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Can't be long before we'll need a 2021 thread started. After a rush of declarations in the middle of the last decade, we've now had a rather long wait for a classic vintage. The early indications on both '21 and '22 suggest that both years worked well for some producers, but not all - so are we goin...

Are you looking for contributions towards the line-up? I can comfortably bring down up to eight bottles on the day, more is a bit of a struggle, unless we have an intermediate event that I can use to drop bottles off. Big question to decide is whether to include the Nacional or not. Whilst the tast...

Booking now confirmed for Thursday May 25th.

Need to fix a date for this - Tues May 16th - Thurs May 18th or Tues May 23rd - Thurs May 25th looks promising.

Any dates in those windows difficult for anyone?

F80 in my book is an OK VP, but far from typical for a Fonseca and trades for well above its worth.

W80 is typically 10% cheaper, and 100% better.

What airline carries it? I know Lufthansa has Graham's TWAIOA and LBV Lufthansa used to, but they seem to skip around the producers - they were heavily into Niepoort for a while, and I think they served me Taylor once. Thai has always had Warre, and IIRC it was also on board Turkish and EVA when I ...

Warre have two LBV offerings - the blue foil bottle aged variety that we tend to see most of, and a young red foil offering with T stopper that seems to be mostly, but not exclusively, sold to airlines. I surmise that the blue foil variant is by far the biggest seller, but I don't know that for a fa...

Unable to make Feb 7th alas..

Although the rules say 4th year after harvest as the earliest bottling date, which I would assume is Jan 1st, nothing ever seems to get to market before the second half of that year. Niepoort is usually quick off the blocks but most of the others drag their feet - as of today, only 4 of the 75 LBVs ...

I’m really pleased to see this project still continuing! Need to make sure I get hold of a bottle of the new one.

If you missed out on getting the first edition Jacob, I have three dozen in bond (in cases of three) - could spare a case..

I had just assumed it was a Bomfim because, well, 1964 wasn't a good year. Not a bad year either - all my encounters have been good. The producers were so signed up to declare '63 after the '63 harvest, I don't think they gave '64 a chance. I've never seen a D64 offered, but I do have the extremely...

Well we had a great night and (smug attack..) was very pleased to see my bottle, revealed as Tuke Holdsworth '22, get one of the best WOTN scores ever. But the clean up has been a chore.. - the liquid chalk used to mark the glasses does not wash off easily as I expected, but worse, the pub's water s...

12 decanters washed and ready, decanter chains packed. Have hammer, funnels, gauzes

Rather disappointing, my local cheese shop was closed today so my planned cheese hasn’t happened

I invested forty quid at a cheese shop in Buntingford yesterday - curiously run by another T Archer - so no worries

Four cheeses, 100% English

We have about 55 glasses - so should be OK

Take care guys - we've had a tiny bit of a thaw this afternoon, but it's now freezing again - there's some really slippery ice around.

Would you like me to also bring a rack of 24 glasses?

We've probably got enough, but the odd casualty dwindles their number, if you could pack them for now, I'll check when I go over to get ready in an hour's time.

Tasting notes and other sheets about to be printed…

Excellent - will you bring tongs?

On the subject of collecting - I put a very keen bid in on one lot at Keys in Norfolk, and threw in a couple of shot to nothing bids as well. The long shots came home but not the one I was after.. - I will probably trundle up there on Wednesday to collect, and will have a lot of spare space in the c...

The centenarian bottle I am pulling for the Xmas bash next week will reduce the average of the VP in my cellar by 3 days, 20hrs and 20 minutes..

@ Tom - if it's not an imposition pease could I start with just a green salad? I didn't do sufficient justice to my massive fillet steak last year. Could you possibly bring your own, or ask the Indian restaurant just down the road? We don't stock salad ingredients in the pub and I don't do rabbit f...

I will start getting the usual food order together tomorrow unless anyone has an issue:

Smoked salmon
14oz fillet steak + chips
Vanilla ice cream and gravy
Stollen slices
A selection of British cheeses + biscuits

It's an old school auction house mostly selling local stuff to local people - always been friendly when I've dealt with them.

In normal mechanical filtration, ever smaller gaps leave ever smaller particles free to pass through. However, the particles that form fine hazes are too small to be mechanically screened, so in wine making, fining agents, that serve to agglomerate fine particles are used. However, there is a third ...

Trafalgar day 2022 My initial assessment of the 2020 port vintage, its inclusion in my rolling evaluation of the sixty most recent vintages, and my updated full vintage rankings. This year we say goodbye to the 1960 vintage, a vintage that was quite widely declared, yet was overshadowed in its earl...