Question about a bottle

[Jasper A.]

Who can tell me something about this bottle. Can't find anything online. Is this old Fonseca? I know Terra Feita was not owned by Taylor's yet.

[Eric Ifune]

I believe it is from Guimaraens, before they were aquired by Taylor Fladgate and Yeatmans.

[Phil W]

Fascinating bottle; I don't have much to add on the history - I only remember that there used to be four parts of Q. Terra Feita prior to amalgamation (sometime between '40-'70 I believe, though I don't remember when); clearly bottled (or produced and bottled) by the Guimaraens family, very interesting.

[Jasper A.]

This one show some sings of leaking. Hope the other ones are better.

[Andy Velebil]

Guimaraens* was a separately run company, though part of Fonseca, back then. They did not own the Quinta back then, however the Quinta was under contract to provide grapes to Fonseca. This does pre-date the official combination of the Fonseca-Guimaraens label/company, which wasn't until 1931. However, even that is a little murky but for all intents and purpose that is the offical date used. I know the 1909 and 1911 were not bottled as "Fonseca" but as this single Quinta. 1925 wasn't a great year and being they were still separately run companies I suspect Guimaraens used the grapes for this bottling.

I'm going to speculate that the label was added a bit later, or it was a slightly later bottling. As, as far as I know, the company name of Guimaraens & Co. wasn't started until 1928 when the London offices of M.P. Guimaraens were closed and moved to Oporto and renamed to Guimaraens & Co.

*Confused yet? The history of this company is very complex and confusing. I've done some research on it for a past article in the newsletter and it wasn't easy, even speaking to David Guimaraens and Chris Forbes (who was doing historical research for TFP) personally.

[Scheiny S]

This one show some sings of leaking. Hope the other ones are better.

pardon my asking, where are the signs of leaking? i've only seen a few bottles that had gone bad and they had obvious stains on the label. my eye isn't trained.

[Eric Menchen]

Andy, prior to the 1931 merger, there was a merger in January 1844. But that was dissolved in December 1848.

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[Eric Menchen]

And my reading of the history is more that Guimaraens & Co. was the company back then, and Fonseca was a brand name they owned, having acquired it from the Monteiro family in 1863. The significance of 1931 is that is the first year a Guimaraens VP was released, and a Fonseca VP was also released that year.

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[Andy Velebil]

Eric,
I may not have been clear, but I was referring to 1931 as being when they combined the Fonseca-Guimaraens company names on a label for the first time. Well, at least without an "&" between the names, LOL.

Fonseca was founded in 1815 and in 1822 Manuel Pedro Guimaraens gained control of the Fonseca-Monteiro Co., left Portugal for London and sold Ports under all sorts of names, Fonseca & Guimaraens was one of them. So Fonseca came first, then Guimaraens popped up some time after Manuel took control in 1822.

The history is very complex as yes there was a lot of changing names and comings and goings during the 1800's. The history is a real mess to sort out. For all intents and purpose those are the offical dates used as I was personally told by David and Chris. I understand one bit of information I was given back then and not mentioned here has changed already, I assume due to further research on their part.