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I noticed this morning that Berry Brothers have 4 different shippers 1970 vintages on their list: Quarles Harris, Taylor, Graham and Gould Campbell.

Now I have a healthy respect for the quality of the Quarles Harris and expecially the Gould Campbell, but I would generally expect to see these listed (cheapest to most expensive) as Quarles Harris, Gould Campbell then a jump to Graham and Taylor (with the last two being very similar).

To my surprise, Berry's have priced these as Quarles Harris, Taylor = Gould Campbell, Graham with the difference being
Quarles Harris
Taylor = QH + £10
Gould Campbell = QH + £10
Graham = QH + £35

With this pricing difference I would be unlikely to choose the QH - probably going for the T70 but might be tempted by the GC70.

I find Berry's pricing particularly hard to fathom. I often buy from them, either BBX or their own stock but the prices really do go from the sublime to the ridiculous. Sometimes I look at the prices (Fonseca 97 at £1000 in bond?) and cannot imagine that anyone is going to buy it.

LGTrotter wrote:I find Berry's pricing particularly hard to fathom. I often buy from them, either BBX or their own stock but the prices really do go from the sublime to the ridiculous. Sometimes I look at the prices (Fonseca 97 at £1000 in bond?) and cannot imagine that anyone is going to buy it.

A good way to launder small sums of money.

I'd have to think long and hard to justify paying £150 all-in for G70, even given the excellent provenance. And the same argument goes for all the other 70s listed at their respective price-points. £115 for QH is the one that might just be reasonable.

The Wine Committee of The Queen’s College Oxford recorded, on 10 June 1972, a table of merchants’ quotations of 1970s, which might be of interest.

Alas the best shippers’ 1970 Vintage Ports are no longer available for less than £20 per dozen.

wow

those are wholesale prices so if you took the standard 1.5x retail mark up.

Fonseca 1970 would be 28.2 Sterling * the dollar conversion in 1970 (2.4795) would have been 69$/case

add in the 4.145% average inflation in the US from 1970-2013 is 5.733928x compounded
meant that the release price of the fonseca 1970 taken in today's terms would have cost 395$ per case

djewesbury wrote:I'd have to think long and hard to justify paying £150 all-in for G70, even given the excellent provenance. And the same argument goes for all the other 70s listed at their respective price-points. £115 for QH is the one that might just be reasonable.

I just snagged a case of G70 at the most recent Zachys auction for just under $100/bottle all in. There was another case that was picked up by another FTLOP member, and a 3rd case that passed.

We also picked up some F70 for, as I recall, about $120/bottle all-in.

to Glenn

I recently acquired 9 bottles of G70 for £45 each including tax and delivery. BBR's prices are ludicrous.

DRT wrote:I recently acquired 9 bottles of G70 for £45 each including tax and delivery. BBR's prices are ludicrous.

! where, he asked, with an ellipsis?

djewesbury wrote:

DRT wrote:I recently acquired 9 bottles of G70 for £45 each including tax and delivery. BBR's prices are ludicrous.

! where, he asked, with an ellipsis?

I just checked and I confess that paid more than £45 per bottle. It was £57 per bottle plus six bottles of F70 at £72 per bottle. I bought them from Vinsignia and, yes, I bought the entire stock.

DRT wrote:

djewesbury wrote:

DRT wrote:I recently acquired 9 bottles of G70 for £45 each including tax and delivery. BBR's prices are ludicrous.

! where, he asked, with an ellipsis?

I just checked and I confess that paid more than £45 per bottle. It was £57 per bottle plus six bottles of F70 at £72 per bottle. I bought them from Vinsignia and, yes, I bought the entire stock.

According to their current price list, you can buy a G70 Magnum at the Graham's lodge for 545 Euro. If their usual 20% discount applies to this bottle, too, then the price would still be 436 Euro. Even if the Mag would be ex-cellars, I think this way too high.

DRT wrote:

djewesbury wrote:

DRT wrote:I recently acquired 9 bottles of G70 for £45 each including tax and delivery. BBR's prices are ludicrous.

! where, he asked, with an ellipsis?

