2003 Symington Vintage Port - what is it?

[Alan Gardner]

To emphasize – I’m looking for information on the 2003 Vintage Port, bottled under the ‘Symington’ label (not their usual house names). This is listed on Cellar Tracker as 2003 Symington Family Porto Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Vintage – but there are no tasting notes by members (or anywhere in FTLOP notes) although there is a reference to a note on the Jancis site (but I’m not a subscriber) https://www.jancisrobinson.com/tastings/view/517546

This is planned to be served alongside a ‘review’ of the 2003 Graham’s Vintage Ports (we have the 750ml & 375ml commercial releases, plus the three individual bottlings of the different pressings: Traditional Lagar; Robotic Lagar; Paddle crushing).

Does anyone know whether the ‘Symington’ bottling has any relationship to the Graham’s bottlings (other than ownership)?

[Alan Gardner]

I have managed to get a copy of the Jancis note linked.
However, it doesn't give any details of origin - just the note itself. It further references that the Sainsbury 'Taste The Differnce (TTD)' line of products are what Sainsbury claim to be "superior bottlings" (which I interpret TTD to mean is a marketing term!).

The tasting note identifies "pure orange peel" on the nose - not something I usually associate with any of the Symington brands. Anybody else get pure (or impure) orange peel on the nose of any of their brands?

[Frederick Blais]

Symington's are often doing what is called a Buyer own brand Port. So it could Sainsbury Vintage 2003 bottling by Symington.

[Eric Menchen]

Of course, this kind of begs the question, what is Graham's? It is more than just Malvados juice in 2003. I don't know specifics about this bottling, but I'm under the impression that these BOB bottlings are made up of stuff that might have gone into some of the other lesser known labels, QH, Martinez ... The family has plenty of properties to pick from.

[Andy Velebil]

I know some of the older UK BOB's were simply relabeled "regular" brands from the Symington's. Mostly Quarles Harris and Warre's, if I'm not mistaken.

However, for 2003 I have no idea if they made up a special blend just for them or not. I would assume they did make a special blend, but again that is pure speculation.

Perhaps one of our UK folks can chime in, as they would probably know best.

[Alan Gardner]

Without getting too sidetracked, most BOB's are offered under the name of the retailer, rather than the 'House' who produced it.
This is clearly identified as Symington - although it seems apparent that it was only sold at Sainsbury's.

And, of course, the 'bottling' would have to be in 2005 - substantially before being offered for sale by Sainsbury - which Jancis's note suggests was in 2011 when she tasted the whole range of Sainsbury 'Taste The Difference' wines.

Of course Sainsbury could have 'reserved' this 5+ years earlier, but it seems more likely (to me) that this was a 'stranded port' made by Symington's outside (or in addition to) their regular house offerings, but sold (subsequently?) to Sainsbury - so the volume had to be substantial.

EDITED TO ADD: This is more technically a 'co-brand'. The front label emphasises the Symington's but also includes the 'TtD (Taste the Difference)' logo. The Sainsbury connection is (only) on the back label. The TtD logo itself says "Selected By Our Winemakers" and the front label also includes " Winemaker: Charles Symington"

[Tom Archer]

I have (quite recently in fact..) pointed out to members of the Symington clan that whilst 'Symington Family Estates' may be factually accurate, it's a rubbish brand name.

My advice has been to either maintain Quarles Harris as a 'best of the rest' brand with no fixed house style, or to present 'Symingtons' as a shipper in its own right. However the latter option is slightly problematic as it would be attributed to the lower end of the quality spectrum. A third option would be to maintain the Martinez brand as the 'also ran' brand..

[Alan Gardner]

Is 'Symington Family Estates' even accurate?
We know the major houses generally have contracts with multiple growers. Is it realistic to expect that 'Family Estates' would be crushed (trodden?, Lagared?) separately from 'non-Family' estates?

Plus we are told that, from the start, 'Vintage' ports have been treated differently from 'mass market' ports (e.g. generally vintage ports were foot-trodden - at least until recently). Which also begs the question of how the Shippers knew to 'foot-tread' when the declaration came 2 years later (but that's a different thread!).

Until around 2000 I could regularly pick out Martinez in blind tastings - but I was a huge Eira Velha fan (although I haven't identified it in any Taylor/Fonseca brands since the change - but then I don't taste younger ports regularly). As a (former) Martinez fan, I'd object to the brand being resuscitated with a totally different style. (Haven't had enough Quarles Harris to have a 'style memory').

