For The Love Of Port

Key word = buying. Many of us have held a 6 liter bottle of VP in Gaia. That obviously does not count.

I am sure some have experienced some old heavier weight glass used for Port too. I know we'll have some wise guys with large formats, but this is really about 750s.

My 1970 Royal Oporto bottles seem to be rather thick and heavy, but I doubt that the difference between them and a "normal" bottle would be more than an ounce or two. I'd weigh one to find out, but unfortunately I don't think I have a scale that precise that can handle ~3 lbs.

Here are some sample weights full or empty in grams.
From this, I think we can assume that the loss of density due to
alcohol vs water is made up almost identically by the weight of
the sugars and solids in port (748g vs 750g).

The heaviest bottle was the TF 20year (655g) by a half ounce
over the American fortified wine bottle from Justin (640g).
The lightest bottle was the Warre's 1994 at 561g (~3.5 oz less)

When were bottles used that were enough heavier that a
person could tell by the heft in hand (rather than by weighing
on a sensitive scale)?

House-----Type------------Year------Empty-----Full------Contents
================================================================
Croft-----vp----------------1960-------624-----
Justin----Obtuse-(fw)-----1998-----------------1380
Niepoort--colhieta--------1991-----------------1355
Niepoort--colhieta--------1991-----------------1358
Noval-----20y--------------------------596------
TF--------20y----------------------------------1395
TF--------40y---------------------------613------
TF--------vp----------------1966-------601------
TF--------vp---------------1977-----------------1337
TF--------vp---------------1977-----------------1353
Warre-----Nimrod-------------------------------1340
Warre-----Nimrod-------------------------------1340
Warre-----Nimrod-------------------------------1341
Warre-----Nimrod-------------------------------1341
Warre-----vp--------------1963-------606------
Warre-----vp--------------1966-------593------
Warre-----vp--------------1983----------------1359
Warre-----vp--------------1991-------587------
Warre-----vp--------------1994----------------1311
============================================================
Average-->----------------------------603-----1351-------748

(Sorry about all the hyphens; trying to keep the columns straight.)

Peter W. Meek wrote:When were bottles used that were enough heavier that a person could tell by the heft in hand (rather than by weighing on a sensitive scale)?

I don't know the answer to this, but I'm reminded that I can feel the difference between a returnable 12 oz. beer bottle and the non-returnable kind.

The same is true of the old 6 oz refillable Coke bottles and the current 8 oz glass nostalgia bottles: the "real" ones are a lot heavier. Not so noticeable when they are full, since the new ones have an extra 2 oz of Coke.

Peter

Thanks for that, it's quite interesting to see the results. Doesn't seem to be a whole lot of variation, at least compared to some Cali dry wine bottles that empty are heavier than a full bottle.

Andy Velebil wrote:...some Cali dry wine bottles that empty are heavier than a full bottle.

(heh)

I missed my chance to be the king of empty bottle weights. Right before I saw this post, I had just taken 173 empties to the recycling center. (Mostly Italian. The accumulation since early July.)