I just checked and I confess that paid more than £45 per bottle. It was £57 per bottle plus six bottles of F70 at £72 per bottle. I bought them from Vinsignia and, yes, I bought the entire stock.

I was unaware of the work of the Vinsignians. I have sent them an enquiry.

DRT wrote:BBR's prices are ludicrous.

Not if they sell what they have in stock...(as discussed here). But their prices are often enough to persuade me not to buy much from them these days. This year I've bought only 4 bottles of port from them.

AHB wrote:

DRT wrote:BBR's prices are ludicrous.

Not if they sell what they have in stock...(as discussed here).

I think we must able to say that their prices are ludicrous if we are refusing to pay them? Just because some people are stupid enough to pay them, it doesn't make them less ludicrous. Some people will pay tens of thousands of pounds to own rubbish pieces of art, or exclusive handbags. I think those are ludicrous prices. If I were the one paying them, I might disagree; but then again, I might simply not care, as I would clearly have more money than sense.

I would happily place a bet with you that in 5 years time they will look pretty good!

Christopher wrote:I would happily place a bet with you that in 5 years time they will look pretty good!

Happy to discuss this bet with you tomorrow evening!

Done!

I am strongly of the view that 1970 is underpriced with the next blockbuster vintage 1994. You cannot have enough of this vintage.

Christopher wrote:I am strongly of the view that 1970 is underpriced with the next blockbuster vintage 1994. You cannot have enough of this vintage.

Do you mean that compared to 94 it is good value? I would say that my last case of Graham 94 from Berrys at £400 plays £1300 for the 70 would seem to undermine this argument. I think that the 70 is fully priced but not yet overpriced especially if you look in the less obvious places. Compared to the 63 it looks a steal.

I sometimes pay over the odds at Berrys (a bit) for the convenience and that whenever I have had to argue with them about anything they cough up eventually.

LGTrotter wrote:

Christopher wrote:I am strongly of the view that 1970 is underpriced with the next blockbuster vintage 1994. You cannot have enough of this vintage.

Do you mean that compared to 94 it is good value? I would say that my last case of Graham 94 from Berrys at £400 plays £1300 for the 70 would seem to undermine this argument. I think that the 70 is fully priced but not yet overpriced especially if you look in the less obvious places. Compared to the 63 it looks a steal.

I think he means that '70 is underpriced due in part to the fact that the next "classic" vintage is '94, which won't reach similar maturity for another 24 years. There's going to be a pretty long gap between their maturations, so stock up on the '70s now so that you have something to carry you through to the '94s.

I tend to agree. Several of us just picked up lots of '70s from Zachys at crazy-low prices. My case of G70 was just under $100/bottle. People also picked up F70 for ~$120/bottle. That's just nuts for a 40+ year old VP, especially in the US.

I certainly agree with that. It has occurred to me that there might be a long dry patch if we don't buy 70s now.

I see. I may be in a minority but I do like quite a few of the 77's, and there are a lot of standout individual wines in the eighties too. But I cannot disagree with the thrust of the argument.

And one gets so bored with good wine.

LGTrotter wrote:And one gets so bored with good wine.

That makes one of you.

Glenn E. wrote:

LGTrotter wrote:And one gets so bored with good wine.

That makes one of you.

It's a serious point, albeit flippantly made. I think we get hung up on chasing fairly small margins of betterness. I like variation, and find a lot of pleasure in small and overlooked shippers and years.

BBR may be full of pricing anomalies, but the 70s / 80s Symington stock that BBR is selling is all ex-cellars. Some may like that, others will want stock that was bottled and stored in northern Europe. But i don't think that you'll get eg: G70 from the big ex-cellars release that the Symingtons did recently at a much cheaper price anywhere (plus if you buy with any frequency from them, £150 per bottle if you buy in singles becomes £100 per bottle if you buy a case).

BBR also caters for a slightly different market than those who have the time to trawl auctions and are happy to take risk on bottles that may not have had pristine storage. Plus (for regular customers at least) they will replace a bottle that is flawed (whether corked or some other flaw) without question or any requirement for proof.

LGTrotter wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:

LGTrotter wrote:And one gets so bored with good wine.

