It’s tempting to look for house style in Tawny Port, especially among the British firms who make a point of defining a style for their Vintage selections. Taylor’s Vintage, blended from several estate vineyards, is defined by the old vines at Quinta do Vargellas, a Douro Superior site that produces tense, muscular and firmly mineral wines. Though this Tawny is from a lot purchased by Taylor from the Port shippers Wiese & Krohn in 2013, as Taylor’s managing director Adrian Bridge explained, the company decided to present it as part of their Limited Edition series, as it closely parallels the style of Tawny Dick Yeatman would have socked away. Bridge said that Yeatman, who managed the firm from 1923 until his death in 1966, 'loved making Port, but he wasn’t interested in selling it; we have all this old Tawny stock because he had an attachment to it.' Whether augmented by new purchases, or selected from the firm’s own stocks, Taylor plans to release a Limited Edition Tawny from a 50-year-old single harvest each year. There’s a buzz of freshness surrounding the flavors in this 1965, incorporating the kind of tension you might find in an equally mature vintage of Taylor Vargellas, parallel in its mineral structure and schist-inflected tannins. Here, the edges have been polished smooth by cask aging, but there are still edges, and there is still fruit—plummy fruit layered with floral notes of honey and bee pollen. Brisk and graceful, this carries the terroir of the Douro directly.
Wine & Spirits 97 points.
