L B V +

At last night’s tasting, Sweet Wines from around the World, the only ‘blind’ sweetie I actually got right out of the 8 wines tasted, was Taylor’s delicious L. B. V. 2016.  My neighbour, at the table, asked me what it meant? I asked what?..‘LBV’! 

So of course I had to explain. Lesbian Bi-Vegan or something like that. ‘No, he says, the wine’. Ah, in that case it means Late Bottled Vintage (Port) to be precise. Dear reader, if you have not drunk any L.B.V. for a while now, I can tell you it’s quite a good suprise. Soft blueberries and violets, creamy and warming black fruits. I forgot how good L.B.V. can be and it wont dent your wallet too badly either. Since around & pre-1970, if you wanted to drink Vintage Port you may have had to wait 25-30 years, or at least drink a vintage from your birthyear. But thanks to the genius of Alistair Robertson, the gent who took over the reins on Taylor Fladgate in the late 1960s. He came up with this idea of an L.B.V. aimed for the Asian and N.American markets, who could not get their little heads, or pallets, around Vintage Port and it’s intricacies. The only market in the world that substanciated the Vintage Port market was dear old Great Britain. I guess it still is to a certain extent. What other kind of wine can you buy these days that is super drinkable and was made, maybe, in 1963 or 1966 and all are available still in 2020 for a few hundred quid. Unbeatable!

Housekeeping: Most of our dear customers who have purchased and followed us on the Zalto glassware story from the beginning, will know that we still import the whole range direct from the factory in GmunD. As you may know the glasses are entirely mouth-blown. It takes two workers to make one glass and through the chaos of 2020/21, Austrian C-19 restrictions meant that only 50% of each team were able to work at any one time. This was primarily due to social distancing laws, but also meant that there was a workforce at home should the bug have breached the factory gates/walls and enforced a 10 day isolation period for the Zalto staff. The timing, of course, could not have been worst as demand was at an all-time high. Production was of course halved and Zalto began this year 2022, with a total loss of one full year’s production of glasses, and a 12 month backlog on orders. Yesterday, we received our latest shipment of Zaltos, ordered in January this year, and I want to thank Claudia and her Zalto team a lot for this. For whatever reason, and a good one for us, we where put on the top of the list for orders. There are much much bigger fish than us in the sea for these glasses, and I am chuffed to bits that some of our orders are now being fulfilled this week, as I type. Bravissimo! Zalto and thank you our clients & customers for all of your patience with this. “Joyeux Quatorze Juillet”

“I no longer feel acutely the desire for progeny which was very acute once; and since I became a Christian I feel that the only difficulty I should have in a monastic life….would be the deprivation of French tobacco”  Thomas Stearns Eliot