For The Love Of Port

(cross-posting from here TPF which I hope is acceptable, to widen the potential pool of knowledge)
The oldest branded port corks I have seen are Croft 1912 and Cockburn 1912. Others here have opened many more pre-war bottles than I, so may have older examples; Is the 1912 vintage the first to have been bottled (in 1914) with branded corks?

No idea. I suspect this may be a bit hard as a fair amount of old Ports that remained in producers cellars have been recorked over time. So it most likely would have to be a bottle that has been in private cellars for many decades. Look forward to seeing what people come up with.

I thought Croft & Ferreira had them going back to the late 19th century?

I will have to look at my photos, as we just happened to be at Ferreira the day they were re-corking all remaining bottles of 1815 Vintage Port. I took some pics but don't know if they'll tell me if the old corks had branding and honestly, I do not remember. If so, that would certainly be the oldest I am aware of, although not the oldest VP I've had.

Roy Hersh wrote:I will have to look at my photos, as we just happened to be at Ferreira the day they were re-corking all remaining bottles of 1815 Vintage Port. I took some pics but don't know if they'll tell me if the old corks had branding and honestly, I do not remember. If so, that would certainly be the oldest I am aware of, although not the oldest VP I've had.

I thought about that day too, but since they regularly re-cork every 30 or so years it probably wasn't the original cork anyways. I have a new cork from it, properly branded with 1815 and the recork year. Though that won't help us