An old Mackenzie & Co Port - help needed

[Andy Velebil]

I recently bought this for a pretty cheap sum, so it was worth the gamble. Anyone have any guesses on what time frame it was produced in?

The bottle appears to be one-piece on the top part and then a separately attached base. The base is wobbly when set on a flat surface. Inside the punt you can see very rough tool marks. The front label (no back) has 1915 as the last date on it, referencing an award won in San Francisco. There is no Selo on it and appears there never was one. I can't see anything on the cork and there is sediment when I tip it into the neck, as the bottle is too dark to see through anywhere else. There are air bubbles in the glass throughout the entire bottle.

I suspect it is an old Tawny of some sort, but anyone have any ideas?

[Bradley Bogdan]

That's such a cool bottle. Where did you come across it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Andy Velebil]

That's such a cool bottle. Where did you come across it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

At auction. It was something like $20-25 so I figured if it tastes terrible it wasn't any real loss of money.

[Tom Archer]

The lack of markings on the base suggests it is upwards of 50 years old, and the presence of a punt makes it unlikely to be a Portuguese bottling, although if it was bottled in the USA, I have no information on the timeline of American glass production. However, assuming it was bottled on this side of the pond, do the following:

Have a close look at the neck of the bottle and see what the glass is like - rich even green glass didn't seem to appear until the mid sixties, and prior to that an even brown or washed out green/brown were the dominant hues. Look to see if there are any visible stress marks in the neck glass - that tends to indicate pre WWII. If air bubbles can be seen in the glass it could be pre WWI, but the label effectively rules that out. There was a fairly brief period in the very early sixties when producers had a dalliance with opaque or near opaque black glass, so if you can't see through it, that might afford a clue..

[Bradley Bogdan]

The lack of markings on the base suggests it is upwards of 50 years old, and the presence of a punt makes it unlikely to be a Portuguese bottling, although if it was bottled in the USA, I have no information on the timeline of American glass production. However, assuming it was bottled on this side of the pond, do the following:

Have a close look at the neck of the bottle and see what the glass is like - rich even green glass didn't seem to appear until the mid sixties, and prior to that an even brown or washed out green/brown were the dominant hues. Look to see if there are any visible stress marks in the neck glass - that tends to indicate pre WWII. If air bubbles can be seen in the glass it could be pre WWI, but the label effectively rules that out. There was a fairly brief period in the very early sixties when producers had a dalliance with opaque or near opaque black glass, so if you can't see through it, that might afford a clue..

Was it only the 60s where producers used the nearly opaque glass? I'm lacking access to my stash to look at individual bottles as I'm at work, but I could swear a few of my 70s decade Niepoorts have annoyingly dark bottles.

Thanks for the insights Tom!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Roy Hersh]

Somewhere between late 1940 to the mid-1960s, but beyond that, who knows.

[Tom Archer]

Was it only the 60s where producers used the nearly opaque glass?

No.

Around 10% of the 1960 VPs are in opaque bottles, but prior to that, opaque glass is virtually unknown. The only '63 I've seen in opaque glass is the Borges. I don't think I've ever seen an opaque '66 or '67, but some of the minor houses started using it in '70. Then for the '85s the world went mad as both the Symingtons and TFP opted for opaque and this continued until the end of the last century, when the producers began to have doubts about the wisdom of not being able to check the level of a bottle. This was reinforced when the emergence of FTLOP and TPF brought the producers into much closer contact with serious port consumers (as opposed to just critics and merchants) who made it pretty clear that the principal of 'survival of the fittest' when pulling a bottle for consumption, is greatly compromised by opaque glass.

My recent stock is confined to the darkness of its wooden cases, so I can't give an authoritative statement on the proportion of opaque glass used in recent bottlings, however my occasional observations suggest that the practice has now been largely abandoned.

As the '80s emergence of opaque glass coincided with a sudden increase in flawed bottles, I have previously dubbed it 'the dark ages' of port..

[Andy Velebil]

I'll double check the neck and other items mentioned. There are air bubbles in it, you can see some elongated ones on the second pic from the top on the right side of the label. Given how wobbly the base is I'd hazard a guess it was pre-WW2. As I've never had a post WW2 bottle that had this wobbly of a non-machine made base before. But I'll confirm more details tomorrow.

[Andy Velebil]

Ok, I looked at the bottle again a bit closer. The neck doesn't have glass stretch marks in the neck that I can see, however it does have lots of elongated air bubbles in the neck.

The glass is actually a darker shade of green. I can see through the neck and with a better flashlight can sorta see into the main bottle a little bit (though I think the Port color is a bit dark making it harder).

There are quite a lot elongated air bubbles in the glass, all over it.

I can't see any thick seam on the main bottle itself which is quite weird given how the base appears to be hand molded on to the main bottle. Or a very very crude semi-mechanical method.

Given how the last date for an award listed on the bottle is 1915, one would think they wouldn't still be using those dates well into the mid-1900's, some 40+ years later. Then again, I'm sure stranger things have happened.

It has a silver metal capsule that someone has waxed over. The wax appears to be the kind of stuff used in the 60's-70's. However this wax is a second layer and I can't see enough of what appears to be the original underwax to get a good age read on it, though it does appear to be more of a light tan or off-white.