For The Love Of Port

Playing with Excel...

The bottles of VP in my cellar have an average age of 22 years and 149 days.

Collectively, they gain another year of bottle maturation every 7.5 hours.

How does this compare?

Tom

Tom,
You're obviously spending too much time in front of the computer and NOT drinking enough...now get back to that VP

Yes, must get back to the port - I'm sinking a bottle of French plonk right now (actually quite good for a vin de pays)

Tom

The average age of the bottles in my cellar is 22 years and 332 days. The cellar gains 1 year in collective maturity every 30.1 hours.

Isn't it fun being back at work :?

Derek

That is a substantial number of bottles to gain a year in 7.5 hours! Put another way to drink them all in a year you would need to drink a bottle every 7.5 hours (sounds like the rate Pitt used to drink his port but perhaps it had a lower alochol content back then).

For me its more like 120 hours (5 days)!

My cellar has an average age of 23 years and 319 days and gains 1 year in collective maturity every 19 hours and 42 minutes (except in leap years). I suspect that the average age of the wine is very much driven by my birth year of 1963.

Tom - you're running out of drinking time to drink all that port you have stashed away in your cellar!

Derek - you're right, I'd never had had the time to work this out if I had not been back in the office!

Alex

ajfeather wrote:That is a substantial number of bottles to gain a year in 7.5 hours! Put another way to drink them all in a year you would need to drink a bottle every 7.5 hours (sounds like the rate Pitt used to drink his port but perhaps it had a lower alochol content back then).

Bridgema wrote:Tom - you're running out of drinking time to drink all that port you have stashed away in your cellar!

Don't worry guys, after witnessing Tom's capacity for VP at our recent Christmas bash I can assure you that he has what it takes to drink his cellar dry

Derek

After a 3 week absence I am shocked that this thread hasn't had more posts - do you guys over the pond need us to explain the Math

Derek

Update:

The average bottle age in my cellar is now 25 years and 91 days and the cellar gains 1 year of bottle age every 32 hours.

So, the average age has increased whilst the rate of ageing has slowed down. This means (a) I need more old bottles and (b) I'm drinking too many old bottles :?

Derek

PS: I know a man who's cellar has an average age of 44 years and gains 1 year every 365 days

Interesting thread Derek... I haven't come across this one as of yet (in my quest to peruse all the archives since I joined.)

Yes, unfortunately, this dumb guy will need you to explain exactly what is meant to calculate "average age" and how it ages X years in XXX days. :?

Todd

Todd,

Here's The Math(s):

Cellar List
Fonseca 2000
Fonseca 2000
Fonseca 2000
Fonseca 1994
Fonseca 1985
Fonseca 1985

No. of Bottles = 6
Total Age = 2000+2000+2000+1994+1985+1985 = 11964

Average Age = Total Age / No of Bottles = 1994 = 13 years (from 2007)

Where the division of Age/Bottles results in a decimal such as 1994.25 the Average Age would be 13 years + 0.25 x 365 days = 13 years and 91 days

Rate of Ageing is 365 / No of Bottles = 60.83 days or 60 days and 20 hours


OK?

Derek

My calculation starts from the middle of the vintage year rather than the beginning - nominally when the first juice forms in the grapes..

This means my '97's are not calculated as being quite ten years old yet - as of now, 9.86 years to be precise.

A bit pedantic, I know.....

Tom

PS

After Derek's raid yesterday, my average bottle age now stands at 22 years and 65 days. Time taken to amass one bottle year - 5 hours, 13 minutes.

I use the Racehorse method - all have their 1st birthday on the 1st January in the year after their birth. So, on 1st Jan 2008 the 2007 juice will be 1 year old.

Derek

Wow... all this math. And when did I think that my statistics and averages classes were going to come in handy???

I just want to drink port baby!

(Thanks for the math lesson though Derek - it makes sense now that it is explained in dummy-proof language! )
Todd

Statistician here - sorry but you cannot do the bottle age thingy. Average age is perfectly OK but to collectively add a year every so many hours is neither elegant nor correct. It's like when they try to combine ages on Sports shows - "The Arsenal defence has a combined age of 165", it doesn't make sense as between them they could not remember Queen Victoria being alive. Indeed, Tony Adams couldn't remember getting into the car, Officer.

KillerB wrote:Statistician here - sorry but you cannot do the bottle age thingy.

We can and we will

Derek

Since I have fewer bottles, these numbers will change dramatically with each purchase, but, for fun:

Avg Age = 14yrs, 40 days
Aging Rate = 1 day every 40 days, 12 hours, 13 minutes

I'm not up to doing the same calculation with my non-fortified wine.

R

Derek Turnbull wrote:

KillerB wrote:Statistician here - sorry but you cannot do the bottle age thingy.

We can and we will

Derek

If you are under the impression that your wine has aged by one year in 32 hours then you are either in possession of a TARDIS or a psychological disorder.

We can and we will

Indeed - and if you don't like it, I'll set my Dalek on you!

Tom

Derek the Dalek....

Thats got a ring to it!