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Does anyone have any comments or views about the comparative merits of (on 1970 and before) Uk v Oporto bottling or is it simply a question of how the bottle has been stored? I've acquired quite a few UK bottlings over the last year (the likes of Grants of St James, Charles Kinloch etc) and assuming it's not simply a question of storage, are there any particular bottlers to look out for (either for good or for bad)? Would I be right in thinking that outside of Portugal, the UK was the only other place where bottling took place-or did it happen in other countries?

Swedish and Danish bottlings have been seen.

Also see Corks and bottles: Oporto versus London, and Comparing the bottlers.

Irish too (both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland) and according to Alex only the best of port!

Justin K wrote:Irish too (both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland) and according to Alex only the best of port!

Quite so. It was also bottled in other British colonies where it was cheaper to ship in bulk, and in Brazil and possibly Angola / Mozambique. Oh, what about Goa?

EDIT: there's a bottle in the corridor on the way to the gents in the Graham's lodge with a Bombay bottling.

Looking at the threads JDAW linked to, a comparative bottler tasting never took place-is such a tasting now irretrievable?

idj123 wrote:a comparative bottler tasting never took place

Alas.

idj123 wrote:is such a tasting now irretrievable?

No, but it would require somebody to take charge, enquire what people have in a variety of obvious suspects, find a date, and do the rest. Please don’t be shy about volunteering. Either re-use an existing thread, or start a new one linking as appropriate.

Oh, almost forgot: I’m in.

jdaw1 wrote:

idj123 wrote:a comparative bottler tasting never took place

Alas.

idj123 wrote:is such a tasting now irretrievable?

No, but it would require somebody to take charge, enquire what people have in a variety of obvious suspects, find a date, and do the rest. Please don’t be shy about volunteering. Either re-use an existing thread, or start a new one linking as appropriate.

Oh, almost forgot: I’m in.

But then we're back in the situation of comparing one variable when all the others (storage over 40+ years, provenance, basic bottle variability etc) are unknown and uncontrollable. I would say that there's very little to be gained from a 'scientific' viewpoint by doing this kind of comparison.

What would be very interesting would be to run some tastings - a series, not just one - where we assembled as many different non-Oporto bottlings of one shipper and one vintage and compared them - not to see which was best, but to see if there's anything that's constant between them at all: does a single characteristic come through in them all? Grants, BBR, Army & Navy, Scottish bottlings, Irish bottlings, bottlings for the King of Siam and the Maharaja of Cooch Behar...

Who volunteers to organise this?

djewesbury wrote:I … volunteers to organise this

Well done, Daniel. Not quite grammatically correct but we accept your offer.

I'm in.

I suggest G70 as the subject. Plentiful, non-silly prices, lots of different bottlers and consistently better than good.

DRT wrote:

djewesbury wrote:I … volunteers to organise this

Well done, Daniel. Not quite grammatically correct but we accept your offer.

I'm in.

I suggest G70 as the subject. Plentiful, non-silly prices, lots of different bottlers and consistently better than good.

Nicely done Derek. Now that I've made the offer I can hardly go back on it.

There have been several previous discussions on possibilities of EB vs OB, and of a shipper-verizontal; both are imo excellent ideas, and I would be up fo either / both, dates permitting.

jdaw1 wrote:Swedish and Danish bottlings have been seen.

Justin K wrote:Irish too (both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland) and according to Alex only the best of port!

I have also seen German and Belgian bottlings of Vintage Port and we know the Newman family used to bottle port in Newfoundland.

And for the sake of future-proofing this thread I should make it clear that UK bottlings I have seen have included merchants operating in Scotland, England and Wales.

Does anybody else know about those Indian bottlings?