For The Love Of Port

GOULD CAMPBELL Vintage Port, Oporto 1927
Bottled by Matthew Lang & Co. in October 1929 - Re Corked in 1955 and then in the Late 1990's.Minor Label Damage

Paul Fountain wrote:This would have been bottled in Australia as Matthew Lang was a wine and spirits merchant in Melbournre back in the late 1800s. There is a label that still bears his name which is the cheapest and nastiest swill ever put in a bottle.

Andy Velebil wrote:Does it say who did the recorking? And are you able to find out if they topped up the bottle or was it just a simple recork job? If they topped it up, what they used to top it up with would be important.

Derek T. wrote:

Paul Fountain wrote:This would have been bottled in Australia as Matthew Lang was a wine and spirits merchant in Melbournre back in the late 1800s. There is a label that still bears his name which is the cheapest and nastiest swill ever put in a bottle.

This is good news and bad news for me.

I own one bottle of Australian port, which is a bottle of Lang's 1888. It is great to have confirmation that there was indeed a Wine Merchant named Lang in that time period as it helps authenticate my bottle. However, your description of the quality of their wines put a bit of a dent in my enthusiasm for drinking it one day.

1930 Matthew Lang and Co Hunter River Cabernet, New South Wales

“The best red in my experience up to 1960,” said Max Lake in his book “Cabernet: Notes of a Wineman” (Rigby 1977), “of extraordinary complex flavour, it was a supple and elegant wine consisting of equal parts cabernet sauvignon and petit verdot, grown at Dalwood. Only three hogsheads were made and the vines were pulled out!” Max Lake was “influenced to start a cabernet vineyard” as a result of tasting this wine. Many commentators believed that Cabernet was not suitable to the Hunter Valley micro-climate. Nonetheless Max Lake established Lake’s Folly, one of Australia’s early boutique wineries in 1963.