For The Love Of Port

Are you a buyer (at auction or privately) if the price is right, when you see a top shoulder fill?

Top shoulder, yes. Any levels below that, I doubt that I would venture a gamble.

Nope, not even at a reduced price, unless it's an extremely old bottle and I have good evidence of its provenance. I'd rather pay more for a clean bottle. I was impatient and bought too many questionable bottles on impulse in my more active buying days. The older and wiser (?) I get, the slower I am to pull the trigger on purchases. That marginal condition hard-to-find bottle in this month's auction may be calling my name, but sooner or later another one always seems to come along, so patience is usually rewarded.

Like everyone, I suppose, I've been surprised plenty of times by bad looking bottles that showed extremely well. And I know lots of great wine lovers disagree with me, and some even have no problem with low fills or signs of seepage if there is no additional evidence of damage. But there are already so many unseen variables inside every bottle that make it impossible to predict its quality, and the success rate is already low enough on old bottles, I prefer to at least eliminate the bottles with very obvious risks.

I'm with TomD. on this one

unless it's a very special bottle that i need to hunt down for a specific event.

Of the bottles over 60 years old in my cellar, 1% have a low shoulder level, 5.5% have a mid shoulder level, 4% have a top shoulder level, 14% have a very top shoulder level, 22% are base of neck, and the remaining 53.5% have a level in neck. However, I am quite pro-active when it comes to drinking through bottles with poor levels...

A bottle that has become ullaged, despite good cellarage, usually drinks well, although the incidence of cork-related problems or evident oxidation is much higher. A bottle that has become ullaged due to careless storage conditions is a different matter however.

Anyone buying port that has lived south of the 50th parallel would be wise to avoid isolated ullaged bottles, for fear it has been caused by extremes of temperature. However, if offered a case of 70's, with eight or nine bottles level in neck, two or three base of neck and one top shoulder, then that is a fairly normal ullage profile for a well-cellared case.

Tom

I love how Tom A thinks in case terms and I only in single bottles

Every bottle has its price. Must consider the "3 C's"; color cork and capsole.

Jeff G. wrote:I love how Tom A thinks in case terms and I only in single bottles

I love how Tom has three different notations for what, to me, sounds like the same fill level.

Top shoulder, very top shoulder, and base neck.

My definitions are:

IN - In neck - level at least 3mm/1/8th inch into the neck

BN - Base of neck - meniscus not wider than the outside diameter of the neck

VTS -Very top shoulder - meniscus less than twice the diameter of the neck

TS - Top shoulder - level less than 10mm/3/8 inch below neck join

MS - Mid shoulder - meniscus less than half way round the radius of the shoulder

LS - Low shoulder - meniscus still in contact with the shoulder of the bottle

BLS - Below low shoulder - meniscus on the vertical side of the bottle

Also: - GTD - Glass too dark to record level

Some sixties bottles have swept necks that make the base of the neck hard to determine, and then there's the Niepoort bottles... At some point I plan to design gauges for these bottles so the levels can be consistently recorded.

Tom

This may be a dumb question, but... do we have any reliable information on the fill level at bottling and how much it varies across shippers/years? I sometimes find myself wondering whether a case with all bottle levels the same at only about 5mm in neck with no signs of seepage was simply only filled to that level, or have all consistently lost 5-10mm. Effectively I guess I'm asking whether there are any particular shippers/years who are either very variable with their fill levels, or typically lower than others, at bottling?

do we have any reliable information on the fill level at bottling and how much it varies across shippers/years?

No.

Most modern bottling lines produce consistant fills, but one still encounters the odd exception.

Prior to mechanised bottling, original fills were inconsistant, and I've encountered a couple of very poorly filled bottles that appeared to have an entirely sound cork.

Ullage rates are certainly inconsistant, and with a well-cellared case that has enjoyed the benefit of good quality corks and capsules, the majority of bottles will still be very close to original fills after 40 years.

But a few weaklings usually emerge, which makes it important to occasionally inspect bottles, order them by their condition, and drink first any bottles that show signs of seepage, followed by the most ullaged.

One of my big gripes is the poor fill levels on many new bottlings. Historically, one could expect a vintage port bottle to be high filled at the outset, but in recent years it has been commonplace to fill them to only a few mm into the necks, leaving a big air gap between the cork and wine.

One would have to some complex calculations on the relative expansion coefficients of wine, glass and air to be sure, but my suspicion is that this increases the stress on the corks caused by minor cellar temperature variations..

Tom