Wine Auctioneer

[StuartC]

I recently joined the forum due to its overwhelmingly valuable source of information and clearly passionate group of Port lovers - this is definitely a forum I want to be engaged with! Upon then taking advice of JDAW1, we agreed that I start this thread of posts - which I hope everyone will find equally valuable.

By way of introduction, I'm the director of Wine Auctioneer (www.wineauctioneer.com) and we feature a good number of Ports in our bimonthly, online auctions. I believe our auction site could be potentially useful for ThePortForum members for both your buying and selling of fine, rare and unusual Ports.

Rather than spamming the main Selling Port thread with a barrage of new threads for each potentially-interesting Port we feature, I'll contain such posts in here. I further promise to inform only, no hard selling! Comments and questions welcome also. And in case anybody wants to get in touch with me directly, I can be contacted at stuart@wineauctioneer.com.

Enjoy.

[StuartC]

Our September auction is now live and open to receive bidding until Monday 24th.

I recall reading on another thread (Valuation??? By Golfbumm4life) about Niepoort's Garrafeira 1931 Port. Well, we have one in our auction, see it here - https://www.wineauctioneer.com/lot/3427 ... feira-port.


Additionally, we have another 5 Lots of Niepoort's Garrafeira 1952 Port. https://www.wineauctioneer.com/auction- ... ction_form.

[Alex Bridgeman]

Stuart - if nothing else, I can gaze longingly at the photos you post and admire pictures of wines I am unlikely to ever own. I love pictures of port bottles, I accept my wife's assertion that I may not be wholly normal in this respect, but please do keep posting them.

[StuartC]

..if nothing else, I can gaze longingly at the photos you post and admire pictures of wines I am unlikely to ever own.

AHB, how do you think I feel??? Surrounded by all these wonders in my physical presence every day (they tempt, they tease, they defy!)

[StuartC]

Dow's 1963 is one of those benchmark Ports against which other producers and vintages are judged. An outstanding year which continues to be enjoyed by the lucky few. www.wineauctioneer.com/lot/3380/dows-1963-vintage-port

This bottle features the label for the London wine merchants Hedges & Butler Ltd.

[StuartC]

Everyone loves a good mystery, right? How about this mystery bottle then???

The only identifying mark is what remains of the number 10 to the right of the cap-seal, in worn orange-red wax - assumption is a 1910 Vintage Port.

In the absence of jdaw's new book, can anybody identify further???

[PhilW]

Absolutely we like bottles like this, especially with decent fill levels, cork not damaged or raised, and a good colour to the wine.
Can we get a couple of higher resolution images to look at more closely (perhaps by PM, or links by PM, as appropriate)?

[flash_uk]

Looks more like OB than 10 to me.

[Alex Bridgeman]

I took a good look at the photo. I think the photo is upside down and what we can see is the O and part of the R from the word PORT. I’d have to check my records, but I have a few bottles that were sealed with PORT across the cork, mostly port from pre-WW2.

[StuartC]

Can we get a couple of higher resolution images to look at more closely...

There are a couple of high-resolution photos on this Lot page on our website: https://www.wineauctioneer.com/lot/3381 ... ntage-port - Free to look and no obligation to register or bid.

I think the photo is upside down and what we can see is the O and part of the R from the word PORT.

Yes, also possible! Having a close look in person, there doesn't appear to be horizontal arm-stubs coming off the vertical (I) for the remnants of an R - yet this could well be due to damage. However, there isn't enough space to the left of what would be the letter O, for the letter P; and the centering would be WAY off - also feasibly possible if wax being stamped by hand. But if it is a 10, then centering would be spot on.

[DRT]

Everyone loves a good mystery, right? How about this mystery bottle then???

The only identifying mark is what remains of the number 10 to the right of the cap-seal, in worn orange-red wax - assumption is a 1910 Vintage Port.

In the absence of jdaw's new book, can anybody identify further???

I have an unpublished edition of Julian's book and the only confirmed 1910 VP is Offley Boa Vista. Gonzalez Byass are thought to have produced, but not released VP from that vintage but those would be as rare as rocking horse poop.

I think the chances of this being a 1910 VP are extremely unlikely but not impossible. If it is, it is possibly one of the rarest 100 yr+ bottles I have ever seen.

One thing that I'd note from the pictures is that the cork is very short. That normally means that what is in the bottle was not intended to be aged further, it was bottled to be drunk. It is much more likely that this is a barrel-aged port bottled around 100 years ago with the work PORT branded on the now degraded cork.

[uncle tom]

I'm not convinced that bottle is port.

The neck profiling is atypical of bottles hailing from either the UK or Portugal - there's a slightly eastern european hint to the styling, but beyond that, I can't find a match..

[Glenn E.]

Yes, also possible! Having a close look in person, there doesn't appear to be horizontal arm-stubs coming off the vertical (I) for the remnants of an R - yet this could well be due to damage. However, there isn't enough space to the left of what would be the letter O, for the letter P; and the centering would be WAY off - also feasibly possible if wax being stamped by hand. But if it is a 10, then centering would be spot on.

I can see the horizontal arm-stub clearly in lower-resolution photos such as the ones in this thread in your original post. For some reason the horizontal is more difficult to see in the higher-resolution photos.

I disagree that '10' would be properly centered. '1910' would not be quite as off-center almost as 'PORT' would be, but it would still very much be off-center on the cork.

But since I can clearly see a horizontal line coming off of the vertical, PORT seems more likely than 1910 to me.

[uncle tom]

But since I can clearly see a horizontal line coming off of the vertical, PORT seems more likely than 1910 to me.

Bear in mind that this is a wax embossing rather than a cork branding, so the distortions seen on brands will not occur here.

We can clearly see the character 0 or O and also the kerning between that and its neighbouring character. If it were the word PORT, either way round, the adjacent letters would be well off the side of the bottle. Not only that, but the full word P O R T would be wider than the cork itself. Whilst the word PORT is sometimes stamped into the wax on the top of old bottles, it is invariably in a much smaller font. No-one in their right mind would get an embossing stamp made that was that big.

Similarly 1910 would also fall off the bottle.

If it's a date, it will be a two digit one, so 10 - but there are not many precedents for doing this. Much more likely is that it's the initials of either the wine or the bottler.

[DaveRL]

Is OBV a possibility?

[uncle tom]

Is OBV a possibility?

If it is port then that would fit, but we still have the problem with the shape of the bottle glass. I wonder if our Scandinavian friends can input on this, as the shape bears no resemblance to anything I've seen used in either UK or Portuguese bottlings..

[DRT]

We can clearly see the character 0 or O and also the kerning between that and its neighbouring character. If it were the word PORT, either way round, the adjacent letters would be well off the side of the bottle. Not only that, but the full word P O R T would be wider than the cork itself. Whilst the word PORT is sometimes stamped into the wax on the top of old bottles, it is invariably in a much smaller font. No-one in their right mind would get an embossing stamp made that was that big.

The wax capsule might well have been 20-30% wider than the top of the cork so the word PORT would easily fit on the top of a capsule.

"PORT" would not be unusual to see stamped on the capsule of a bottle containing some type of Port that was intended for immediate drinking, i.e. not Vintage. This is quite likely to be a bottle of Port aged in cask and sold on demand by a Wine Merchant. As said above it is highly unlikely to be a 1910, and not just because the branding doesn't look like 1910