For The Love Of Port

Amen! I am quite tired of over-sized and super heavy wine bottles that I avoid them as much as possible. Other than the obvious, very heavy to lift a case, more money to ship (due to weight), less eco-friendly, etc., they just don't fit into standard wine racks and are a pain to store long term. These overgrown bottles are very popular in the US and luckily some producers are finally going away from them after many complaints. Something I do hope other producers follow.

Turley is one example that I have stopped buying since their strange shaped and heavy bottle is nearly impossible to store on lying down and are so big they don't fit into normal racking. It's just such a pain to store them I finally got tired of dealing with them and simply stopped buying them even though I enjoy them. I've spoken to other people who've also stopped buying them for the same reasons.

Luckily we haven't seen this in the Port world yet and I hope we never do.

Andy Velebil wrote:Luckily we haven't seen this in the Port world yet and I hope we never do.

Ummm, I have some old Port bottles that are oversized and don't fit in my racks so well. Royal Oporto 1970 is one, and a bunch of the Kopke colheita bottles I have are shorter squatter bottles.

What is the difference between the two bottles besides the wieght? Are the double butted, thinner walled, different material????

Eric Menchen wrote:

Andy Velebil wrote:Luckily we haven't seen this in the Port world yet and I hope we never do.

Ummm, I have some old Port bottles that are oversized and don't fit in my racks so well. Royal Oporto 1970 is one, and a bunch of the Kopke colheita bottles I have are shorter squatter bottles.

I have some fairly recent bottles that don't fit my racks well - Quinta do Noval bottled their 1964 Colheita in 2006 using a bottle that bulges slightly, and that bulge makes it just wide enough that you can't rack those bottles properly in either of my wine fridges.

Like Eric, I also have a couple RO70s and they don't rack well at all. They're almost too wide to be racked at all - I have to keep them on specific shelves in my fridge because they won't fit on the rolling shelves. RO77 uses the same bottle.

Casa de Santa Eufemia's bottle for their Special Reserve White is oddly shaped and won't rack next to any other oddly shaped bottle.

Kopke's Colheita bottles are short and squat, and because of that they don't rack well next to each other. They're not quite as bad as the '64 Noval bottles, though.

I'm sure the list could go on and on...

Guess I've been lucky with my storage racks as I've not had issues yet, even with the 1970 Royal Oporto's.

Of course I'm sure there are a few out there, but far far fewer than the US over-sized bottle craze that took off like a bat-out-of-hell this past decade.