1967 | Taylor's | Fladgate Very Old Single Harvest Port

Delicate tawny brown color with a broad amber rim displaying olive highlights. A complex symphony of aromas on the nose, with notes of apricot, sawn wood and tobacco, scents of orange flower and honeysuckle, all on a rich mellow base of toffee, marzipan and almond. Dense, concentrated, velvety palate lifted by a crisp acidity, with a confit of apricot, guave and raisin, flavors of butterscotch and a hint of caramelized orange. A wonderfully opulent and complex wine with a lovely youthful freshness.

Reviews:

• Wine Advocate: The 1967 Very Old Single Harvest Port is Taylor's new release in its ongoing 50-year Colheita program (or, as they prefer to say, "single harvest tawny port"). This should just recently have been released into the marketplace by the time this review appears. It is a typical Douro blend, coming in with 163 grams per liter of residual sugar and 20.7% alcohol. Taylor's series of 50-year single-harvest tawnies are impressive and always on the mark. This year is no exception. This molasses-flavored beauty emphasizes its complexity, seeming elegant in the mid-palate, but remarkably concentrated in flavor. Despite that concentration of flavor, this never seems even a little jammy. It is also wonderfully persistent on the finish. The most notable features here, though, are the smooth, unctuous texture and the complexity--the mature flavors, not only molasses, but a bit of seared caramel. It was interesting revisiting this a few days later, by the way. Some say these long-aged tawnies never change. I never believed that was true and this is a good example. On opening, there was a touch of a hard edge and it was sometimes just a little harsh on the finish. A couple of days later that was literally gone and after a week or more, this seemed remarkably graceful and impeccably balanced. It eventually seemed even a touch understated. This was bottled in 2016 with a bar-top cork. As noted on occasion, wines aged this long in barrel can in theory last indefinitely, assuming no cork failures, but it is ready and the bar-top cork means it is meant to drink now.

• Wine Spectator: This draws you in, with aromas of warm halva and toasted pistachio giving way to a wide range of buckwheat, toasted sesame, walnut husk, menthol and licorice root notes that refuse to break down in the mouth. Exhibits remarkable length, with ample viscosity matched by steely tension, putting this in rarefied air.

Producer Information

Taylor's is one of the most important Port houses in the Douro region of northern Portugal. It is notable for its wide range of traditional ports, from vintage expressions to tawny ports of various ages, and also for its creation of the Late Bottled Vintage, or LBV, style. The genesis of the company began 1692 when English wine merchant Job Bearsley arrived in Portugal, although it would be many years and owners before it came to be known as Taylor's. Bearsley initially traded in red Portuguese wine from the northwest of the country, and in 1744, under his grandson Bartholomew, the company became the first British wine merchant to buy a property in the Douro. Taylor's changed hands often during the 19th and 20th Centuries, coming under control of both Joseph Taylor and John Fladgate, who gave the company its names. It survived to rebuild after phylloxera ravaged vineyards across Europe at the end of the 19th Century. It came to the Yeatman family at the beginning of the 20th Century, and they have been the proprietors since. In the 1960s, Alistair Robertson took the reins and began to focus on finding new markets in Asia and North America, rather than just relying on Britain. He also created the first Late Bottled Vintage port, which has since become a mainstay of the industry. It was first released with the 1970 vintage and was an instant success.

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