What is the average age of the Vintage Ports in your cellar?

[Roy Hersh]

I know this is not an easy question but ...

[Eric Menchen]

Easy question. 14.865 years

[Peter W. Meek]

Since Nimrod (with no indication of age whatsoever) outnumbers my other ports by about 2:1 I can't answer that.

Discounting the Nimrod, the average vintage of Ports in my cellar is 1994.642857 (sum of age of each bottle/total bottles)

Average age is 2009 - 1994.642857 = 14.357143

[Peter W. Meek]

Huh!!! Mine aren't quite as old as Eric's.

[Eric Menchen]

D'oh! I drank an 1983 this evening. That pulled it down to 14.767. The astute mathematician will now determine how many bottles of VP I own.

[Peter W. Meek]

Sorry, but this astute mathematician CANNOT determine how many bottles of VP you own... at least not after two bottles of wine and a half bottle of port. I did get some fairly silly answers suggesting that you own complex fractional numbers of bottles, but I doubt those answers were even close to correct.

[Glenn E.]

The average date on my year-dated bottles is 1985.539. Today is 2009.693, so the average age of the year-dated bottles in my cellar is 24.154 years. I didn't bother to subtract out tawnies, though, so that's not purely a VP number for me. I have a lot of tawnies and those tend to make up the bulk of my older bottles.

Coincidentally, 1985 also happens to be the year from which I have the most bottles (41), followed by 2003 (36) and 1964 (29).

Eric now probably has 114 bottles, though due to rounding it's possible he has 113.

14.865 * (n+1) = 14.767 * n + (2009 - 1983)
several steps of basic algebra later...
n = 113.622

Given the precision provided by Eric I shouldn't be off by a little over a third of a bottle, so I must have messed something up.

[Eric Ifune]

If you don't count three outliers, 2 1935's and a 45, probably early to mid 80's.

[Mike Kerr]

Not counting multiple bottles of a given year, which would skew the average a bit, the average age is just over 16 years.

Oldest is 1972, newest is 2007, average is 1993.

Factoring in multiples, it's closer to 1998, or 11 years.

Mike.

[Eric Menchen]

Eric now probably has 114 bottles, though due to rounding it's possible he has 113.

14.865 * (n+1) = 14.767 * n + (2009 - 1983)
several steps of basic algebra later...
n = 113.622

Given the precision provided by Eric I shouldn't be off by a little over a third of a bottle, so I must have messed something up.

Your math works. Don't forget those half bottles, and those Kopke 500 ml bottles. I now have 85.375 liters of VP, or the equivalent of just under 114 bottles.

[Glenn E.]

Your math works. Don't forget those half bottles, and those Kopke 500 ml bottles. I now have 85.375 liters of VP, or the equivalent of just under 114 bottles.

Aha! Yeah, I just assumed "bottles" and not liters. Mine's probably off then, because I have several magnums and several halves.

[Roy Hersh]

The size of the bottle is irrelevant for this exercise.

Also irrelevant is this:

Since Nimrod (with no indication of age whatsoever) outnumbers my other ports by about 2:1 I can't answer that.

In the original subject .. please notice two words which are relevant: VINTAGE PORT

And Mike, multiple bottles from the same year ... definitely DO count.

[Eric Menchen]

The size of the bottle is irrelevant for this exercise.

IMHO, it should be taken into account. The question as originally posed isn't clear in this regard. Given Roy's assertion, If I have only three bottles, two halves from 1960 and a full bottle from 1980, ignoring the bottle size gives a vintage average of 1966 and 2/3. Taking the bottle size into account gives 1970. If I have just two bottles, a half from 1960 and a magnum from 1980, should the average of these two be 1970? I think the magum should count four times as much as the half, and this was my assumption in my calculations. But if someone wants to just count all bottles equally that's fine too. Unlike these examples, it wouldn't change my result by more than a year. Oh, and both the median and mode of my collection 1994.

[Gary Richardson]

Just Vintage Port: 16.1 years average
Vintage plus LBVs: 14.4 years average
Vintage plus LBVs plus Colheitas: 16.2 years

I know that I went beyond the scope of the original question, but I did answer that one first

-- Gary

[Derek T.]

54.445 years. A few more cases of 1908 and I should top the big 60



This is a joke. The real number is around 20 years.

[Peter W. Meek]

In the original subject .. please notice two words which are relevant: VINTAGE PORT

I did leave out the Nimrod; I confess to including tawnys with indication of age.

Considering only VPs (without a skewing recent purchase which is to be cellared for a long time): 30.2 yrs

With the case of 2007 Warre: 10.29411765 yrs

I have (and have ever had) only a few VPs in my cellar, so I took a historical look.

VPs ever in my cellar (excluding the 12x2007): 30.33333333 yrs

Lastly, VPs ever in my cellar (including the 12x2007): 14.14285714 yrs

Which should provide plenty of grist for the algebraicists. (all bottles 750)(all years are even numbers)
Extra points for guessing brands.

[Tom Archer]

The average age of my VP has been recently depressed by the bargain purchase of seven cases of Martinez '97, but extended by the purchase of five bottles of Andresen 1884; and currently stands at 26 years, 7 months and 7 days.

The collective age of the bottles in my cellar has now topped 70,000 years..

Tom

[Roy Hersh]

Nice Tom!

Thanks for sharing.

[Moses Botbol]

I am guessing about 23 years old would be the average.

[Marc J.]

The average age of the VP in my cellar is just over 34 years (sometime in 1976) - according to my cellar software.

Marc