A fellow user and I might have recently bought a Scottish bottling of a 1970 port that's been lying in bond in the bottler's store since 1972. We were informed that the labels were not affixed at the time and are in the merchant's library; they can be affixed prior to delivery or alternatively taken separately.
Has anyone come across this before? Is this quite a common occurrence? Perhaps it's not so often that one finds bottles that have been in store with their original bottlers since shipping and bottling. Will I say 'bottle' once more just to amplify the strangeness of that last sentence? No, I bottled it.
Daniel J.
Husband of a relentless former Soviet Chess Master.
delete.. delete.. *sigh*.. delete...
Wow, I'm not sure whether that's cool or slightly worrying. Obviously it's a reputable bottler or you wouldn't be buying, but my skeptical American side would eat at me a bit if I didn't know them well.
However, skeptical me aside, that's actually pretty awesome, I've only heard of such things for ex-cellars bottles from the producers themselves. I always figured most of the bottlers would have labelled and sold off the last of their pre-bottling imports long ago.
I don't find this at all suspicious, as it is highly likely that the capsules will be embossed to confirm the ID, and labels do not survive well when bottles are bin stored.
But heck! I am surprised that over 40 years after UK bottling ended, a merchant still has the labels neatly filed away..
I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I shall be sober and you will still be ugly - W.S. Churchill
Desultory browsing of the website yesterday evening led me to this thread ... for which I do have relevant experience.
One of the wine merchants I use occasionally is Whighams of Ayr. Nowadays it is part of the Corney and Barrow organisation -- and on the ground floor it is a modern wine shop. But the underground cellar is 250 years old and an Aladdin's Cave. Whighams claims that in the late 18th century it was certainly visited regularly by one Robert Burns, a local excise man and a friend of the proprietor. This is probably true, since it seems at times that Burns was a good friend of every supplier of alcoholic drink in the South West of Scotland!
When I was shown the cellar some years ago, I was told that up to the 1970s wine arrived in casks and was bottled on the premises (there was an elderly cork flogger in one corner), but not labelled ... the humidity of the cellar was good for corks but bad for labels. The bottles were stored in bins -- sections of the floor against the wall delimited by wooden boards -- the ones they showed me contained several hundred bottles, all belonging to Whighams customers. When a customer opted to take delivery of his or her wine, the bottles would be wiped clean and labelled.
John Owlett wrote:is Whighams of Ayr. Nowadays it is part of the Corney and Barrow organisation -- and on the ground floor it is a modern wine shop. But the underground cellar is 250 years old and an Aladdin's Cave. Whighams claims that in the late 18th century it
Must ask: are there old price catalogues? Cellar books?
jdaw1 wrote:Must ask: are there old price catalogues? Cellar books?
Sorry, Julian, I don't know. I was just a customer being given the "Tour of the Cellar". They gave me a copy of their 2007-08 Wine List, which I suppose is an old price catalogue within the meaning of the act, but I doubt whether it is what you want.
They sell me wine, but haven't told me where, and whether, the wine labels are kept. They haven't even told me whether the splashes of white paint are vinyl or acrylic.
user and I might have recently bought a Scottish bottling of a 1970 port that's been lying in bond in the bottler's store since 1972. We were informed that the labels were not affixed at the time and are in the merchant's library; they can be affixed prior to delivery or alternatively taken separately.
