Something off with this 1964 RP

[MigSU]

Just thought some pictures of this alleged Ramos Pinto 1964 should be shared.






A VP with a bar top. Who would've thought.



(Source: here)

[PhilW]

Indeed, clearly fake. Thanks for the warning; sadly there have been a few along these lines recently.

[winesecretary]

I am sure you have all noticed it but ‘interesting’ bottlings like this proliferate in the period coming up to and into an anniversary date. I am sure there will be some rare 1965s on the market in a few months. They might even being made at the moment…

[MigSU]

Yes, anniversaries are fertile ground for this sort of nonsense. I couldn't stop chuckling when I saw the bar top. Such a silly thing.

That said, the bloody thing is already at €138 with 2 days remaining. Ridiculous that they haven't removed it yet.

[winesecretary]

My expectation is that that one is a genuine Ramos Pinto wine (not VP) with correct seal/selo/bar top with a fake label. My Madeira focus means that I more usually encounter genuine bottles with fake contents where the capsule/selo have been reused.

[Mike J. W.]

I was going to ask you if you saw this on Catawiki, but then I saw your link and of course it's from there. The T-stopper at the top is ridiculous but the fill is also amazingly good for a 60 year-old Port. I'm not saying it can't have a fill level like that, but I've found it to be rarer more so than commonplace in a bottle that old. I also looked at the listing on Catawiki and the seller has only been on there for 2 weeks. He or she has also kept their profile private. Lots of red flags.

[winesecretary]

My expectation is that that one is a genuine Ramos Pinto wine (not VP) with correct seal/selo/bar top with a fake label. My Madeira focus means that I more usually encounter genuine bottles with fake contents where the capsule/selo have been reused.

[Andy Velebil]

Fake.

Sadly, more and more of fake old ports are showing up on the market.

[Will W.]

This stuff drives me nuts. And in this case, that the Catawiki "expert" did not catch such an obvious forgery. Whatever the case, I have let Catawiki know.

I have likely observed elsewhere at TFP that fakes - invariably, easy to spot for the likes of collectors - are a manifest problem at auction in Portugal.

[MigSU]

You can't catch what you don't want to catch.

[Will W.]

By way of an update on this matter:

I wrote to Catawiki to express my opinion regarding the (in)authenticity of the bottle in question. It was very responsive, asking for more information, which I sent. In the end, I received the following response:

On 27/10/2024 you reached out to us with concerns about this item's authenticity and we forwarded the information you provided to the expert.

The expert concluded that, based on this information, there is not enough reason to doubt the authenticity of the item. Because of this, we'll keep the item in auction. If you have any other information that proves that the item is inauthentic, don't hesitate to get in touch with us so we can investigate further.

Thank you for your help keeping our auctions safe!

The curator/expert of the Catawiki port wine auctions has changed since I last looked, some months back. The previous chap was, in my limited experience, quite exacting. On the face of it, the current one would appear to be less so. Either that, or the new curator/expert, with an eye to her job security, is loathe to admit that a fake got by her. Alas, it happens to the best of us. One would have thought that the presence of the t-stopper was, alone, sufficient to pull the bottle, though there are, with this offering, additional issues of a non-mitigating nature.

[Glenn E.]

there is not enough reason to doubt the authenticity of the item.

SMH. It's a VP with a t-stopper. What more reason does one need to doubt the authenticity?

[MigSU]

Good lord, "not enough reason"! What a joke.

[Alex Bridgeman]

If I could be bothered, I’d post something on X, FaceBook and Instagram saying “Don’t buy from Catawiki, they sell obvious fakes - look at this bottle”