Port for Sale?

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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lbettam
Cruz Ruby
Posts: 2
Joined: 17:48 Tue 22 Oct 2013

Port for Sale?

Post by lbettam »

I have a single bottle of L. W. Burmester & Co late bottled vintage 1964 bottled December 1969, and also a Dow's 1988 Quinta Do Bomfim vintage port. Do they have any value as private sales or should I get down to drinking them. Hope someone can offer some help. Thanks, Len Bettam
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djewesbury
Graham’s 1970
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Re: Port for Sale?

Post by djewesbury »

We have the man with the answer. Over to you, JDAW.
Daniel J.
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jdaw1
Cockburn 1851
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Re: Port for Sale?

Post by jdaw1 »

They aren’t valuable. Each might be, as an off-the-cuff estimate, £30 at auction. So if you were to sell them to a wine merchant you might get £15, perhaps £20, each. Drink them.

FYI, there follows our standard advice to would-be vendors.
:tpf:   Standard advice to would-be vendors   :tpf:
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, vintage port (rather than LBV, Crusted, or other types), of a good name, from a good year, four or so decades old, of good provenance, might be as much as £100 a bottle. If not all these ducks are in a row, it will be less. 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 pleasure 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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RAYC
Taylor Quinta de Vargellas 1987
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Joined: 23:50 Tue 04 May 2010
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Re: Port for Sale?

Post by RAYC »

The Burmester is an interesting curiosity, since it is relatively early in the days of the style. Taylor claim to be the first to have released/sold LBV on a "commercial" basis with their 1965 LBV (but which - like your Burmester - was bottled in 1969 and released in 1970)*.

1964 ports (or at least 1964 ruby-style ports) are also reasonably difficult to come by so, with the 50 year birth anniversary coming up, you may be able to do a bit better than the £15 or £20 suggested IF you connect with the right 49-year old buyer who also happens to have an interest in the history of portwine...! (also depending on storage history, condition of the bottle, whether there are signs of previous seepage etc. etc....). Ebay, with a reserve (start high, then reduce over time if it does not sell), might be your best bet in terms of getting lucky.

Where are you based in the world?

* The claim is debateable (depending on your definition of "commercial") since LBV was - at least as far as i can remember - seemingly sold as a distinct style in the UK by others including Noval from the 50s, and generic "Late Bottled" vintage port had been around for a long time before that (though perhaps not regarded as a distinct style, and certainly not an "official" category under IVP rules). More information here (external link to Richard Mayson's book)
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Glenn E.
Graham’s 1977
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Re: Port for Sale?

Post by Glenn E. »

lbettam wrote:I have a single bottle of L. W. Burmester & Co late bottled vintage 1964 bottled December 1969, and also a Dow's 1988 Quinta Do Bomfim vintage port. Do they have any value as private sales or should I get down to drinking them. Hope someone can offer some help. Thanks, Len Bettam
As others have already said, their value is limited.

I am one of those people who might be interested in the 1964 LBV, though, provided you're in the US. 1964 is my birth year so I'm always looking to pick up oddities when I can find them. A 1964 Burmester LBV certainly qualifies as an oddity.

Feel free to send me a PM if you're in the US or can ship to the US reasonably.
Glenn Elliott
lbettam
Cruz Ruby
Posts: 2
Joined: 17:48 Tue 22 Oct 2013

Re: Port for Sale?

Post by lbettam »

Thanks to folks who gave me the information on my port, most useful. I am in the UK so sale outside of the UK for single bottles is probably out of the question. Thanks again. Len Bettam.
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