For The Love Of Port

Yesterday evening a new port club was founded in Aarhus, by me and a friend.

We will kick off with a 10YO tawny blind tasting (known producers) to keep things simple and accessible for everyone as inspired by this thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=38814

We are expecting somewhere around 25-30 people.

I have a couple of practical questions I was hoping you more experienced chaps could assist with:

A)
How many difference producers would you recommend for such an evening (2-3) hours? And which?

B)
Depending on your answer in A, would you separate into x number of flights?

C)
We have a very limited amount of stem-ware. How would you go about handling the pouring if every participant only has 1 glass? (Pre pour in disposable cups and then people can clean their glass with water and transfer from the plastic cup to the wine glass themselves?)

D)
Which condiments would you recommend to go with the wine. White bread as a palate cleanser? Anything else

E)
Which point system can you recommend?



Really looking forward to kicking things off in my city and spreading the word about port.

Cheers

My thoughts about how to set up the evening would be that it would be a less formal tasting and more like a focused "party" of sorts.

I'd set out 4-6 wines, anonymized, on a table. Once the guests have arrived, I'd give a quick run through of basically what they're there to taste and what it is (a quick primer on how it's made, aged, blended), that each person will have a single glass, and they can move at their own speed to come back to the table to try each wine in any order. The table will also have some sort of measurement system for them to make sure they're only pouring a set amount to sample. There will be paper to vote for their top 2 or 3 (depending how many wines you have) and to record impressions of the wines. At the end, you'll reveal the wines and which won the voting. If you're up for hosting further, people can hang around and revisit the leftover wines and converse further.

As this is a less formal tasting setting, I'd have the standard bread or crackers, water etc. but I'd also have some complementary snacks, perhaps some cheese, nuts, small pastry things, or whatever else might be popular. Part of the fun people will have is trying some of wine 2, and then trying wine 2 after some cashews and noticing the difference.

Hopefully, at the end of the evening, people will have had some good conversation, expended some thought as to the taste of the wines, and had the point driven home that the wines are delicious, reasonably priced, and that they should come to your tastings more often for further port-taculars!


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I agree with Brad 100%

Hey guys and thanks for your input. I really appreciate it.

I think we will start off the night with an introduction to this new club and what the focus and agenda of it will be.

Then we are so lucky that 2 retailers, where one of them is Peter Skov (Some here will know him), has donated a couple of bottles and suggested that they could tell us a little about Porto, Port, the Douro valley and 10 year old tawnies to set the stage.

I think we will have a slightly higher number than 4-6 wines because of the amount of donations and the different producers that we want to include. I think me and my accomplice will handle the pouring duties for each producers but that solves the issue about stem ware, as we will only need 1 glass per person and some water + spit bucket to rinse.

Maybe you are right about just letting people vote for their top3 in each the night, but I think I will also include a option that they can try and guess the producers just for the fun of it. Then at the end of the night reveal the results and the WOTN

1 thing I really would like your input on is how much a tasting pour should contain? Be cause the affects the amount of bottles we need. We are aiming for a tasting of 30 people. I was thinking to buy 2 of each bottle. That is 150 cl of each producers which is 150 cl / 30 people = 5 cl / person. Is that really sufficient to satisfy people?

Cheers

For most people, especially people that don't regularly drink/taste a lot of wine, 1.6ish ounces of Port X 6+ Ports is enough to wear most novices out. Considering most folks don't spit, it's enough to get many people a bit buzzed, so to speak. Factoring in that most gathering have some last minute cancellations from attendees, that's probably enough to go around. You can always have an extra bottle or two handy if you're worried folks won't have something to savor after the reveal and vote tallying.


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Two bottles for 30 sounds reasonable. You might have a few cancel, as Brad mentioned. Also, these bottles won't have sediment, so you won't be losing that last bit compared to old Vintage Ports. You will need to be careful with the pours.

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I would not have people try to guess the producers. I find this to be a most difficult task, makes most feel like they know nothing and are failures for not "getting it"--especially for newbies. Just stick with the rest and everyone will feel positive about the night.

John M. wrote:I would not have people try to guess the producers. I find this to be a most difficult task, makes most feel like they know nothing and are failures for not "getting it"--especially for newbies. Just stick with the rest and everyone will feel positive about the night.

You can still serve blind just to remove label bias (I don't think John is suggesting otherwise), but the point here about guessing is valid for newbies. Even us oldies don't have a high hit rate on the guessing.

Eric Menchen wrote:

John M. wrote:I would not have people try to guess the producers. I find this to be a most difficult task, makes most feel like they know nothing and are failures for not "getting it"--especially for newbies. Just stick with the rest and everyone will feel positive about the night.

You can still serve blind just to remove label bias (I don't think John is suggesting otherwise), but the point here about guessing is valid for newbies. Even us oldies don't have a high hit rate on the guessing.

I realize that and acknowledge the point. I think I will just include it as an optional field on the rating paper that they can make guess if they wish to do so. I think grown people can handle the fact it would be hard even for a pro to get more than 2-3 right ones. At least that is how I see it.