ThePortForum.com

A Bridgeman is defined as the length of time, in years, it takes one 75cl bottle of beverage to increase in age by one year.

Consequently, a cellar consisting of two bottles of Port will increase by two Bridgemans in one year. It will therefore increase by one Bridgeman in 0.5 years. A half bottle of Dow's Quinta do Bomfim will increase by 0.5 Bridgemans in one year. The Bridgeman can only be applied to a complete cellar or defined unit, such as a case or bottle.

The Bridgeman has the following dimensional analysis: LLLT

I presume this unit also only applies to the South?

Is there established data on the decay of a Bridgeman? (As the bottle seaps, it must decay relative to a caesium-based measure of time.)

The rate of decay will be dependent upon the gluttony of the observer.

Although a caesium clock could be used to measure its accuracy is irrelevant as Bridgemans are measured in bottle years. Caesium clocks are fabulous for sub second accuracy but an adjustment by the Greenwich bods will mess up your spreadsheet.

The Bridgeman will vary dependent upon relative position to the Equator, yes, but this is insignificant even if a single bottle of Martinez is consumed. It maybe used North of the M4.

The aggregate bottle age of my cellar is 6033 years across 246 bottles.

Am I right in thinking that this means my cellar has a Bridgeman Factor of 35 hours, 36 minutes and 36 seconds (35:36:36) and an average bottle age of 24 years, 191 days, 9 hours, 39 minutes and 30.732 seconds (24:191:9:39:30.732) ?

Derek

Thank you all.

I have now achieved truly meaningless status.




(However, I think that I need to point out that in the event that there is only one bottle in the collective then 1 Bridgeman = 1 year and a Caesium clock can be applied in this instance. At all other times a large, manual wind-up alarm clock with an external bell plus a calendar, calculator and corkscrew are the only other items of equipment required to measure the Bridgeman.

I have also noted that measurement of a Bridgeman is a clear example of the phenomenon of observation affecting the item observed. When I open a bottle to measure the Bridgeman value of its contents, the contents cease acquiring additional Bridgemans and only the glass bottle continues to do so. Having noted this phenomenon, I am not sure whether the opening of the bottle is the cause or the effect. I intend to continue my experiments into this matter over the next few years and will report back on what I discover. I encourage all other readers of this post to also open their bottles of port and report back on what they find.)

Alex (all in the interests of science, of course)

Derek T. wrote:The aggregate bottle age of my cellar is 6033 years across 246 bottles.

Am I right in thinking that this means my cellar has a Bridgeman Factor of 35 hours, 36 minutes and 36 seconds (35:36:36) and an average bottle age of 24 years, 191 days, 9 hours, 39 minutes and 30.732 seconds (24:191:9:39:30.732) ?

Derek

No - you have a cellar size of 6033 Bridgemans, and it will increase by 1 Bridgeman every 35.bibble hours and by 246 Bridgemans in one year.

Remember that a Bridgeman is a composite unit not a factor. As a Bridgeman has already been defined, we need a time to denote the how long it takes for a collection of bottles or single bottle to increase by 1 Bridgeman. This I think should be referred to as Turnbull Time

I much prefered HAMMER TIME!!!

cue the 80's dancing, and re-runs of Miami Vice...