Non-Vintage Port before 1986

[JacobH]

A little while ago, someone from the Symingtons posted this advert for Croft Port from 1962 (which was reproduced in Sarah Bradford’s “History of Port”) on Twitter.

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I have also been looking at Ned Halley’s “Sandeman: Two Hundred Years of Port and Sherry” which shows an advert from Sandeman from April 1809 offering:

Pᴏʀᴛs..........Firſt quality £34—ſecond £32 ⅌ Pipe, 9 months, ſubject to any extra charge if the French are at Oporto.

The book also has an advert from a happier, pre-Peninsular War days, when a №3 Port could also be had for £29.

Thanks to the work of Julian and others, I think we know a great deal about Vintage Port back to the Waterloo vintage and beyond. However, I was wondering if much is known about the non-vintage Ports?

A few things really strike me about the Croft advert:

• they offered an incredible number of Ports: so many more than now
• whilst the White Ports were still flogged in a manner which would have been familiar to Sandeman 150 years earlier, the red Ports are offered in a bewildering number of categories.

I have a feeling that all of this was stopped by the 1986 regulations which I think were the first time the categories of Port were set down but I might be wrong, does anyone know?

I am also interested in what the Ports actually were. I presume anything advertised for bottling would have thrown a crust whilst the “draught wine” might have been designed to be drunk young. However, were the differences between, say, the “Finest Vintage character”, “Choice wine, Vintage character” and “Very fine Vintage character” just different levels of quality or something else?

Equally, does anyone know what the reference to “dry” in the tawny Ports meant? For example, I wonder what the difference was between the “Fine old Tawny, dry finish”; “Very fine old Tawny”; and “Fine old Tawny, very dry” all of which were basically the same price.

I suppose if you are selling Port by the Pipe rather than in bottles it was easier to make smaller batches, but the fact that each type seems to have had its own mark suggests that they were making these available on a regular basis. Did people just drink a lot more of different Ruby-type Ports than they do today?

[jdaw1]

• whilst the White Ports were still flogged in a manner which would have been familiar to Sandeman 150 years earlier

There are four white Ports, identically described, but not identically priced. They weren’t doing the finest job of the upsale.