Page 1 of 1
1977 Dows
Posted: 22:24 Wed 18 Sep 2013
by Badger
Hello Everyone,
Standard sort of question. I have 12 bottles of 1977 Dows Port bought as a christening present with a view to me selling many years down the line. It is now many years down the line and I want to do something with them. My options as I see it -
1. Keep them and drink them - Not a major drinker so would be totally wasted on me to be fair.
2. Dish them out to family and friends who can enjoy
3. Sell 10 keep 2 for myself. Stored for the majority of it's life in the dining room (wooden suspended floor 1904 house never got anywhere near what could be considered warm). What do people think? And what sort of value? This is my favoured option as long as it doesn't present to much agro. Willing to open one of the two keepers as a tester.
Any input much appreciated.
Re: 1977 Dows
Posted: 23:25 Wed 18 Sep 2013
by DRT
Hi,
1. Don't rule out the possibility that you will develop a taste for port as you get older. I did.
2. Dow 1977 can be fabulous port, but it has a bit of a reputation (along with others from the same vintage) of suffering a higher than average incidence of being corked. For that reason some here avoid buying it, including me.
3. The described storage condition is not ideal but doesn't sound disastrous. I assume your definition of "warm" is that of a Brit?
4. In a private sale or at auction you will probably get 50% of the current retail price. Current retail is around £500 per case, so you are looking at £250 for the lot or just over £200 for ten.
5. I refer you back to point 1
Derek
Re: 1977 Dows
Posted: 23:28 Wed 18 Sep 2013
by Alex Bridgeman
This is a really interesting question. Dow 1977 is a fabulous port - but was bottled at a time when corks were very poorly sterilised and suffers an alarming rate of contamination from poor corks (I think I run at around 66% failure).
You could easily sell via your local auction house or probably a local wine merchant. For something as old and as (potentially good) as Dow 1977 you could even consider consigning your bottles to one of the internationally known provincial auction houses like Straker Chadwick or Dreweatt Neate. Roughly you could expect to net around £20-25 per bottle, maybe a bit more. It shouldn't make any real difference if you sell 10 bottles or 12, although some people on the board might disagree with me.
You might also be able to sell privately, perhaps through this board, but most people here would prefer to buy a small number of bottles because of the incidence of cork taint.
Best of luck - and please let us know what you decide to do.
Re: 1977 Dows
Posted: 21:31 Thu 19 Sep 2013
by Badger
Well, it would seem to me that perhaps the best thing in the first instance would be crack one open this weekend and see what all the fuss is about!
Re: 1977 Dows
Posted: 22:09 Thu 19 Sep 2013
by DRT
A splendid decision.
Re: 1977 Dows
Posted: 08:30 Fri 20 Sep 2013
by Alex Bridgeman
Badger wrote:Well, it would seem to me that perhaps the best thing in the first instance would be crack one open this weekend and see what all the fuss is about!
That is an excellent decision.
Can I suggest that when you do open one, you decant to remove the sediment and start drinking right away. Experience shows that if TCA is present, it takes a while to absorb oxygen and become really offensive. If you open a bottle and drink immediately you could be enjoying the port while it is at its best. Leave perhaps a glass or so overnight and come back to it to see whether the mouldy cardboard smell and taste developes. And please let us know what your experience is - this is still an hypothesis that is being tested.
But overall, I hope you enjoy what can be a stunning glass of port.
Re: 1977 Dows
Posted: 08:58 Fri 20 Sep 2013
by jdaw1
Indeed, our standard advice of not to sell isn’t just aimed at you and your bottles.
[url=http://www.theportforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=7411]Here[/url], in drafting ‘standard advice’, we wrote: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?
Since you have decided to ‘quality control’ the bottle, please do post a
tasting note.