Port houses tout another vintage year
Port is enjoying a rare twofer. So rare, in fact, that it hasn’t happened in 146 years. In 1873, the major port houses unanimously declared a “vintage” year for the second harvest in a row. Now they’ve done so for 2016 and 2017.
Vintage declarations started in the 1850s, as savvy port producers seized on a way to market their most exceptional harvests. Individual producers declare a vintage, and a “general declaration,” when there is unanimity among major port houses, is rare. And for it to happen two years in a row is, well, almost unheard of.
“We’ve had two vintages in a row with outstanding quality but very distinctly different characteristics,” said Rupert Symington, CEO of Symington Family Estates. “That warrants breaking a century-and-ahalf tradition of not declaring two vintages in a row.”
Symington came to New York recently with his cousins, Charles and Dominic Symington, along with CEO Adrian Bridge and winemaker David Guimaraens of the Taylor Fladgate
Group of wineries, and Christian Seely of Quinta do Noval to introduce the 2017 vintage ports.
“You probably didn’t expect to see us back here so soon,” Bridge said, referring to the group’s visit last year to introduce the 2016s.
Vintage port is an anachronism, a relic of wine’s golden age. It is rare and expensive — the best top triple digits in price — and rewards long aging in a dusty, cold cellar. It can be exuberantly fruity and luscious when young, then close down after a few years from harvest before blossoming into something magnificent after a couple of decades. Port producers compare them to children — adorable as infants and toddlers, intolerable as adolescents and teenagers, exceptional as adults.
Rupert Symington realizes today’s consumers may not have the opportunity to taste a well-aged vintage port.
“Consumers want to enjoy the wine now,” he said, commenting on current tastes and lifestyles. “Nobody has the cellar space to buy 2017s and age them for 25 years.”
That would be a mistake. These wines are amazing. The New York tasting included 16 wines from 2017, including Dow’s, Graham’s, Bomfim, Warre’s, Cockburn’s and Vesuvio from the Symington portfolio, Taylor Fladgate, Fonseca and Croft from the Taylor group, and Quinta do Noval.
Guimaraens said the previous year, 2016, was a cooler season, yielding elegant and silky wines, while the hotter 2017 vintage gave riper, more powerful ports.
House styles were apparent. The various Symington wines were exuberant, almost playful and eager to party in their youthful fruitiness, while the Taylor Fladgate wines were more powerful, demanding attention and almost daring me to drink them before they fully matured. Quinta do Noval split the stylistic middle.
Portugal’s Douro Valley, where port is grown, has enjoyed a good decade. The 2011 vintage was exceptional for both port and dry wines, as were 2016 and 2017. Winemaking is improving. “The ability to produce a large amount of indifferent wine is there, but we prefer to focus our efforts on producing the best wine possible,” Rupert Symington said.
Climate change may also be in play. “The source of the Douro River actually dried up in 2017,” Bridge said. He has organized the Porto Protocol campaign to enlist wineries to take action to address the effects of a warming planet.
The New York tasting on May 8 was held in a nondescript hotel conference room in midtown Manhattan, with the speakers distressingly backlit against a window looking out to Sixth Avenue. As I savored my tastes of the 16 wines on offer, I looked around the room and saw about half of the place settings unoccupied. These were seats for sommeliers, retailers and journalists who RSVP’d, but then decided not to come. I looked at all those prepoured glasses and thought of the fabulous wine to be wasted and poured down the drain. Vintage port remains stuck in another era, a collector’s item in an impatient time when we hold onto wine only so long as it takes to drink it. Our modern way of enjoying wine may be depriving us of one of its greatest treasures.
Times like this, I regret that I have but one liver to give for my country. I wanted to do all those wines justice, but I settled for another taste of the Dow’s. And maybe the Graham’s Stone Terraces. I may not have a chance to taste these wines again, after all, but I will never forget them.