What a wonderfully incredible month October has already been!
I began this month with my annual Port wine trip to Portugal with our For The Love of Port tour, spending four days in Oporto visiting the Port Lodges, and then travelling the 100 miles up the Douro River for four days, visiting 7 Quintas over the remaining four days. The harvest was in full swing while we were there, and there was considerable buzz not only about the 2008 harvest being picked, but also the developing quality of the 2007 vintage that has been in casks for a year. For the wine lovers and Port fans, my tally for the week was 176 wines, ranging from two 1937 colheita Ports to 2007 Ports sampled directly from the barrels, to even a few 2008 wines, whose grapes were literally crushed hours prior. Other highlights included a once-in-a-lifetime dinner at the fabled Factory House with some of the luminaries of the Port industry and being able to once again climb into the big stone lagares at Quinta do Crasto and actually do some grape-stompin’ myself. We had a great group travelling with us, and it was a very memorable return to Portugal for me.
After Portugal, my lovely girlfriend Jody met me in London, and we spent the next few days enjoying the London sights and culture. We saw “Wicked” in London’s West End, and attended another Port tasting. After a week of drinking Port, you would think that I’d be looking forward to a break, but this monumental tasting of some of the great Ports from Cockburns could not be missed. The 23 Ports on the day’s tasting agenda included Cockburns Ports from 1896, bottles from every declared vintage, 2007 cask samples, and even a bottle from the non-declared 1977 vintage, which basically doesn’t officially exist. It was provided from the private reserves of Cockburn’s winemaker, who joined us for the event from Portugal and added absolutely wonderful commentary about the wines throughout the night.
How could one top such a week and a half? A surprise trip to Venice for Jody, who thought all along that we were just going to spend “a few days in Scotland” after London. The weather was warm and perfect, the city was absolutely magical, and as the final exclamation on an unforgettable two weeks, we got engaged at dusk in the plaza of San Marco, steps from bank of Venice’s Grand Canal.
For October’s Poem of the Month, I give you a selection from the prose Poet Louis Jenkins…
Louis Jenkins
(1942 – )
Flight
Past mishaps might be attributed to an incomplete understanding of the laws of aerodynamics or perhaps even to a more basic failure of the imagination, but were to be expected. Remember, this is solo flight unencumbered by bicycle parts, aluminum and nylon or even feathers. A tour de force, really. There’s a lot of running and flapping involved and as you get older and heavier, a lot more huffing and puffing. But on a bright day like today with a strong headwind blowing up from the sea, when, having slipped the surly bonds of common sense and knowing she is watching, waiting in breathless anticipation, you send yourself hurtling down the long, green slope to the cliffs, who knows? You might just make it.
