ThePortForum.com

Hi there,
I've occasionally read the discussions in TPF before, but only just joined, as I have a question I'd like your expertise on.
I purchased a bottle of "Tesco Finest Vintage Port 1994" by Symington for the astoundingly low price of £11.15. I opened it last night for a dinner party and decanted it etc., it was perfectly nice.
One thing I noticed, however, is that the cork, despite being branded "VINTAGE PORT 1994", and the bottle saying "bottled in 1996" was almost immaculate. There was virtually no staining on the bottom of the cork at all. There was a heavy sediment in the bottle, which suggests that it really was a VP, but I'm utterly baffled by the cork - I've seen more staining on the corks of beaujolais nouveau, and this certainly didn't look like it had been in there for 16 years. To your knowledge, is there some alternative closure used (e.g. like the crown caps used during lees aging of Champagne) then the bottle have a cork put in for public release? I just can't fathom how the cork was so clean. Do any of you have any ideas?
Kind regards,
Matthew

IIRC, I’ve seen the same: Tesco 1994 (Symington), with a very clean looking cork. It could be that the corks are flawless, and very tight.

But there is no Champagne-style complication: once corked, it is corked. Of course it could be that the corks had a problem and were, in bulk, re-corked. But that would be unusual for a wine less than half a century old.

jdaw1 wrote:But there is no Champagne-style complication: once corked, it is corked. Of course it could be that the corks had a problem and were, in bulk, re-corked. But that would be unusual for a wine less than half a century old.

Hmmm....i'm not sure i agree with this statement...a lot of Symington ex-cellar stocks of well under 50 years of age have been re-corked (eg: 77 Magnums, Gould and Graham 70 etc.)

I also wondered about the cork of the G94 here

mattmoy_2000 wrote:to your knowledge, is there some alternative closure used (e.g. like the crown caps used during lees aging of Champagne) then the bottle have a cork put in for public release?

I would be very surprised if this were allowed under IVDP regs! My strong bet is "no"

It is possible that these bottles were originally intended for sale under one of the Symington brands (or bought in from another producer) with branded corks. They certainly will not have been bottled in such quantity with the intention of being sold under the Tesco Finest brand as that is a recent phenomenon. If originally branded with a shipper's name, it is perfectly understandable that the original corks would be removed and replaced with these generic corks shortly before shipping to avoid brand confusion.

DRT wrote:(or bought in from another producer)

This should be an easy spot - if they were brought in from another producer pre-bottled, i believe that the "bottled by" small-print on any new label would still need to reflect the name of the original producer...

DRT wrote:It is possible that these bottles were originally intended for sale under one of the Symington brands (or bought in from another producer) with branded corks. They certainly will not have been bottled in such quantity with the intention of being sold under the Tesco Finest brand as that is a recent phenomenon. If originally branded with a shipper's name, it is perfectly understandable that the original corks would be removed and replaced with these generic corks shortly before shipping to avoid brand confusion.

Otherwise this sounds very plausible. For some reason i had always thought that a huge shipment of the 94 VP went across to Tesco at some point in the past and everything put on the shelves since then has slowly been depleting that one-off shipment. But it makes much more sense if there are smaller shipments made to Tesco as needed on a more regular basis, and the original branded corks are swapped out for generic corks as they go along.

RAYC wrote:

DRT wrote:(or bought in from another producer)

This should be an easy spot - if they were brought in from another producer pre-bottled, i believe that the "bottled by" small-print on any new label would still need to reflect the name of the original producer

Good point.

DRT wrote:

RAYC wrote:

DRT wrote:(or bought in from another producer)

This should be an easy spot - if they were brought in from another producer pre-bottled, i believe that the "bottled by" small-print on any new label would still need to reflect the name of the original producer

Good point.

I wouldn't argue with this, but I think the point made by DRT is still valid.

The label will have been printed and stuck on the bottles solely for this order. It will say only that this was bottled and shipped by Symington Family Estates. Yet the bottles will have been blended and produced under one of the shipper names used by SFE and when bottled in 1996 could well have been sealed with corks branded something along the lines of "Quarles Harris 1994 vintage port".

