1979 port to sell

Port to sell? Excellent! Please post here, with details of what you have, how stored, and where in the world it is. Please start by reading our ‘Standard advice to would-be vendors' and ‘A note to wine merchants’.
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samandkirsti
Cruz Ruby
Posts: 2
Joined: 21:21 Thu 26 Sep 2013

1979 port to sell

Post by samandkirsti »

My partner and I have 7 bottles of Graham's Malvedos 1979 Vintage Port to sell. My partner was given a case of 12 bottles as a christening present some 26 years ago now and after keeping a few bottles for family members, we would like to sell the rest. I wonder if anyone might be interested in purchasing these from us?
Thank you!
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jdaw1
Cockburn 1851
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Joined: 15:03 Thu 21 Jun 2007
Location: London
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Re: 1979 port to sell

Post by jdaw1 »

Hello and welcome.

Alas, though Malvedos 1979 is an unusual wine, it has a mixed reputation, sometimes being nice, sometimes not so much.

Retail I can find it at £23 per half bottle. Generally vendors get it at about half the retail price, so £23 per bottle. For that kind of money, is it worth selling?

FYI, there follows our standard advice to would-be vendors.
Standard advice to would-be vendors
Some new members of ThePortForum.com join because they have a bottle, or some bottles, for sale. So we have jointly composed this standard advice, that covers the most frequently-seen situations. Of course, some more specific advice might follow after.

First, hello and welcome. We welcome such visitors, from the likes of whom we have bought bottles and cases in the past.

Second is less good. Your bottles are unlikely to be worth a lot. Selling at auction, through one of the big auction houses, is likely to net you about half the retail price. (Auction prices are less than retail which is why wine merchants buy at auction, and there is the seller’s commission and transport costs.) Selling to a wine merchant is likely to net you about the same, half retail. As a guide, a good shipper, from a good year, four or so decades old, of good provenance, might be as much as £100 a bottle. So this will not pay for a car or a holiday: sorry.

So our usual advice is not to sell.

If you were given these bottles as a christening present, we advise that you hold them. When you are thirty or forty years old it will give you great please to open these bottles with friends bottles you will have owned since you were a toddler. (Recall Alan Clark on Heseltine: ‟he had to buy all his furniture”. Your friends will have had to buy their own wine; yours came to you as a child.) Selling will net you small money; holding and drinking later can give you great pleasure.

If you are the father of the vendor, a teenager with non-vinous uses for money, then you are probably the best purchaser. Buy, and share with your offspring when they are old enough to regret having sold.

But if, despite all this, you still want to sell, then we might be the best purchaser. Please describe what you have, and post a picture of the bottle or of the unopened case. When did you acquire it, and where has it been stored? And where is it now located: which country (UK? USA? Other), and approximately where within that?
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g-man
Quinta do Vesuvio 1994
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Re: 1979 port to sell

Post by g-man »

i will also mention that the grahams lodge had this in magnums for offer @ 149$ USD (of which i am a proud owner)
Disclosure: Distributor of Quevedo wines and Quinta do Gomariz
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Alex Bridgeman
Graham’s 1948
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Joined: 13:41 Mon 25 Jun 2007
Location: Berkshire, UK

Re: 1979 port to sell

Post by Alex Bridgeman »

There is another option open to you. 1979 is a year which did not produce any great wines from the leading wine regions. In 2019 people born in 1979 will reach a landmark birthday and might well want to celebrate with a bottle of wine from the same vintage as they are. While the Malvedos 1979 was never a great wine and will not improve over the next 5-6 years, if it is well stored it will be one of the better things to drink from that year.

If you are in no hurry to sell, you might like to consider holding on to the bottles for another few years and selling in 2018 and 2019. You might (or might not) get a better price.
Top Ports in 2023: Taylor 1896 Colheita, b. 2021. A perfect Port.

2024: Niepoort 1900 Colheita, b.1971. A near perfect Port.
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mosesbotbol
Warre’s Otima 10 year old Tawny
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Joined: 19:54 Wed 18 Jul 2007
Location: Boston, USA

Re: 1979 port to sell

Post by mosesbotbol »

Where are you located?
F1 | Welsh Corgi | Did Someone Mention Port?
Glenn E.
Graham’s 1977
Posts: 4174
Joined: 22:27 Wed 09 Jul 2008
Location: Seattle, WA, USA

Re: 1979 port to sell

Post by Glenn E. »

AHB wrote:If you are in no hurry to sell, you might like to consider holding on to the bottles for another few years and selling in 2018 and 2019. You might (or might not) get a better price.
This seems like the best advice to me for this particular wine. Though even then you probably won't get a great price for the bottles - as has already been said, 1979 wasn't a great year for wine or Port so the people buying will be doing so for sentimental reasons.
Glenn Elliott
samandkirsti
Cruz Ruby
Posts: 2
Joined: 21:21 Thu 26 Sep 2013

Re: 1979 port to sell

Post by samandkirsti »

Thank you all for your advice. All helpful advice! We are not in any real rush to sell it but were keen to know how much it may be worth. We are based in Cambridge.
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