Yet another thing to worry about . . .

[Fat Guy]

This is the second time I've read, in the Rare Wine Co. newsletter, that pre-1975 Port was not necessarily bottled in Oporto. Most of it was shipped in barrels to the UK and bottled by the various merchants, a process that is now apparently resulting in huge variation among, for example, bottles of 1970 Taylor or Graham.

[estufarian]

Don't worry too much. The storage conditions will probably have more effect then the bottler.

I stumbled over 4 different bottlings of 1970 Fonseca, and eventually rounded up 6 different bottlers.

At a blind tasting ALL were great, but there were some differences.

One of the bottlings (English) stood out - more evolved and complex. One was definitely worse, dusty and tired (possibly the cork, not the bottler) and the other 4 were almost tied in total scores. The Oporto bottling was in the middle group.

I discussed the tasting with the late Bruce Guimaraens, and asked whether Fonseca had investigated the effect of 'early' bottling (e.g. bottling the 70 early in 72) vs late bottling (e.g. at end of 72). He suggested this was a little academic - they bottled when the winery workers weren't doing much else, so had the time to be in the bottling area!

[ctgm]

I agree that it comes down to the storage conditions. One of my clients has a lot of Taylors 1963 bottled by Tanners and it really isn't very nice but I know someone else who has some from the same stock and it is vastly different.

I always thought that as the wine was fortified it was more robust and shipping it and bottling would not make any differnece. Anyway Port was never originally bottled in Portugal - as I am sure you know, a bit of brandy was added to the red wine of the area so that it could be shipped to England for bottling as we had in the late 1600s declared war on France and stopped importing their wines.

As an aside, French wines were often bottled away from the chateau. In particualr Bordeaux was often bottled by the merchant that sold it and very often it was of a better quality as the attitudes to hygien differed.