WTN: Taylor Vintage Port 1994

Belated tasting note from August 2006.

<b>Taylor Vintage Port 1994</b>
Half bottle thanks to Albino. Still opaque purple-ruby-black, slight watery purple rim. Still somewhat closed of course, and nowhere near ready, but so deep and complex, concentrated and intense, as well as extremely well-balanced, 1970-like in its early harmony, seemingly even longer and more complete, a perfect young Port the likes of which have not been made since. We had once hoped that thanks to that superior early harmony of the 1994s, even the top wines of the vintage would be reasonably approachable once they reach the age of fifteen. It now looks as if, even though such well-balanced wines are a pleasure to taste throughout their lifespan, the top 1994s are too big to fully open up (let alone show true signs of maturity) before they reach age twenty. Even so, we will certainly continue to pull at least one cork even on the Taylor and Fonseca once a year. Having said that, other 1994s (especially ones not 100% foot-trodden) may enter their plateau of maturity sometime between 2009 and 2014.

Greetings from Switzerland, David.

David, why would foot-trodden Ports mature more slowly?

Yes, the 1994 Taylors are closed now. They were a joy to drink on release and will be when they open again.

Honestly, I can only venture an educated guess, such as that foot-treading results in "better" extraction (whatever that means, more complete and at the same time more even, less crushing of pips and thus "green" matter, but more substantial extraction of colour and tannin etc.). It usually seems to me those wines have higher dry extract, too.

Whatever the reasoning behind it, experience tells me it is true. The Symington's (Peter's in particular, given he built/ds his own remontagem fermentation tanks and markets them locally) experimentation with Graham for example seems to prove the point, for example. No wonder it is the one Port house that managed to make a greater 2000 than 1994 (which I believe was only partly machine-made, but still). While both wines age harmoniously, one simply never gets the same sense of youthful burliness over a number of years with partly or fully machine-made wines, instead, they appear to sort of disrobe part of their structure while they are maturing, unlike the wines of the past (Graham up to and including the 1970, if not up to 1975 vintage IS not the same product at all, regardless of vintage fluctuation).

Another way to get an idea of the difference it makes, one might compare Graham from the nineties to their Vesuvio, vintage per vintage. The problem is, now that the Symingtons use machines for their standard (non-vintage) wines again only, will they reveal the necessary information that would such a comparison worthwhile? They certainly have no interest in proving that their remontagem systems are not perfect (note theirs are said to be so much better than everyone else's down there, so do not get me wrong, this is NOT an anti-Symington rant - if anything, their perfectionism and return to methods of old proves the point, that's all).

In short, whenever you hear anyone claim 1994 was not the greatest Port vintage of the last three decades, ask them which wines they tried. They are going to enumerate remontagem-made ones, you will see. Those are not bad wines, but I still wish they would reveal that relevant bit more grip.

As to the 1994 Taylor, I'm happy my dear friend Al bought enough I'm getting to taste it once or twice a year at least. This may seem like infanticide, but hey, how often do you get to observe a 100 point-rated wine's evolution this closely?

Greetings from Switzerland, David.