London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

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DRT
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by DRT »

AHB wrote:My experience with Vargellas is limited, but my experiments over 2-3 days with the occasional bottle would indicate that they can take a hefty decant time. Midnight before the tasting would be fine for me!
Having re-read my one and only TN for the Vargellas 1965 I think I will open that bottle 24 hours before the tasting.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by WS1 »

Hi, Ho

hope the 91 Vargallas will be shipped in time. Looks all good at the moment. With regards to decanting times of Vargallas I think we should open the bts at least 1 day in advance. Decanting is another thing but at least the bt should be opened before hand.
With regards to decanting time I would like to recomend decanting them about 2h before we drink/try them after they have been open at least for a day. My experience with Vargallas is limited, know only the 1995, which is a port I like very much. Usually I find them better a day after haveing opened the bt. My usual strategy is to open them, try a glass, rekork the bt or leave it open and continue the next day. That works best. Decanting it for 24h has also its merits but destroys the "punch/attack" a bit in my eyes. Despite you get more complexity with very long decanting but the "brut force" appearance, which is also appealing, at least for me, is lost/reduced.

regards

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Alex Bridgeman
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by Alex Bridgeman »

How about an agreement that you decant when you think appropriate / possible for the bottle you are bringing, but make a note of how and when the bottle was opened and decanted?

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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by WS1 »

Will do, it is highly likely that I will open the bt 24h in advance if the 91 Vargallas is shipped in time if not told otherwise. Can we do the Decanting at the Crusting pipe? I will ask Axel what he recomend with regards to his 1996. Have you got any experience with the 1991/1996?

regards

Wolfgang
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by jdaw1 »

Please could the placemat-maker (hereby assumed to be me) have a simple noddy guide as to what is being drunk by whom?
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by benread »

Wolfgang,

Decanting at TCP is no problem. Alex always has his portable kit to hand and TCP always have suitable jugs or simply old port bottles suitable for decanting into.

Regards,
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by benread »

jdaw1 wrote:Please could the placemat-maker (hereby assumed to be me) have a simple noddy guide as to what is being drunk by whom?
Julian,

I think Jacob may take on this task for this tasting. Either way, the original post has been updated to reflect the current state of play. I am still waiting for confirmation of 2 attendees although I am fairly certain one or the other will be bringing the 1978!
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by jdaw1 »

benread wrote:I think Jacob may take on this task for this tasting.
Works for me. Jacob: please confirm that it works for you.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by JacobH »

jdaw1 wrote:
benread wrote:I think Jacob may take on this task for this tasting.
Works for me. Jacob: please confirm that it works for you.
I will do my best :)
WS1 wrote:Will do, it is highly likely that I will open the bt 24h in advance if the 91 Vargallas is shipped in time if not told otherwise. Can we do the Decanting at the Crusting pipe? I will ask Axel what he recomend with regards to his 1996. Have you got any experience with the 1991/1996?
The last time I opened a '96 I wrote that I thought it would reach perfection at 12 hours. But that was from a half-bottle so it might have been a bit more mature, and it was certainly a very enjoyable experience on opening and at 24 hours.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by Axel P »

I would go for 12 hrs on the 96 and for 24 hrs on the 91.

I will open my half 91 in Germany as my birthday Port and sing me a little birthday song with it.

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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by benread »

Original post updated with latest attendees and confirmed bottles.

Only Ghandhi remains unaccounted for - both in terms of attendance and (if so) bottle!
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by Ghandih »

Hi Ben,

I will broach the subject this weekend with Mrs G, and let you know on Monday, if not before. Sorry for the delay...

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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by JacobH »

Some early thoughts about placemats.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by JacobH »

JacobH wrote:Some early thoughts about placemats.
(Which may not be available between 1500 and 1800 GMT tomorrow due to my webhost doing some work).
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by jdaw1 »

JacobH wrote:Some early thoughts about placemats.
GuildfordDemo-Normal appears to be a sans-serif typeface, in which the digit 1 is an unadorned vertical line. That means spacing between a 1 and any digit looks much wider than the spacing between any non-1 pair of digits. Me no likey.

Also, the Circlearrays don’t match the Titles (look at the ’87 and ’91).

Not quite full marks for your spelling of Niepoort.

