1944 Officers Army Port, advice neede please

[4114effects]

Hello all. My in-laws have an unusual bottle of port and I cant seem to find any information on the web. Thought I'd come to you guys for some advice.

The port seems to be WW2 army issue, hand signed by Major Bennett, 2/4/44. I've been told this was a soldier billeted with my in-laws auntie during the war, who presented her with the bottle as a thank you.

I've attached (hopefully) an image of the label.

Thabks for any help or advice you can give

[PhilW]

What an interesting bottle and background. If possible could you please post a photo of the whole bottle (so we can see the full shape, neck and side of capsule) and a photo of the top of the bottle/capsule (looking down at it from above) which might also help us with identification.

[4114effects]

Many thanks for getting back to me. Certianly seemed interesting to me.

Please aee more photos below, hope they help.

[jdaw1]

Fascinating bottle. Thank you for posting.

Did Iain Bennett — writing 47 days before D-day — survive the war?

[jdaw1]

Is there anything written on the cork? With a flashlight can you see through the glass: is the cork branded?

[PhilW]

Thanks for posting the additional pictures. As the bottle has a driven cork (rather than T-stopper) this may indicate a better quality of port (since a T-stopper would more commonly, although not always, have been used for standard ruby and LBV-equivalent). The glass and bottle shape certainly seems to match the right time period. The quite transparent brown glass does mean we can clearly see the sides of the cork; it would be worth close inspection to see if there is any branding on the side of the cork as JDAW has suggested - if there is I would expect it to be visible through such glass (using a torch shone at an angle from the side might also help if needed, though this glass is clear enough I would expect it to be readable under general good lighting if there is branding present).

I would also suggest shining a torch through the main body of the bottle to ascertain the colour of the wine; a good deep red, pink or perhaps red/orange brick colour would show the wine to be ruby-style well kept and of good quality; a more transparent or orange/yellow would either mean a ruby which has faded or possibly a tawny-style. My expectation is that this is a ruby-style port, so this is more about checking condition than identification; the port will likely be drinkable in any case.

I had hoped for a capsule or remnants thereof to help with identification, but it has obviously either disintegrated or perhaps never had one, so
I'm afraid I can't shed any further light than to say that it seems genuine, likely a good quality ruby-family port from that time, appears in good condition (subject to wine colour check per above), but unless there is branding on the cork then we will likely not know further.

Very interesting however, and thank you for sharing the pictures. If you do find branding on the cork then please let us know, and if you open and drink it we'd be interested to hear how you find it.

[DRT]

If we had an Enigma machine we might be able to decipher the code punched into the label

[SushiNorth]

I was also fascinated by the photos posted, and wound up lost in an article about the US mobilization through the UK in prep for D-Day. In my research I could not find any bottles with similar labeling, at most I found two old photos:
- One of a group of troops drinking beer(?) in a mess hall, and with one of those bottles bearing a script/spacing/etc very similar to the one in the original poster's photos. The writing was different, and it was not easily read. May be absolutely no relation: https://warontherocks.com/2015/06/a-far ... ld-war-ii/
- the other of an NFS sub-station during WW2, where the second bottle has the very familiar neck shape of a port bottle. The shade of the bottle seems clear, tho, not dark. It suggests that UK gov may have been doing some broader distributing to boost morale.
https://www.prints-online.com/london-fi ... 38229.html

Either way, what strikes me as most interesting is all that I COULDN'T find. Nothing on the web, no tourist photos of similar bottles in museums, etc. And I am confident that those who gather here in TPF would have seen this bottle if there were more than a handful floating around; JDaw published a veritable encyclopedia on the topic. And none of us have seen this before?

I would suggest the wine in the bottle is not worth much from a pure drinking-interest perspective. However, that bottle may be sufficiently rare to belong in a museum, reflecting on the WW2 cooperation between our countries.

[4114effects]

Sorry for late reply. In-laws just had a flashlight to the neck, no markings whatsoever on the cork I'm sorry to say.

Certainly is a curiosity.

I think father in law was hoping it mught be valuable, but I take it that's probably not the case?

[jdaw1]

I think father in law was hoping it mught be valuable, but I take it that's probably not the case?

Depends on the meaning of valuable. I could imagine it reaching £100ish at auction. That’s a mortgage-repaying quantity of money, if the outstanding mortgage is ≤£100.

Open it with friends. Or with us. Or alone on a quiet Tuesday.

[PhilW]

Sorry for late reply. In-laws just had a flashlight to the neck, no markings whatsoever on the cork I'm sorry to say.

A shame. In which case most likely a lesser-quality rather than vintage, which was likely anyway.

Certainly is a curiosity.

I think father in law was hoping it mught be valuable, but I take it that's probably not the case?

Certainly not valuable as far as the port itself is concerned; quite hard to say what this might go for at auction depending on the value someone may place on the history of the bottle itself; I would guess it might sell anywhere in the £30-120 range depending on whether it happens to catch someone's eye.

[Glenn E.]

I think father in law was hoping it mught be valuable, but I take it that's probably not the case?

That's hard to say. I doubt it has any value as Port, but it might be valuable as a collectable or war-era memento. As Port it probably isn't worth more than $50 to $100, but as a memento it could be worth far more. It is very difficult to estimate what a collector might pay for something they're interested in - I have friends who have paid thousands of dollars for Star Wars figurines, for example.