Large format bottles

[Bradley Bogdan]

A very well deserved prize!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalkz. U

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

How many people would you feel is optimal to consume each of these two sized bottles?

At the annual Dinners that are not a multiple of ten, typically about two dozen people drink a dozen bottles of Port (having started with a gallon of beer, sparkles, white and red wines). I thought that the 59 people attending would be 48 like the previous set, and some non-drinking or very-light-drinking other halves. Nearly. The wives whom I thought would be light drinking were mostly like their husbands, so 27 bottles volume was a mite too light. We needed another two or three magnums.

Separately, one of my friends remarked that the imperial just didn’t look eight times as big as the little bottles. It didn’t. He was a mite disappointed. Then he remembered that the little bottles were actually magnums, and he was happy again. ☺

[Roy Hersh]

Thanks Julian.

I hope everyone here has read Julian's incredible article in the last newsletter. It was the reason I made newsletter #83 "open source" for everyone to be able to read his historic achievement. If you have not yet read it, you really should go back to the download area of the homepage and read that part of the newsletter, free for everyone to see. If you don't know this story, you are missing a pretty significant and historic development that took place in the Port trade ... during our lifetime.

That doesn't happen all that often!

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

an Imperial (6l) and was opened with nine Magnums of F85, three bottles on Noval 1955 and many gallons of beer

Indeed, many gallons. In recent years The Red Bull has pre-loaded with extra barrels for this weekend, having once had the embarrassment of being drunk dry. Playing Conjectures or Yogi’s Whist for a few hours does cause some drinking of beer. Responsibly, of course.

[Roy Hersh]

I often use Google Translate program, especially when conversing with French and Portuguese friends.

However, I could not find any way to translate that olde English used by our friends in the UK. No wonder why things get badly misunderstood between Yanks & Brits. I had a much easier time when visiting Scotland and who the heck ever thought THAT would be possible? I watch a movie from Scotland and have to use subtitles. My wife watches Downtown Abbey, intead, I pour another glass of Port.

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

There has been a legal and a cultural change about big bottles of Port. Last December Roy suggested that the origin of this change appear in his FTLOP newsletter #83, December 2014, with an agreed exclusivity of 30 days. It was an excellent suggestion of Roy’s.

The essay now appears at www.jdawiseman.com/papers/port_and_wine/port_ending_big-bottle_prohibition.html. It is substantially the same essay as that in Roy’s newsletter, plus some data from Niepoort (alas ✔s rather than numbers). Also it quotes the whole of the first letter to the IVDP, English and Portuguese, and includes some other minor extras. But it is substantially the same essay: if you read the version in the FTLOP newsletter, it’s not worth the effort of re-reading.

Request to Port houses: please do send more data for the table in the essay’s postscript, even for vintages long post-dating the essay.

[John M.]

Personally, I love Oscar Quevedo's caveat. Almost worth having a large bottle just so he would visit!

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

Personally, I love Oscar Quevedo's caveat. Almost worth having a large bottle just so he would visit!

I concocted that contract whilst sitting next to Oscar at a tasting. “Send it to me”, he urged. And I explained that though, legally, it looks like a disadvantage for the owner, any likely owner would see it as a joy.

[Eric Menchen]

So what is the difference between 1(a) and 1(d)? The article I read didn't explain it, and I was curious while reading, and still want to know.

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

So what is the difference between 1(a) and 1(d)? The article I read didn't explain it, and I was curious while reading, and still want to know.

You asked.

2. Next we come to a more technical reading of the details of the rules.

Wine is divided into various types by 75/106/EEC (as amended), of which port, being a non-sparkling non-French wine made from fermented grape, can only fall into 1.(a) or 1.(d). But which?

• [1.] (d) Vermouths and other wines of fresh grapes flavoured with aromatic extracts (CCT heading No 22.06); liqueur wines (CCT subheading ex 22.05 C)

Port clearly isn’t a Vermouth as it isn’t “flavoured with aromatic extracts”, so port falls into 1.(d) only if it lies within Common Customs Tariff paragraph 22.05. This has three sub-paragraphs, (a), (b), and (c), and port does not fall into any of those three, as I now describe.

• [22.05] (a) grape must with fermentation arrested by the addition of alcohol, that is to say, a product:
  • having an actual alcoholic strength by volume of not less than 12 % vol but less than 15 % vol, and …

Neither an intermediate product, nor the final port product, has alcohol between 12% and 15%. So port doesn’t fall into 22.05 (a).