That makes one of you.

It's a serious point, albeit flippantly made. I think we get hung up on chasing fairly small margins of betterness. I like variation, and find a lot of pleasure in small and overlooked shippers and years.

i love variation

that's why i buy fonseca & croft

g-man wrote:

LGTrotter wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:

LGTrotter wrote:And one gets so bored with good wine.

That makes one of you.

It's a serious point, albeit flippantly made. I think we get hung up on chasing fairly small margins of betterness. I like variation, and find a lot of pleasure in small and overlooked shippers and years.

i love variation

that's why i buy fonseca & croft

While I have plenty of ports from the '77 vintage and from the '80s that I enjoy drinking, I do support the view that the '70 vintage is a consistent stand-out that will be a classic in the way we think today of the 1927 and 1945 vintages. Sadly, I am slightly underweight on the '70 vintage and have no plans to rebalance. I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

AHB wrote:I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

Fancy a light lunch next week?

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

Fancy a light lunch next week?

You two make me sick.

LGTrotter wrote:

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

Fancy a light lunch next week?

You two make me sick.

And themselves.

LGTrotter wrote:

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

Fancy a light lunch next week?

You two make me sick.

That is a pity. It probably means you won't want to join us for lunch in Taunton.

I would rather eat one of my own shoes with David Warner.

LGTrotter wrote:I would rather eat one of my own shoes with David Warner.

I love how we always manage to blend our discussions together.

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

Fancy a light lunch next week?

Are you thinking of the place with the special Fonseca 1977 chip sauce?

AHB wrote:

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

Fancy a light lunch next week?

Are you thinking of the place with the special Fonseca 1977 chip sauce?

You're going to El Vino aren't you!

AHB wrote:

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

Fancy a light lunch next week?

Are you thinking of the place with the special Fonseca 1977 chip sauce?

Indeed. But, unfortunately, next week doesn't work and nor do the next two. Perhaps an idea to hold onto until January?

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

Fancy a light lunch next week?

Are you thinking of the place with the special Fonseca 1977 chip sauce?

Indeed. But, unfortunately, next week doesn't work and nor do the next two. Perhaps an idea to hold onto until January?

Sounds like a plan. Unless you're free on the 4th Wednesday of December?

Glenn E. wrote:

LGTrotter wrote:And one gets so bored with good wine.

That makes one of you.

He was quoting a former Prime Minister.

AHB wrote:

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:

DRT wrote:

AHB wrote:I am happy to bring along a bottle of Fonseca 1963 if someone else will bring along the Fonseca 1970

Fancy a light lunch next week?

Are you thinking of the place with the special Fonseca 1977 chip sauce?

Indeed. But, unfortunately, next week doesn't work and nor do the next two. Perhaps an idea to hold onto until January?

Sounds like a plan. Unless you're free on the 4th Wednesday of December?

El Vino is closed that day.

jdaw1 wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:

LGTrotter wrote:And one gets so bored with good wine.

That makes one of you.

He was quoting a former Prime Minister.

The trouble is that so much of what I think is other peoples' (?) that I often feel I do little else but quote other people. Walpole? (I am thinking of Jack Plumb's scholarly essay on his wines).

I thought Disraeli / Beaconsfield (that much is vague, when he said it I have no idea).

Edit:

Disraeli, the author of [url=http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3760/pg3760.txt]Sybil[/url], wrote:"I rather like bad wine," said Mr Mountchesney; "one gets so bored with good wine."

Christopher wrote:I am strongly of the view that 1970 is underpriced...You cannot have enough of this vintage.

Shhhh!

Since Christopher introduced me to this 70s mantra at a previous tasting I have been actively seeking out all and any I can obtain (at reasonable prices). It remains to be seen how well the 11 bottles of G70 with 'very tatty labels' I managed to secure from Drewatts, will drink, but at just over £50 a pop all in, I'm going to enjoy finding out!

This thread is an enormous exercise in shooting ourselves in the foot. Please may I delete the incriminating posts?

jdaw1 wrote:This thread is an enormous exercise in shooting ourselves in the foot. Please may I delete the incriminating posts?

Yes for mine.