Bottom left, most printers will fail to print the tail of the Q as it is too close to the edge of the paper.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by jdaw1 »

And which method did you choose for the Vargellas logo?
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by JacobH »

jdaw1 wrote:
JacobH wrote:Some early thoughts about placemats.
GuildfordDemo-Normal appears to be a sans-serif typeface, in which the digit 1 is an unadorned vertical line. That means spacing between a 1 and any digit looks much wider than the spacing between any non-1 pair of digits. Me no likey.
True; I might redo their kerning pairs (I presume that Postscript respects the kerning in the font?). The reason it’s a bit off is that the font is the closest I could find to a free version of Gill Sans, the typeface used for a while on Vargellas logos.
jdaw1 wrote:Also, the Circlearrays don’t match the Titles (look at the ’87 and ’91).

Not quite full marks for your spelling of Niepoort.

Bottom left, most printers will fail to print the tail of the Q as it is too close to the edge of the paper.
i) Typo; will fix.
ii) Ditto.
iii) Should work on the printer I intend to use but, in any case, most people use Adobe Reader to print which results in the page being shrunk in any case, irrespective of whether the author intended it.
jdaw1 wrote:And which method did you choose for the Vargellas logo?
The method was quite simple: I produced the logo I wanted, traced it in Inkscape to turn it into an SVG and replaced a glyph within the font (I went for the À) with the SVG in FontForge. A (bit of a) hack, and only effective with smallish monochrome logos, but it seemed to work in this case!
Last edited by JacobH on 23:27 Sat 07 Mar 2009, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by JacobH »

Also, amusingly, the ‟Demo” nature of the GuildfordDemo was demonstrated by them swapping the A and Ã… glyphs!A cunning, if slightly odd plan!
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by Alex Bridgeman »

Would it be possible to include the name of the person bringing the bottle in the circle marking the space for the relevant glass as well as the name of the port?
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by JacobH »

AHB wrote:Would it be possible to include the name of the person bringing the bottle in the circle marking the space for the relevant glass as well as the name of the port?
Yes; I’m currently correcting the mistakes spotted by jdaw1 (including faking the kerning of the 1s in the main date) so I’ll add that, too.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by JacobH »

JacobH wrote:
AHB wrote:Would it be possible to include the name of the person bringing the bottle in the circle marking the space for the relevant glass as well as the name of the port?
Yes; I’m currently correcting the mistakes spotted by jdaw1 (including faking the kerning of the 1s in the main date) so I’ll add that, too.
Now updated, hopefully with all corrections/emendations thus far.

Notes:
i) The kerning of the dates in the circle array cannot easily be fixed without modifying the font!a possibility put perhaps more trouble than it’s worth.
ii) The names are fairly small because the two ’67; the ’96 and Niepoort require more text. This doesn’t particularly bother me but can be changed if desired.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by jdaw1 »

JacobH wrote:True; I might redo their kerning pairs (I presume that Postscript respects the kerning in the font?).
Errr, looks at feet. Suddenly notices that everybody’s glass is empty: my round same again?

(I call plain show. Advice on kerning and kshow or better would be welcomed.)

But you can kern manually: [(W) {CurrentFontSize -0.07 mul 0 rmoveto} (arre)] works in straight lines and in circles.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by jdaw1 »

JacobH wrote:
jdaw1 wrote:Bottom left, most printers will fail to print the tail of the Q as it is too close to the edge of the paper.
!
iii) Should work on the printer I intend to use but, in any case, most people use Adobe Reader to print which results in the page being shrunk in any case, irrespective of whether the author intended it.
Allowing Acrobat to scale the print post-production always looks terrible.
JacobH wrote:
jdaw1 wrote:And which method did you choose for the Vargellas logo?
The method was quite simple: I produced the logo I wanted, traced it in Inkscape to turn it into an SVG and replaced a glyph within the font (I went for the À) with the SVG in FontForge. A (bit of a) hack, and only effective with smallish monochrome logos, but it seemed to work in this case!
You narg! Please email the PS, and any other useful pieces.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by Alex Bridgeman »

I will happily leave you two kerning away. My only comments would be that I can live with the font of the numeral 1 as it is, but would also observe that it is rather harsh looking against the other numerals, with 1991 looking particularly dominated by the numeral 1 - the 1 almost looks to be taller and bolder than the 9s.

But, my main objective is to know which port I am drinking and the current draft of the placemats will most certainly assist me in that.

Alex
Last edited by Alex Bridgeman on 00:27 Sun 08 Mar 2009, edited 1 time in total.
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2024: Niepoort 1900 Colheita, b.1971. A near perfect Port.
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Re: London Quinta De Vargellas tasting - 24th March

Post by jdaw1 »

And the texture of the circle text would look more even without the ‟+” separators.
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