E Godwin Clayton F.I.C.

[winesecretary]

A brief historical note from an idle moment of study. This chap's name appears on the front of bottles of Sandeman's Invalid Port as certifying that a sample was 'pure, and free from added ingredients, and of sound and good quality'.

Some manuscript letters in the Wellcome Collection reveal that he was tried in 1913 for criminal conspiracy in connection with the agitation for Womens' Suffrage, of which he was an ardent supporter. May we infer that port is the drink of the forward-thinking and egalitarian?

[JacobH]

That’s really interesting. I haven’t come across this Port before. Strangely they don’t advertise it on their website, even though it does seem to be available. As I’ve mentioned before, I am really interested in the pre-modern non-Vintage Ports: this looks like one that has been made consistently for a very long time. A few antique bottles are available.

[jdaw1]

Picture of a label of Sandeman Invalid on p561 of Port Vintages (2018); picture of Croft Invalid on p50.

[winesecretary]

There's quite a bit (for a given quantity of 'quite a bit') of the Sandeman Invalid port about still, it must have been quite popular. I've seen several bottles at auction over the past few years and GN has some too. The Croft one I have not encountered!

[JacobH]

This is a fascinating Port byway about which I knew nothing.

The Croft website tells us:

The London wine merchant Gilbey’s had developed a brand known as Gilbey’s Invalid Port, for which it claimed invigorating and tonic properties. The wine was supplied by Croft, shipped in cask and bottled by Gilbey’s in London.

Gilbey’s Invalid Port was an enormous success and this new business brought welcome cash into to the Croft Port business. As the sales of Invalid Port grew, Gilbey’s began to be concerned about guaranteeing its source of supply of suitable wine. In 1892, they purchased half of the shares in Croft [...]

This is supported by this glorious advert from the Calcutta Medical Reporter in 1895:

INVALID PORT
This well known and much appreciated wine is strongly recommended by the Medical Faculty as being of undoubted purity.

INVALID Port Certificate: I hereby certify that I have carefully examined two bottles of Cutler Palmer & Co’s Port and am of opinion that the wine is free from adulteration and is a good sound wholesome Port

Chas E Cassell FIS, FIC
CUTLER PALMER & Co CALCUTTA

A family history page for the Delaforce Family mentions:

During and after the First War business increased dramatically and thousands of pipes (534 litres each) of port were shipped to England each year. Sales were mainly to the ‘pub’ trade, and the label Delaforces’ Fine Old Invalid Port became well known until bureaucracy decreed many years later that the label might be misunderstood!

All of this suggests that it was a Port version of a tonic wine, a bit like Buckfastleigh (albeit without the additives).

There are a few literary mentions, too. Etherlberg in T.S. Elliot’s 1934 play, the Rock, says:

If people don’t take their religion in the usual proper way, they’ll take it in other ways, such as politics; and then they get into a ’ell of a muddle. As you was more or less ’intin’ yourself, Fred. And political religion is like invalid port: you calls it a medicine but it’s soon just a ’abit.

It also gets a mention in Chapter II of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall:

In a bookcase were a number of very old text-books and some new exercise-books. There were also a bicycle-pump, two armchairs, a straight chair, half a bottle of invalid port, a boxing glove, a bowler hat, yesterday's Daily News and a packet of pipe-cleaners.

Finally, I saw this 1933 American guide to “Wines … After Repeal” which says:

Invalid Port - does not mean “medicated”. It means a vintage port of a very high quality and is valuable as a tonic.

Having a look online, I can see bottles made by Gilbey’s, Sandeman, Delaforce, Croft and Neipoort. It looks like Sandeman still makes it as the “Old Invalid” since there are a few adverts from German and Finnish shops at a modest price (c.€16). I wonder what the blend is?

Incidentally, the product also seems to have massively taken off in Australia and been made by all the Australian fortified producers to the extent that, for example, this 2001 article in the Evening Standard says:

The Australians are coming. No; scrub that. The Australians have arrived.

In a couple of decades, they've gone from joke status (Kanga Rouge and invalid port) to being Britain's number two wine supplier. They now have France in their sights, and are preparing to slingshot themselves past the vine's mother country by 2005, consumers willing. (They seem to be.)