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This week I bought some more bottles of the Niepoort 2008 LBV at the same shop where I already bought some '08 LBV last autumn. They had just received a fresh shipment from Niepoort. There seem to be some slight changes in design and pricing at Niepoort. For a start, the card-board packagings are now silver-grey and not in the original card-board colour. The bottles are also shaped slightly different now, they are a little bit taller and a bit smaller in perimeter (see my photo). And they did cost slightly more than last time (16,75 Euro, not 15,75 Euro). I asked the wine merchant about the price increase. They told me that Niepoort had raised the prices and they as retailers would pass on the increase to their customers. (Perhaps I have to explain that this wine merchant has very competitive prices, for example he has even lower prices than German vine-growers themselves. The merchant even does not have a web-shop, because vine-growers would complain about the prices.) Then I asked if Niepoort raises prices frequently. No, I was told, prices were stable for quite some years now and so the increase was justified. So we might experience some slight price increase all across the Niepoort range (if merchants pass on the increase to us consumers.)

Niepoort, it seems, have also moved the bottling line from Porto to V. N. Gaia.

It is interesting that all of these were probably bottled at the same time, using different bottles. I find that slightly odd - I would have expected everything to have been bottled at the same time, using the same bottles.

Am I the only one surprised by this observation?

I wouldn't be surprised if producers had multiple bottlings of LBV throughout the year (or years) depending on demand.

Neipoort created a new bottling line when the purchased the Osborne cellar a few years ago. Prior to that they used to bottle in the Niepoort cellar. I am not aware of them ever having a facility in Oporto so perhaps this is just a wording change rather than a change of location.

Did the change of ‟engarrafado” cause the switch?

jdaw1 wrote:Did the change of ‟engarrafado” cause the switch?

I don't think so. The switch to the new bottling line happened at least five years ago. These bottles were filled in 2012, probably in the same place.

DRT wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:Did the change of ‟engarrafado” cause the switch?

I don't think so. The switch to the new bottling line happened at least five years ago. These bottles were filled in 2012, probably in the same place.

2013...!

RAYC wrote:

DRT wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:Did the change of ‟engarrafado” cause the switch?

I don't think so. The switch to the new bottling line happened at least five years ago. These bottles were filled in 2012, probably in the same place.

2013...!

Oops.

Look carefully at the wording on the bottles. One has one place, the other has the other.

And they gone from an off white to a more pure white color for the lettering

jdaw1 wrote:Look carefully at the wording on the bottles. One has one place, the other has the other.

Look carefully at almost every bottle you own. The labels will say "Bottled in Oporto". Almost all of those will actually have been bottled in VNG.

To most of the world "Oporto" is commonly used to describe an area that is larger than the city of that name. A good analogy would be "England".

I regularly tell people that I live in Seattle, but I actually live in Sammamish. If I started with Sammamish I'd just have to continue with "it's a suburb of Seattle" anyway.

I suspect that Gaia suffers the same fate for most people.

jdaw1 wrote:Niepoort, it seems, have also moved the bottling line from Porto to V. N. Gaia.

The bottling line always was in VNdG, as Derek said first in the Niepoort lodge (and a tiny bottling line it was!), now with a bit more space in the former Osborne lodge. This change happened a couple of years ago.
The Niepoort offices always used to be in Oporto, not far from Vinologia, but they have now moved to VNdG as well (also in the former Osborne lodge). This has also happened some years ago, but they probably only now changed the label. I wouldn't think too much of it, these things sometimes take a long time to change. Just look at the back label of your Niepoort vintage ports (or the little card attached) and see that over the decades they made the same spelling error. Bonus points for the first one to find out.

Charactaristic

RonnieRoots wrote:Just look at the back label of your Niepoort vintage ports (or the little card attached) and see that over the decades they made the same spelling error. Bonus points for the first one to find out.

You must have different bottles from me, because mine pretty much have an error on every single line!

DRT wrote:

jdaw1 wrote:Look carefully at the wording on the bottles. One has one place, the other has the other.

Look carefully at almost every bottle you own. The labels will say "Bottled in Oporto". Almost all of those will actually have been bottled in VNG.

This may have been the case in the past, but a quick look round my collection indicates that newer labels seem to avoid saying "bottled in Oporto" and instead use the formulation: "Bottled by [Name of Company], Oporto"

It should be remembered that the location name on the label is not supposed to refer to where the port was bottled, but to the "circunscrição administrativa local" where the registered office of the named bottler is situated. These could potentially be quite different. See article 15 of Regulamento n.o 242/2010

RAYC wrote:

RonnieRoots wrote:Just look at the back label of your Niepoort vintage ports (or the little card attached) and see that over the decades they made the same spelling error. Bonus points for the first one to find out.

You must have different bottles from me, because mine pretty much have an error on every single line!

Ha, you're right! Hadn't even noticed most of them. I was referring to one in particular, I always found it very funny that their wines can "through" a deposit or crust.

RonnieRoots wrote:

RAYC wrote:

RonnieRoots wrote:Just look at the back label of your Niepoort vintage ports (or the little card attached) and see that over the decades they made the same spelling error. Bonus points for the first one to find out.

You must have different bottles from me, because mine pretty much have an error on every single line!

Ha, you're right! Hadn't even noticed most of them. I was referring to one in particular, I always found it very funny that their wines can "through" a deposit or crust.

BRILLANT!