Can of worms, I know… But I recently acquired a bottle and I was hoping the gift box could at least help determine what decade… So can anybody here help me out?
Bump, surely sombody here knows something about this packaging.
Isn’t always a 3 declared vintage blend ?
It is, but it is impossible for the consumer to learn exactly which vintages that have been used in a particular blend. The only way to get some indication of a bottle’s age if you do not know provenance details is by keeping track of which gift packaging was used at what time.
Based on bottle packaging, mid to late 1980’s juice most likely in that bottle. There was a shift early 90ish (vintages in the bottle) and then another 93/5/6 time frame. Yours is definitely 80’s era. Hope it’s good.
Thanks! Somebody should make a Grand Siecle packaging gallery to help determine approximate age of bottles.
Frank,
I can’t see all the details in the picture to get a really firm time frame, but it isn’t any younger than the 85/82/81 blend. Do you have a better picture? A few other questions you can answer that can help narrow this down:
- What is the NM code on the bottle?
- What does the neck say? Grand Siecle on each side or Laurent-Perrier on one side and Grand Siecle on the other?
- Is the bottle 750 mL or 75 cL?
- What are all of the words/numbers on the front label that are under Grand Siecle?
- On the front label, is the face on the sun solid gold foil or a printed gold with some black for the eye, nose, mouth, etc… features.
All of this can help narrow things down. Not enough to likely get it down to an exact release, but enough to narrow the date range down some more.
thanks Brad, it is going to be in storage in Germany for a few months so I can’t get any more pictures. But it sounds like you’re sitting on a lot of useful information on this. Perhaps you are the one to put together a guide? I like the wine and they’re always cheap at auction, but you never know what you get…