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Hi I have a couple of bottles of port I would like to sell.

One is a bottle of W & J Grahams Malvedos 1979 vintage port, bottled in 1981.
The other is a bottle of Dow's 1977 Silver Jubilee vintage port, bottled in 1979.

They were both christening presents and as I'm not a big port person I thought I'd see if they get any interest.
They've both been stored on a wine rack in a cellar for their whole life. The labels aren't in perfect condition, most likely because we used to get mice in the house in winter.

Feel free to ask any questions.
Thanks Sandy.

Where are you? Or, more importantly, where are the bottles?

FYI, neither bottle is very valuable. Have you friends or family with whom you could drink them, or to whom you could give them?

I am located in Liverpool, UK.

No one I'm close to likes port so they would be wasted on us. I wasn't expecting much money but someone quoted me the Malvedos was worth £150

sandykearns wrote: ↑15:19 Thu 16 May 2019someone quoted me the Malvedos was worth £150

That’s an astonishingly good price for a GM79. Accept, pronto!

As JDAW said, if you can get 150 Pounds for the Malvedos take it now.

The Dow's has a horrible TCA (corked) issue and not worth the gamble to buy these days. Perhaps gift away to someone who likes Port and will cross their fingers and hope it's one of the bottles that actual show well.

To give some context: 1979 was a very poor year for port, so the Graham Malvedos would not normally be worth much even when well kept (perhaps £30-40 retail, of which you'd expect to get roughly half as private seller. There is however one reason you might get more for it right now, which is that it is currently the 40th anniversary of 1979 this year, which will push the price up temporarily (and similarly on some sites which target the anniversary markets and sell at very inflated prices; this is one thing people sometimes see, giving them a distorted expectation of what they might achieve). This might be why someone has mentioned a much higher price; if someone was offering you £150 you should indeed take it!

The Dow 1977 on the other hand is a different case. 1977 was an excellent year for vintage port; there is one issue though, which is that some wines and Dow in particular that year had a problem with TCA; the percentage of bottles is not known, but my own experience would suggest around 40% of bottles of Dow '77 will exhibit the problem. This means that Dow's '77 tends to sell for slightly less than the '77s of the other main brands, because of the potential risk of faulty bottles, BUT when the bottle is not faulty then the port is an excellent one. Currently this can be purchased retail at good wine shops for £80-85, so given your bottles have been well stored then you might expect to get £40-50 as a private seller.

Hope that helps.

What is value?
When you want to buy them today in the uk you have to pay:


and


So, maybe someone want to buy from you for a very low price?

PeterPort wrote:What is value?
When you want to buy them today in the uk you have to pay:


and


So, maybe someone want to buy from you for a very low price?

Thank you for posting examples of the highly inflated anniversary market. These do not represent value to me.

As PhilW writes, Dow 77 is currently available retail for £80-£85 (WinePro, Farr Vintners, Ancient and Modern, MWH Wines, amongst others), and of course around half that price from auction. I bought Dow 77 last year for around £45 from auction, and Warre 77 for £50. These represent value to me.

If I am wrong and prices for D77 are now nearer £160, and we are suggesting values which are a very low price in the current market, then I too have some D77 for sale