Wine labels

This could be a very difficult question to answer. Just because you find a bottle with very old wine and a label on it does not mean the label is old. Many atach labels just before shipping. Some cellars are so moist that labels will last only a short time in them, so this is the only practical way.

Some older fortified wines, such as vintage Madeira often were stenciled with paint. I have seen very old vintage Madeira with only a stencil. More often the bottle also has a newer label to meet legal requirements if it has been shipped in modern times. Again there is no way to be certain when the bottle was stenciled.

The oldest wine I have is a bottle of Constantia, either 1791 or 1809. In the old days wine often was stored in bins without labels, and in this case it was likely not certain in which of 2 bins the wine was stored. The bottle is of a non-standard size considerably smaller than a modern full bottle, and apparently hand blown. The top is sealed with green sealing wax. There is no indication that a label was ever present.

It was common practice to stencil the info on the eartherware/stoneware jugs and I suppose wood kegs and barrels before bottles came into use. I know the label as it is today came into use some time between 1790 and 1850 but I don't know what the oldest existing label is.

I have a very old bottle that was hand blown in Williamsburg around 1790. The opening in the neck is such that a modern cork will not fit it. I would guess that they used very tapered corks back then. With a closure of that sort, the wine was probably not expected to last for very long. The size is some where between a quart and a regular bottle.

Some early labels might have been filled in by hand, but printed labels likey were used very early. Many of the wines in the UK were imported in barrel and bottled by UK wine merchants until fairly recent times. The wine merchants most likely had a printing company print the labels. It is possible that some printing company in the UK would have sales records going back hundreds of years, or some wine merchants might have purchase records. Some companies in the UK seem to keep records forever. Thus a search of old wine merchant and printing company records might turn up something.

"Jenny" in message news:c2c5cs$1raal2$ snipped-for-privacy@ID-109670.news.uni-berlin.de...

Thanks very much and I do not think I (or most people in the US) would be in any position to complain about anyone's English even if we wanted to. (Actually you can see non-native speakers in the US who have the language better than natives who are happy graduates of our public schools, and know more about US history too; I apologize, I should not get going about that.)

Jenny if you are from the Low Countries then you might possibly enjoy a small intense experience there that I described late Friday on the independent US wine Web site

I am not connected to that site, and my postings there have been sometimes incompletely serious.

Best -- Max Hauser

By the way, "Tintin" is known as "Kuifje" in your region if I remember right. (Re my first reply.)