For The Love Of Port

Opened my first ever bottle of Sandemans Founders Reserve today. I was suprised to find a crust on the bottom. In my limited experience with port, I always thought this style shouldn't need decanting but correct me if I'm wrong. The bottle was pretty dusty when I bought it so it might have some age on it. Is this normal for this brand?

It will eventually develop a little sediment if left in bottle long enough. So yes, it could. But these types of Port generally are not designed to be kept in bottle that long, they are meant to be consumed within a couple years of bottling.

Here is an answer to your question and then likely more info than you ever wanted about this Port:

As for the sediment, it is not all that uncommon for these types of Ports to gain some sediment that precipitates out, especially when bottles have had the chance to remain in bottle for a decade or two. Of course they are not meant to do so, but inventory rotation can go awry at times. However, the vast majority is fined and filtered (heavily in fact) so in the first few years, no sediment is seen.

Sandeman Founder's Reserve has been around at least since the 1980's. Long before Sandeman was in the hands of Sogrape, (2001 IIRC) they were owned by several other companies. The family owned Sandeman company was originally sold by George Sandeman's father David at a time the company was fairly strapped for cash. During those early days, Founder's Reserve had some serious quality issues. At one time it was great in the 1980s and rivaled the best of the category "Vintage Character" which changed to Ruby Reserve/Reserve Ruby in 2005, after all the dust had settled on a bunch of divestments by major beverage conglomerates. Then one owner was only using Sandeman as a cash cow, which is why the quality of their Vintage Ports tanked along with the quality of the Founder's Reserve ... the yields on a hectoliter per hectare basis increased dramatically, sending quality downhill. This eventually changed once Sogrape took over and started to breathe life back into the brand and along with a serious cash infusion, a serious focus on improving quality for the long term. Founder's Reserve came full circle and was again one of the top brands in its niche. I remember when it was a robust big-boned bruiser of a Port, similar in heft to what is seen with Noval Black, seemingly cut from that mold.


Some of the history of other owners/sales of Sandeman that I was able to put together:
1. Seagram bought Sandeman in 1980.
2. Diageo (61%) and Pernod-Ricard (39%) jointly purchased Seagram drinks empire (which included Sandeman) from Vivendi Universal for a cool £5.5bn ($8.15 billion)bid on Dec. 20th 2000. The 2nd place "loser" was a consortium led by Bacardi.
3. Sogrape bought Sandeman in August 2001 for approximately £50m. Amorim, the world famous Portuguese family owned cork company lost out on buying Sandeman when they were outbid by Sogrape. At the time, Sandeman was near the very top of the Port brand pyramid.

Thanks for the reply Roy. I'm kind of geeking out on port knowledge right now so your reply hit the spot.

My pleasure!

So an interesting aside.

Yesterday I opened for guests in Atlanta, a bottle of 1977 Rocha Colheita that was bottled 19 years ago in 1996. That made it an even split with its time in wood and in bottle. I was really suprised how much sediment was in this bottle and the contents made the decanter look like a weird cloudy mess. Probably from flying with the bottle 2 days earlier. However, the sediment had to be there. The properietors of that Port house and their sales team have told me on several occasions that their products to do not improve in bottle due to the processing, fining/filtration their Ports undergo. But while I can't speak to this example being "improved" I can definitely describe the quantity of sediment in this bottle as excessive. :)

It gives 100% credence to the first post in this thread.

The properietors of that Port house and their sales team have told me on several occasions that their products to do not improve in bottle due to the processing, fining/filtration their Ports undergo.

With the notable exception of Niepoort, which keeps a seemingly random assortment of almost everything in their bottle store, I suspect the real answer is that they don't know because they don't keep any to find out - at least, not for more than a couple of years or so.

One well known producer had always assumed that TWAIOA ports would be pretty much shot after a decade in bottle, until he was our guest in London and discovered just how good these ports can become after aging..

So you Brits really DO drink Tawny Port after all.

Nice to see someone admit that publicly.


Kidding of course.

Roy Hersh wrote:So you Brits really DO drink Tawny Port after all.

Nice to see someone admit that publicly.


Kidding of course.

They drink and like quite a bit of the brown sticky stuff. They just don't like to admit it.

Andy Velebil wrote:

Roy Hersh wrote:So you Brits really DO drink Tawny Port after all.

Nice to see someone admit that publicly.


Kidding of course.

They drink and like quite a bit of the brown sticky stuff. They just don't like to admit it.

True that!

So you Brits really DO drink Tawny Port after all

And have done for many years, but in proportionate terms, the percentage is low at all quality levels.

I went to the IVDP site just now, to look up the tables of type vs purchase by country to compare the UK and US purchase of different categories, but it seems to have vanished..

Has the country specific data been deleted, or are they hiding it somewhere..?

There is no telling what goes on with that website. It would deserve a full time employee to keep it up to date and add great content, but that's never really been a priority, unfortunately.

i'm new to this site and forum. thanks so much for that background info on Sandeman! i've never seen it before.

Tom Archer wrote:Has the country specific data been deleted, or are they hiding it somewhere..?

Some of the old data is gone, but there are some numbers for the first half of 2015:
http://www.ivdp.pt/pagina.asp?codPag=73 ... 6&idioma=1

Tom Archer wrote:I went to the IVDP site just now, to look up the tables of type vs purchase by country to compare the UK and US purchase of different categories, but it seems to have vanished..

Has the country specific data been deleted, or are they hiding it somewhere..?

My memory of that data says that the UK consumes more LBV-level ruby than anyone else, and that the USA consumes more Colheita than anyone else. In both cases by a significant margin, IIRC. Also as I recall, France consumes more basic ruby and basic tawny than anyone else by a huge margin.

Eric Menchen wrote:

Tom Archer wrote:Has the country specific data been deleted, or are they hiding it somewhere..?

Some of the old data is gone, but there are some numbers for the first half of 2015:
http://www.ivdp.pt/pagina.asp?codPag=73 ... 6&idioma=1

Interesting stuff for 2015...

The USA, Canada, and Norway are the only countries that consume more Premium than Standard Port. Finland comes close, but is also a pretty small market.

The USA consumes the 2nd most Premium, behind the UK. But based on the deltas (-4.2% for the USA, +26.5% for the UK), in 2014 the USA was the top consumer of Premium Port.

France consumes more Standard Port than all countries combined (including France) consume Premium Port.