However, when 1994 Tesco Own Label first started appearing on the shelves, in 2010 IIRC, it is very likely that the bottles were recorked prior to being shipped out of Gaia in order to remove the specific shipper's identity. And the quality of the corks used does seem to be pretty good, when I've drunk these ports I have thought that although the corks are fairly short for VP, they do seem to have very few flaws and be a very tight grain.

The other factor that could be linked to the condition of the corks is how the bottles have been stored since being recorked. Based on my experience with the in-store staff at Tesco, I have absolutely no confidence that the bottles are being stored lying down before they reach the store. Certainly once in store, they are standing upright on the top shelf and there will be no contact between cork and port for the many months that it takes to sell through a consignment of store stock. So the pristine condition of the cork could be the result of a combination of a new cork being inserted just before shipping plus upright storage keeping the port and cork separated.

But I should also add that personal experience says that storing port upright does not necessarily harm the port. There is one producer who says that port should always be stored this way and another producer who used to ship bottles to be stored upright in the '80s. Time will tell whether the Tesco 1994 benefits from upright storage - or whether it will all be drunk before storage conditions make a difference!

DRT wrote:

RAYC wrote:

DRT wrote:(or bought in from another producer)

This should be an easy spot - if they were brought in from another producer pre-bottled, i believe that the "bottled by" small-print on any new label would still need to reflect the name of the original producer

Good point.

In addition to what AHB has mentioned, IIRC the relabeled Morgan's (now Yeatman VP) doesn't have any mention on the label of it's past name. It only has TFP as a shippers info on it. So I don't believe they have to mention what "brand" this was originally registered under.

Wow! I didn't realise that this board was so active! Thank you all for your replies, so quickly. I guess the one that makes the most sense to me is the replacement of the corks with more generic ones to hide the brand for selling as Tesco Finest, but surely that would be a fairly expensive thing to do, as corks aren't cheap and I mean, what's the point in doing so when you could just sell it as whatever it was originally branded as, but "selected for Tesco Finest" or something (unless it's an overstock of a good brand that they want to sell off cheap for some reason, but I can't see the benefit in doing that unless there was some kind of fault, which there doesn't appear to be). 1994 was a great year for VP as far as I know. Maybe there are several different ports all being sold as Tesco VP, which might explain the bottle-to-bottle variation, where one is brilliant and the next almost undrinkable?

The clue to your question lies in the fact that Tesco can find Vintage Port that is 18 years old to sell in their own name, just four or five years after they decided to do so.

This is probably unsold stock that was sitting in a shipper's cellar in Portugal that needed a way of reaching the market. £1(?) per bottle for new corks and labels is a cost effective way of releasing an otherwise difficult to sell asset.

Most Vintage Port from classic years hits the primary market in the year of declaration, two years after the harvest. This is matured VP that is ready to drink at a price (when not discounted) that is comparable to 2nd label new declarations. I think this is very good business for both shipper and retailer, provided a fair price is being paid.

Although I think that Quarles Harris is a good guess, I would think that Cockburn's is even more likely.

This has been available since before the Syms bought Ck. Were the previous owners, whilst they were owners, responsible for selling Ck?

Roy Hersh wrote:Although I think that Quarles Harris is a good guess, I would think that Cockburn's is even more likely.

jdaw1 wrote:This has been available since before the Syms bought Ck. Were the previous owners, whilst they were owners, responsible for selling Ck?

And they used to be labelled as Tesco Finest 1994, bottled and shipped by Quarles Harris, which means it isn't really a guess

Well in that case ...

DRT wrote:

Roy Hersh wrote:Although I think that Quarles Harris is a good guess, I would think that Cockburn's is even more likely.

jdaw1 wrote:This has been available since before the Syms bought Ck. Were the previous owners, whilst they were owners, responsible for selling Ck?

And they used to be labelled as Tesco Finest 1994, bottled and shipped by Quarles Harris, which means it isn't really a guess

Are you sure Roy is not on to something?

I have found Tesco Finest 1994 to be pretty inconsistent. It would not suprise me if it turned out that some of the different batches recently were different ports...

Or would the IVDP labelling regs prevent the sale of two different ports under the same label?

Interesting hypothesis.