Fake vintage ports - guidelines for newbies

[Anthony M]

Hi folks,

What’s the situation with fakery in the vintage port world...is it very common? Where are they coming from - China, Portugal?

Presumably the forgers go for expensive vintages, so does that mean are we relatively safe when purchasing sub-£100 bottles?

In terms of protecting ourselves, I suppose avoiding auctions and buying from reputable vendors is a good start, but are there any tell-tale signs we should watch out for?

Finally, how do they look, smell, taste?

[Andy Velebil]

Fakes of Port are now out there. Thankfully not a ton of them, but they are there and it is something that people should be aware of. So far we've seen expensive stuff and even not so expensive stuff. The Port world has been lucky of sorts, older stuff didn't sell for much and now that it does there's money to be made. Madeira fakes are also starting to show up and those are even easier to fake bottles of than Port.

If you search here on the Forum there are a number of examples.

[Moses Botbol]

I would be more concerned over fake Madeira as it is easier to dupe someone over a fake port bottle. Can be hard to tell how old some Madeira really is by taste alone.

I wouldn't suggest skipping auctions altogether, but I would suggest knowing what the auction house's policy is towards refunds on suspect bottles and what their stance is on the wines they promote.

[Eric Ifune]

A lot of the fakes are European in origin, some from Portugal. One problem with Madeira is that there is a lot of undocumented wine coming out of the woodwork since prices have increased. Some is legitimately old and fine, a lot is old but was never great to begin with, and some are fakes. I've seen a bottle of what was probably an old bottle of 10 year old that was stripped of it's label, recapsuled, and stenciled as an old wine.

[Roy Hersh]

As Eric and I witnessed last weekend, it is easy to be duped by Madeira. And that mention has nothing to do with fakes, necessarily. There are many bottles that reach auction without any proper JNV/IVM/IVBAM selo (seal or strip label). They don't even know (or have to) mention a grape or even a producer in some cases. Some are hand-painted, others stenciled etc. and come from the cellars of families living on the island. These may be great or often disappointing given today's prices, even the oldies that are from known and pristine provenance.

While in the past 3 or 4 years, the proliferation of fake bottles has increased, along with the skyrocketing pricing for Madeira as the resource becomes more scarce from the few remaining private sources on the island and even less from officially approved exporters, as the demand continues to increase in the major markets where Madeira is revered. It is highly likely that this trend will never reverse in our lifetime.

From what I observe when visiting the island every year, many of the oldies that used to be in 550-650 liter casks, are nowadays all bottled with prices triple what they were not even 10 years ago. For the few remaining 19th century bottlings, buy them this year or next or they will likely no longer be affordable. While we will continue to do our annual tours to the island, I've already seriously considered, making our 2020 Madeirathon our last full week-long trip to the island.

[Tom Archer]

Most bottle forgers make mistakes that give the game away - indeed I've never opened a port bottle with 'incorrect' content that didn't bear some clues.

It's very tempting to detail these, except a forger might well spot blogs like this and refine their game. If you're offered a bottle that you're suspicious about, take some good closeup photos, especially of the label, neck and capsule, and share them - either on the forum or by PM.

Whilst it's possible to verify old port bottles with a good measure of certainty, I would agree with Roy's concerns over Madeira. Unless you know a lot about the history of an ancient stash (and I wouldn't trust an auction catalogue alone) - you have to factor in a significant risk element with (allegedly..) very old bottles.