Bottling date for Port

[Mike J. W.]

I'm in the process of entering all of my Port (and wine) into a spreadsheet I developed. Is there any way to tell when a VP (or SQVP) was bottled based on the selo? Or am I just better off assuming it's 2 years from the Vintage date?

[Glenn E.]

IIRC the bottling year is required on the label. Which, of course, doesn't help if there's no label.

Legally, Vintage Port must be bottled between the 18th month and the 30th month after harvest. Which in practical terms means between March and March with years 2 and 3 years after the harvest year. I.e. This year's VP, which is about to start harvest, must be bottled between March of 2027 and March of 2028.

That usually means March of year+2. But occasionally you'll see one bottled in year+3, and even more rarely you'll see one that was bottled in both. I'm looking at you, 1967 Taylor Vargellas. TV67 was bottled in both 1969 and 1970, and in both cases in both England and Porto. So there are nominally 4 bottlings of it, but since there are very probably multiple English bottlers in both years... it could be a dozen or more, and those English bottlers won't necessarily have bottled at the same time. In fact it's very likely that they did not, so there are probably bottlings of TV67 that span the entire legal range of 18 to 30 months.

But also... I don't recall off the top of my head when the 18 to 30 month law went into effect. There are "Vintage Ports" from long ago that were bottled 5, 6, even 7 years after harvest.

[Mike J. W.]

IIRC the bottling year is required on the label. Which, of course, doesn't help if there's no label.

Legally, Vintage Port must be bottled between the 18th month and the 30th month after harvest. Which in practical terms means between March and March with years 2 and 3 years after the harvest year. I.e. This year's VP, which is about to start harvest, must be bottled between March of 2027 and March of 2028.

I've looked on some of the bottles and I just can't find it. Some have it and others don't. I've only logged 18 bottles into my spreadsheet so far and not all of them are VP or SQVP. The bottles I have logged in so far are from the 90's. Not sure if that rule about bottling date on the label was in effect back then.

[Glenn E.]

IIRC the bottling year is required on the label. Which, of course, doesn't help if there's no label.

Legally, Vintage Port must be bottled between the 18th month and the 30th month after harvest. Which in practical terms means between March and March with years 2 and 3 years after the harvest year. I.e. This year's VP, which is about to start harvest, must be bottled between March of 2027 and March of 2028.

I've looked on some of the bottles and I just can't find it. Some have it and others don't. I've only logged 18 bottles into my spreadsheet so far and not all of them are VP or SQVP. The bottles I have logged in so far are from the 90's. Not sure if that rule about bottling date on the label was in effect back then.

Yeah, printing it on the label might be a 2000's era rule change.

I'm pretty sure 18-30 months has been the law since the 70's at minimum, and possibly as far back as the 30's (the IVP was created in 1933).

[Andy Velebil]

Modern rules for bottling port were changed in the late 1940’s.

Prior to that it was, largely, a free for all. Though most producers were still in the 2-3 yrs for VP. Some were much longer.

[Eric Ifune]

Selos are for tax purposes. The lodges buy them but don't have to use them immediately. I doubt most keep track of which lot of selos are used for which bottling run. A few Madeira producers keep track, but their bottling numbers are way, way less.

[Andy Velebil]

Selos are for tax purposes. The lodges buy them but don't have to use them immediately. I doubt most keep track of which lot of selos are used for which bottling run. A few Madeira producers keep track, but their bottling numbers are way, way less.

Selo’s are tracked. At least to a bottling time and general type of port.

[Al B.]

Selos are for tax purposes. The lodges buy them but don't have to use them immediately. I doubt most keep track of which lot of selos are used for which bottling run. A few Madeira producers keep track, but their bottling numbers are way, way less.

Selo’s are tracked. At least to a bottling time and general type of port.

I think the IVDP keep records of who has what stocks of wine and when the wine is bottled.

Selos are issued to a producer and the producer than tells the IVDP what wine(s) each batch of selos has been applied to.

But I am pretty sure that unless you have access to the IVDP's records you can't use the selo number to figure out with certainty what the bottling date of a bottle is. Producers can have batches of selos in a cupboard somewhere and use them years after their issue. Or producers can bottle Port and keep it in storage for years, applying a selo only when they decide to release the wine. You can have Vintage Port with multiple different selos on it if there have been a number of releases.

[Roy Hersh]

1941 was the beginning of the use of the Selo de Garantia by the IVP. There is a register (cadastra) kept of who the numbered Selos were sent to and when. In the old days, when hand recordings were kept by producers, most kept good records and they had to let the IVP/IVDP know when the seals were used, the date, the product, year of harvest, category and bottling date. Did all of them provide that information? I have to believe there was a lot of things slipping through the cracks, long before computers came into the picture. Not to mention in the prior centuries before the IVP came into being, there was a lot of Port produced in quantities that were insane compared to today. Look into 1927 VP production. Enormous quantities were produced. Those days are long gone with consumption down, general declarations not even talked about anymore, and sales of White/Tawny/Colheitas flourishing globally. Even in the UK, the numbers for the wood-aged Ports has really gone up significantly in the past decade.