Cockburn 1967 - Joanna's Port

At a recent tasting (at time of writing in 2022) I took along the above-picture bottled of Cockburn 1967, this being a friend's birth year. I have had Cockburn 1967 vintage port several times, and was aware of the Joanna-labelled bottles but had not tried one, so it was a chance to compare with other Cockburn 1967 bottlings, plus I bought the bottle as I was interested in the label and history of the bottle; who was Joanna, for whom a clearly significant quantity of port was especially labelled?

From Google, the only information that I could find was an unattributed statement saying that "'Joanna's port' was named after a Joanna who received 600 bottles of relabelled 1967 Cockburn's for her 21st birthday, but sold most bottles to resellers" - this was from a book called "More brilliant answers" which seems to be a collection of unattributed statements to random questions on any subject from the internet.

The label itself says "Joanna's Port; 1967 Vintage; Specially reserved for her by R.V.S; Shipped and bottled by Cockburn Smithes & Co. Ltd St. James Square London SW1", so I did some research to try and identify R.V.S. and Joanna, and found the following which I believe identified both:

• In 1966 the company "Showerings, Vine Products & Whiteways Ltd" bought Harveys of Bristol Ltd which included Cockburn Smithes & Co Ltd, prior to the subsequent merger/sale in 1968 with Allied Breweries (subsequently Allied Lyons plc and Allied Domecq).
• At that time, Showerings was a family company run by four brothers, one of whom was Ralph Vivian Showering, who I believe is the R.V.S mentioned on the Joanna label ("Specially reserved for her by R.V.S.")
• Ralph Vivian Showering and his wife Rita May Fisher had two daughters, Wendy and Jennifer.
• Jennifer R Showering married Geoffrey Brian Clinton-Jones in October 1966, and that they had several children, including a daughter Joanna Clinton-Jones born on 20 Sep 1968. I believe this to be the Joanna for whom the port was reserved by her grandfather.
• Ralph Vivian Showering passed away in 1980, so would unfortunately not have been able to be at her 21st birthday.
• A Joanna Clinton-Jones is recorded as having passed away on 17 Mar 2021, with birth date given on the death certificate as 20 Sep 1969; it seems likely to be the same Joanna with the year in error.
  • An aside: the birth year shown on gravestones and death certificates seems to be commonly wrong by a year, possibly a consequence of direct subtraction of age from year of death to get year of birth without taking into account whether the birthday had/not yet occurred in the year of death.

Thus, "R.V.S." was determined to be Ralph Vivian Showering, and "Joanna" for whom the port was labelled was his grand-daughter Joanna Clinton-Jones. I had intended to potentially contact the family or even Joanna herself, maybe find out whether she actually liked port, perhaps even invite her to a tasting; but sadly at the time I looked into this and identified Joanna, assuming the above is correct, then she had recently passed away (and it would clearly have been inappropriate to contact the family at that time also). I suspect there are only a few bottles of the "Joanna"-labelled Cockburn '67 remaining, but should I be fortunate enough to share another, I will raise a glass in memory, and hope she enjoyed the port that bore her name.

Written September 2022.