! Nearest tube stations are Covent Garden (Piccadilly Line), Leicester Square (Piccadilly Line and Northern Line) or Charing Cross (Northern Line and Bakerloo Line). The full address of the Crusting Pipe is 27 The Market, Covent Garden, WC2E 8RD. Essentially, it is a sunken courtyard in the middle of the market square. You can access their website through http://www.davy.co.uk and then selecting the Crusting Pipe from the wine bar drop down menu.
Cost will be £50 each, payable on the day. This will cover the venue costs, a three course meal, glass hire, bottled water and corkage. In addition, each person will need to bring with them an opened and decanted bottle of VP (check it's not corked when you decant it). I will work through the private message system to agree with each person attending which wine they will bring. More on this further down the posting.
Dress code will be casual. I will be in jeans and my trusty dark red shirt.
I will visit the Crusting Pipe on Thursday and will pick up a menu, which I will post on the forum for people to review. If you have any special dietary requirements, then please let me know as soon as possible.
The theme for the day will be "Four Decades On - Give or Take". The intention is that we will taste wines from the same four producers from each of the vintages 1963, 1966 and 1970. This will allow us not only to look for the "house style" that each label works for but also to compare vintages against each other. Please would you drop me a private message through the forum to let me know which wines you have from these vintages where you would be willing to contribute a bottle for the tasting. I will then take on the challenge of shuffling the emails to try and come out with the same four producers for the entire tasting. I'll start the ball rolling by saying that I can contribute one of the following bottles: 1963 Taylors, 1963 Fonseca, 1963 Sandeman or 1966 Fonseca. I hang my head in shame and confess that I have no wines from 1970!
We will aim to start at 2pm with the meal. (Derek and Jo are having to travel quite a distance to get to London and so will be relying on the rail system to deliver them to King's Cross on time to be able to make a 2pm start - having our meal first gives them the chance to be delayed a little but not to miss out on the tasting. If they arrive on time then we may eat each course of the meal between each of the flights of wine). We will follow the meal with the tasting in the form of three flights of four wines with each flight corresponding to each vintage.
After that comes the opportunity for free-form gossip. We have our table until the restaurant closes at 8pm and have to leave the venue entirely when the wine bar closes at 9pm. I would estimate that we would have finished the tasting by 5pm so if people had far to travel or had to leave shortly after 5pm, that should not be a problem.
And finally, if the day is a success, I will try to organise another tasting in Spring 2006 to coincide with Roy's next visit to London. The theme of that tasting will be "A Complete Vertical of 13 Vintages of Vesuvio - 1989 to 2003".
Alex
