ThePortForum.com

The Ards peninsula! Well. If you're near Belfast perhaps I can distract you for a night. I may be able to attend on the 31st. A distraction would have been manna from heaven. Alas, neither time nor protocol allow for any such escapades. The Easter weekend will be spent eating incinerated roast beef...

Realizing that the proposed date follows hot on the heels of the tasting on 26th March and that this is the Easter week when people may have retreat to their chalets, cottages, country piles or whatever, is there any interest in an informal gathering on Tuesday 31st March? I have been busy with work...

Thanks Phil, very interesting. I always use muslin which is folded a few times into a small sieve (approx. 6 cm diam.) and whilst i have not conducted any real tests, at least not of comparable quality to yours, i have always been pleased with the results. 1. The muslin captures the sediment, even o...

Sadly my attendance has become impossible. Please remove me from the list.

It should be drinking perfectly now (provided it has been stored well) but will not benefit from further aging as it has been filtered and fined to remove the solid matter from the wine that needs to be there for any wine to evolve into something better. Two apologies before i start; firstly for th...

Croftian or Croftesque both work fairly well.

djewesbury wrote:Ugh. I hate Malbec. I never touch New World wines. Did I mention, can't stand Malbec.

Perchance a Cahors would float your boat?

I'll skip ahead to the end point:

2015 - there was weather, wines were made. Best of the 21st century if the middlemen are to be believed.

djewesbury wrote: Be VERY careful what you say about things that are old, decrepit, technically outdated and generally unfit for purpose. How do you think we all end up here?

My post relates to dwellings only but can of course be extended to include other "things" as one may deem appropriate.

Paint method is best. Use liquid wax resist and small paint brush (like those used for airplane modelling) to seal top of neck. Let paint dry thoroughly before removing wax with hair dryer (or paint removing gun) and then wipe clean. I'd take Foster's architecture over that of jug ears any day but t...

Another wildcatter out fracturing the earth's crust? Are my bottles at Vinotheque unharmed? Will pork pie production in nearby Melton Mowbray grind to a halt and if so, will TPF's northwestern piemaker be able to fill the void.

On a positive or practical note, at least i chose the right thread for my plethora of grammatical and logical errors. Must have saved people time when quoting.

Well said and i can but agree even though i am not au fait with all details and intricacies concerning academic life, education policies etc.

This topic is a well-beaten horse but it seems the old nag just refuses to die...

1. I think this has more to do with government policy toward third level education than any supposed problems at second level. But anyway, yes, that's why I said it was a perpetual problem. As in more unis equals dilution of the student brain pool? I would not disagree with that per se but would pr...

Two quick tongue-in-cheek thoughts on DJ's lamentation above: 1. It is in the nature of those who are not young to worry about and to decry the abilities of those who are. This has gone on for millennia. 2. I suspect your population sample is small, biased and unrepresentative of the young populatio...

I too like trees, which is why I noticed the the handle. Fortunately Somerset's full of them, not too many Aspen though. It's the noise and the quivering that intrigue me about them. One of my most effective ways of dealing with stress and troublesome questions is to walk through the beech woods wi...

It's the Aspen. Isn't there a bit of mythology about why it trembles? Purely a rhetorical question I shall look it up myself. Indeed the Aspen. What can i say, i like trees, the smell, sound and colour of a forest, different depending on the predominating specie, season and time of day etc. Beats h...

I realise that you may well be looking higher-end, but in case of interest my Riesling picks of the last year (with price in euros in [] after the name) were as follows: # Georg Breuer Terra Montosa 2004 [20.00] : Full, golden, minerals and green apples, tart sharp, honey finish - Georg Breuer: in ...

Robert Weil is indeed overpriced, but so is Meyer-Näkel in my view (the RW of the Ahr). I will send you a longer PM over the weekend with some suggestions concerning the Ahr and the Rheingau. Agree that M-N is not exactly cheap but it seems to me that top German Spätburgunder never is and also, not...

Answers are quite simple: Ahr: Meyer-Näkel, bought on a whim one might say. Have not tried any others. Rheinhessen: I like Wittmann's GGs and Keller's GGs as well as other wines from K. Have not tried Rheingau and the only big name that springs (to my somewhat narrow) mind is R Weil whose wines alwa...

Have done a quick and dirty rundown of the wines i keep in storage at Vinotheque and the numbers came up as follows, all based on 75cl bottle equivalents: (rounding errors are mine) Countries Austria 1.10% France 25.33% Germany 25.63% Italy 8.83% (of which 14% is from Tuscany, rest is from Piemonte)...

Why can't certain things be allowed to remain mysteries like how does the graphite get crammed into pencils or how are bucatini made?

It seems to me that even a perfect formula for half bottle maturation is still a less satisfactory method than that of pulling a cork on periodic sample bottles.

djewesbury wrote:The Wine Society accidentally sold me something Australian

I would be curious to know who caused the accident? TWS are usually on the ball in my view.

Don't most storage facilities offer single bottle withdrawals nowadays?

If you can't pick and mix, then do what Julian suggested and get both out in their entirety.

Thank you for digging these out and posting them, most fascinating. I suppose i don't need to ask you to keep it up, but please do.

Also, what is the intended outcome from collecting these? Are you creating a database of all port sold at Christie's and if so, what will this be used for?