I first contacted this year’s Decanter Hall of Fame laureate, Dirk Niepoort, 36 years ago. By letter. Yes, that’s how things were done in 1987. I was drafting a little book on Port and had written to all the shippers. One replied personally, with a friendly letter of his own: Dirk.
He was 23 at the time, making his first steps with the family company, unknown in the UK; I was 31 and trying to get a