Different bottles for Fonseca 1970?

[RonnieRoots]

I received an e-mail from one of the participants in the July Fonseca offline with a question about his bottles of 1970 Fonseca. He has two different types of bottles. While both are bottled in Oporto (according to the label), one is in a green glass bottle and the other in black glass. The black glass bottles were apparently meant for the Danish market, the green bottles make no mention of an importer.

Is anyone aware of the use of different types of bottles by Fonseca during this time? Was that a common thing? Any info is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[Andy Velebil]

Ronnie,

The short and simple answer is prior to being soley Oporto bottled, the producers didn't have access to the large amount of good quality bottles or a consistent supply that they do now. So they often bought whatever they could get their hands on to do a bottling run. As such sometimes a VP was bottled in different glass bottles.

Now there is nothing to say they didn't do this on purpose for different markets, as I am not aware of what Fonseca did in 1972 when they bottled the 1970. but I've been told the above from a number of producers so would probably lean more toward that explanation as I don't see why they would need different colored glass in different markets.

[Glenn E.]

You might be interested in this thread.

[Alex Bridgeman]

I don't have many F70 bottles at home, but from what I remember, I have seen real mixture of glass for the bottlings ranging from black glass through to very pale green. Many of these are probably UK bottled as they did not carry sellos but there was no indication of this on the label. Perhaps this is a good question to ask when Roy next has someone from TFP on the Guest's Corner on FTLOP.

[RonnieRoots]

Thanks for the answers, very helpful!

And thanks for posting the link Glenn, I somehow missed that thread.