Old bottle of port

[Grant Watson]

Hello
I have an unopened bottle of port.
Warre & Co
There does not seem to be a year on the bottle.
The label name Convido port
Anyone heard of this my searches come up with nothing.

[Roy Hersh]

Dear Lightninggrant,

Welcome to FTLOP. We request all of our members adhere to a REAL NAMES policy that can be found at the beginning of our PORT FORUM category. Once you log in with your real name/location, I think you will find everyone very helpful and willing to do some research to help you with your photograph. You can either post your photo on Portraits with a link to it, or directly here ... but the size of the photo must be considerably smaller than the enormous file you had attached.

Thank you and I hope you will come on back here to gain the response to your question, once you repost the photo and with your name.

Roy

[Grant Watson]

Ok I try again. I have this old bottle of port. I tried to search to find out more about this like how old it is.
Can't come up with anything in my searches. Anyone heard of this one or have an idea when it was made?
Grant

[Glenn E.]

Hi Grant, welcome to FTLOP!

I can't offer much other than to say that "convido" is Portugese for "invite." Anything further from me would be pure speculation, so I'm afraid I'm not much help.

Someone here will probably have more information for you, though!

[Andy Velebil]

Hi Grant and a belated welcome to FTLOP.

I don't know exactly what Port that is, but I will take a stab-in-the-dark at it.

It is a Warre's...thats easy

Now the not so easy part....I would guess it was a private labeling of some sort, probably for a cheaper Port. Maybe a basic ruby or tawny. I know in the old days this was common to do as was using catchy names on the cheap bottles and have seen the rather large collection that the IVDP has (or had, as I recently heard they got rid of a bunch of them from their museum). That is probably the best guess I could give you, sorry.

May I ask how you came across this? Besides being a cool looking bottle to use as a display, I would guess the contents probably are not good drinking by this point.

[Grant Watson]

I came across this bottle from a friend of mine who recently passed away.
The family loaded all his liquor in boxes and asked me to take it among other things.
I do enjoy port and when I came across this bottle I could tell its been around for quite some time.
Not being able to find a year on the bottle I came here looking for some info if possible.

[Roy Hersh]

Hi Grant,

I think Andy is spot on and that this is a relatively inexpensive private bottling "BOB" or Buyer's Own Brand for a specific retailer. It's possible that it was shipped in cask and bottled outside of Oporto but the actual merchant as this happened often pre-1974, when the law changed.

Given the producer, more than likely it was a ruby style, not a tawny.

Unfortunately, there is no intrinsic value in bottles like these, except for their cool label as Andy mentioned, the wine inside is probably DOA at this point. I wound up obtaining a large collection of OLD Port, Madeira and Tokaji in 2001 in a similar fashion to what you've described and found a few real gems. Then again, there was a lot of stuff in there was undrinkable. You never know until you pop the cork or T-top.

[Holly Downey]

Hello Grant: Re your old port - I found your post because I was searching for the same thing, but for another reason. I came accross a newspaper from Aug 8, 1926 with an ad for your port and liked the ad - it says "it takes no bush to make good wine" and also "30 years old, sold in bottles only". The picture in the paper is identical to your bottle. I don't know if you are displaying the bottle, but I'd be happy to send you the ad, if your interested in such a thing. Did you try it?

[Andy Velebil]

Holly,
Welcome to the forum, glad you have stopped by. The power of the board to bring all things Port together always amazes me. Holly, I'd love if you could email me a picture of the ad. I'll send you an email.

[Roy Hersh]

Hi Holly,


Grant has not come back to visit since last June. We have lots of folks who stop in, ask about a bottle they've found or been given and once they have the information, we never see 'em again.

What a very nice gesture on your part. If it is not too much of an imposition, I'd love the page you mention. 1926 was my father's birth year and he passed away back in January, so it would be very sentimental to have something from that year with Port on it. If it is a pain in the neck though, I'd certainly understand.

Do you enjoy drinking Port by any chance?

Thank you for stopping by!


Roy