• [22.05] (b) wine fortified for distillation, that is to say, a product: …
  • obtained exclusively by the addition to wine containing no residual sugar …

The port I drink has more than “no residual sugar”, so is not 22.05 (b).

CCT 22.05 (c) is excluded from 75/106/EEC 1.(d), but fails anyway, so, even if a lettering error, doesn’t matter.

• [22.05] (c) liqueur wine, that is to say, a product: …
  • obtained from grape must or wine, which must come from vine varieties approved in the third country of origin for the production of liqueur wine and have a minimum natural alcoholic strength by volume of 12 % vol, …
    • by the addition during or after fermentation:
      • of a product derived from the distillation of wine, or …
  
  However, certain quality liqueur wines appearing on a list to be adopted may be obtained from unfermented fresh grape must which does not need to have a minimum natural alcoholic strength by volume of 12 % vol.

The wine to which the alcohol is added does not “have a minimum natural alcoholic strength by volume of 12 % vol” (see definition in Additional notes: ‘natural alcoholic strength by volume’ means the total alcoholic strength by volume of a product before any enrichment). And the “third country” part is puzzling: this might be describing something horrible made from imported grapes, like British Sherry. Even the last clause of 22.05 (c) fails to be port, as the alcohol is not added to something “unfermented”.

Just for emphasis, CCT 22.08 makes very clear that 22.05 isn’t port:

• [22.08] Only vermouth and other wine of fresh grapes flavoured with plants or aromatic substances having an actual alcoholic strength by volume of not less than 7 % vol shall be regarded as products of heading 2205.

No flavouring with “plants”? No flavouring with “aromatic substances”? Not the ports I drink. Hence, in the Common Customs Tariff, port really isn’t 22.05. Hence in 75/106/EEC port is not 1.(d); port is 1.(a). Hence EU rules allow port to be bottled 0.10L, 0.25L, 0.375L, 0.50L, 0.75L, 1L, 1.5L, 2L, 3L, 5L, 6L, 9L, 10L, 0.187L, 4L, and 8L (in the order given in 75/106/EEC (as amended)).

Please, the IVDP should explicitly and clearly permit all these sizes, for new bottlings and for old.

Hence my judgement that most of Roy’s readers just wouldn’t be interested. (Including me.)

Let’s re-phrase. There is no meaning to 1.(a), nor to 1.(d). They are not religious doctrines, giving purpose to the lives of the lost. Instead both are bureaucratic definitions referencing other bureaucratic definitions. That’s all. Which is why I thought that the newsletter would be less turgidly unreadable without them.

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

Advice has been received suggesting that the response above could be misinterpreted. What was and is meant was that the technical details are so boring — to me, even if to nobody else — that they were skipped when assembling the newsletter article. Perhaps, given Eric's interest, that assumption was wrong.

[Glenn E.]

They're certainly dry.

[Eric Menchen]

Dry and possibly boring I won't argue. But when reading I just felt like I might be missing something.

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[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

Request re Jorge Nicolau da Costa Monteiro

Roy,

Please allow a request about a subsequent newsletter.

The Big-Bottle essay explained that the then president of the IVDP, Jorge Nicolau da Costa Monteiro, did not allow big bottles. His term ended at the IVDP; his successor did allow big bottles; that new policy seems to have been a success.

This could be interpreted, not wrongly, as a criticism of Jorge Nicolau da Costa Monteiro.

Please allow a reply to this criticism. Please consider inviting JNdCM to write a response. He might well refuse: even so, offering would be the correct thing to do.

— JDAW.

[Eric Menchen]

Now here is a bit of trivia:
What is the biggest bottle of Port, ever?

I have one answer that I think will stand, but others might have different information.

[Derek T.]

1986 Dow Nebuchadnezzar (15l / 20 bottles)?

[Eric Menchen]

Oh, there has been bigger than that. The bottle I'm thinking of was Fonseca Bin 27.

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[Moses Botbol]

1986 Dow Nebuchadnezzar (15l / 20 bottles)?

How big are the demijohn's for Garrafeira?

[Andy Velebil]

1986 Dow Nebuchadnezzar (15l / 20 bottles)?

you mean 1886?

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

1896. But it has an awkward history.