For The Love Of Port

As I hinted at a recent tasting note, having eyed up the Port that goes for sale on EBay for some time, I finally took the plunge this week (albeit with a fairly standard bottle).

From what I have seen, there is a steady stream of vintage port, of a variety of ages, most of which seems to either be unwanted gifts or bottles rediscovered during house clearing. The prices vary hugely: there look to be some real bargains but also some bottles being sold (or rather not being sold!) at massively inflated prices. The “Emu Vintage Tawny Port” being offered at a starting price of £25 is a good example of the latter!

The biggest problem seems to be the postage, which averages £10 and can quickly obliterate any saving made by buying on ebay, but perhaps this is not so much of a problem if you don’t have many good wine-merchants near-by. There are also a few quirks of ebay: officially you are not allowed to sell alcohol so all wine has to be sold as “collectable bottles” with the contents being incidental to the purchase of the bottle itself! Also searching for the Port is a bit tricky: I’m sure lots vanish under the radar as they don’t contain obvious words, such as “vintage” in the title.

I do quite a bit of shopping on ebay in any case, particularly for flageolets, a type of musical instrument which I collect, so buying from strangers doesn’t really bother me, and I trust the paypal system to sort things out if the seller messes me around. This first purchase was absolutely fine, with the bottle arriving in less than 48 hours, although as it proved to be less than satisfactory, I am left wondering whether it was just a not-great Port or whether the bottle was stored in a bad way.

Have other people bought on ebay? What have your experiences been like? And, I suppose, if not, why not?

-Jacob

I bought several bottles on ebay years ago. I stopped doing that because i found a better place called marktplaats.nl in my country. Its also bidding and selling but then more locally and most of it is in Dutch. I did get some precious gems from there such as complete cases of Noval VP and hard to find bottles such as Fonseca Guimaraens 1976. The only drawback these days is that more and more people are better aware of the prices because of winesearcher. Not so long ago there was a bottle of Fonseca 1963 with a starting bid of € 740 !!!! Yeah right buddy, dream on. Also it had a pic which was copied from a wine-sellers site and a TN that was clearly copied from elsewhere.
But other then that, you still can be lucky.

Most of the good port sellers on EBay don't ship to MA, and it's a crapshoot on the quality from individual sellers. I've bought a couple bottles of port and sherry over the years with mixed results. Buying Madeira may be better served on EBay.

Moses Botbol wrote:Buying Madeira may be better served on EBay.

I was thinking about that. Afterall, they’d have to try quite hard to do any damage to it! Unfortunately, I haven’t see any on EBay in the UK (nor even very many Madeira tags which is a pain as I’d quite like one!).

Never bought Port/wine/or any other liquid from Ebay so I have no experience there. i've bought from ebay only a few times without any issues. I agree that Madeira would probably be the safest bet, as it's pretty durable. I would be very leary of buying wine or Port from Ebay, to many chances for things to go wrong. There is no way to ensure the bottle was stored correctly and that the sellar even knows wine. I've read some descriptions on ebay in the past and its easy to tell who is knowledgeble about wine and who is not.