For The Love Of Port

I was cleaning out my grandma's house yesterday and found the following two ports and was hoping someone here could provide me any details about them.

Quinta Do Noval - Bottled in 1981
Graham's - Bottled 1995

Images: Thanks in advance for any help.

Apologies for the image size!

They are 10 year old tawnies...meaning they taste how a 10 year old tawny port should. Usually these are intended to be opened with a couple years of bottling. Still, they are likely still good. Not worth too much...about $20-25 each retail. I suggest you drink them yourself...not worth trying to sell them. Best would be to gather 4-8 folks together, have a little party and taste them both.

Jordan D wrote:Apologies for the image size!

I resized 'em for you. :)

As John said, these are 10 Year Old Tawny Ports which are intended to be consumed within a few years of bottling. Yours are old enough, though, that Port nerds might find the experience extra entertaining due to the novelty. So they might have some additional value due to that, but I doubt they'd even approach $50/bottle. They might be worth maybe $35/bottle? It's really hard to say.

I've had an old Noval 40 year tawny, bottled a bit before this one. It was drinkable....barely. Worth next to nothing. Try it and hope for sorta being ok.




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Andy Velebil wrote:I've had an old Noval 40 year tawny, bottled a bit before this one. It was drinkable....barely. Worth next to nothing. Try it and hope for sorta being ok.

I had a Niepoort 30 Year Old Tawny once that was bottled in the 70s, so it was a 30-yr old with an additional 30 years of bottle age. It was very good and very interesting, though also very different than a normal (fresh) Niepoort 30. Niepoort, though, is one of the few producers for whom something like that might be considered reasonable, so you're probably right about these (Noval and Graham) since those aren't really made for the long haul.

Thanks for the information. A party is definitely in their future!

Jordan D wrote:Thanks for the information. A party is definitely in their future!

Just have a couple of back ups!

I have several aged Noval 10yr tawnies and can tell you that they do age very well. This is mainly because they are moderately filtered - you should find a little fine sediment in that bottle.

Graham on the other hand tend to filter their tawnies more aggressively (too much so, IMO) - I once had a very poor experience with 40yr Graham that had been bottled just twelve years prior..

I would therefore expect the Noval to drink very well, but the Graham might be a bit of a disappointment..