I'd be happy with 'Symington Selection' - but I'm not the marketer!

I 'think' that back in 2003 all (or most) Symington brands were still foot-treading the grapes, although I guess it's possible that a 'batch' of mechanically processed may have been selected as 'premium' and bottled separately in 2005. For sure the Sainsbury selection has a different bottle from the Graham's (the Grahams bottle is embossed with the house name, so was clearly designated as Graham's from the start).

[Andy Velebil]

Is 'Symington Family Estates' even accurate?
We know the major houses generally have contracts with multiple growers. Is it realistic to expect that 'Family Estates' would be crushed (trodden?, Lagared?) separately from 'non-Family' estates?

Plus we are told that, from the start, 'Vintage' ports have been treated differently from 'mass market' ports (e.g. generally vintage ports were foot-trodden - at least until recently). Which also begs the question of how the Shippers knew to 'foot-tread' when the declaration came 2 years later (but that's a different thread!).

Until around 2000 I could regularly pick out Martinez in blind tastings - but I was a huge Eira Velha fan (although I haven't identified it in any Taylor/Fonseca brands since the change - but then I don't taste younger ports regularly). As a (former) Martinez fan, I'd object to the brand being resuscitated with a totally different style. (Haven't had enough Quarles Harris to have a 'style memory').

I'd be happy with 'Symington Selection' - but I'm not the marketer!

I 'think' that back in 2003 all (or most) Symington brands were still foot-treading the grapes, although I guess it's possible that a 'batch' of mechanically processed may have been selected as 'premium' and bottled separately in 2005. For sure the Sainsbury selection has a different bottle from the Graham's (the Grahams bottle is embossed with the house name, so was clearly designated as Graham's from the start).

Lets clear some things up. Symington Family Estates is the name of their "parent" company (SFE for short). It is no different than Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) for Budweiser and other beers here in the States or any other large company for that matter. It is not misleading or inaccurate in any way, shape or form.

Since the Douro started, long before shippers were also producers, shippers owned no vineyards and bought everything. So historically, every shipper bought finished Port they didn't make. They still do buy a substantial amount from the 33,000-ish growers in the Douro.

Foot treading everything stopped many decades ago, the big movement away started in the 1960's. Quinta do Bomfim/Dow's switched to auto-vinifiers back in the 1960's as an example. Most Port now days is not foot trodden in old lagars simply as it's not practical and way too expensive. Like any wine producer, in any region in the world, they know which vines have the potential to make a great wine (Port in this case) and treat them accordingly - foot treading them if that is how they vinify them. It's not hard if you have experience to walk into a field and see the grapes and know if they are rubbish due to various reasons and send them off somewhere else - to sell to someone else, "declassify" and vinify by a different manor to use in a cheaper Port, etc.

SFE started using their "foot" robotic lagar in the late 1990's and it is in use at most of their main quinta's now. I think Vesuvio is the only one that is still 100% foot trodden for all the grapes coming in.

Noval and Taylor's also largely switched to mechanized trodding (or some combo of mechanical and foot) back in the late 1990's, to name two.

As for BOB's and the like. It is quite normal for any wine company to have a customer request a "private label" blended just for them. Often, their wine person will help come up with the blend or taste various trial blends and pick which they want. Those blends are like any other Port, they could all come from a well known single quinta or they could be a blend of many different sources. Some being "estate" and some being bought. These usually are marked to be a fairly good value (read that as being cheaper in price) so the quality of the blending materials typically reflects that, generally speaking of course. Again, with well over 30,000 growers in the Douro where exactly do you think all that Port comes from?

[Alan Gardner]

As for BOB's and the like. It is quite normal for any wine company to have a customer request a "private label" blended just for them. Often, their wine person will help come up with the blend or taste various trial blends and pick which they want. Those blends are like any other Port, they could all come from a well known single quinta or they could be a blend of many different sources. Some being "estate" and some being bought. These usually are marked to be a fairly good value (read that as being cheaper in price) so the quality of the blending materials typically reflects that, generally speaking of course.

Andy - generally agree with all your comments, but not sure the quote I extracted is fully relevant.

In the situation of 'Vintage Port' the wine is bottled in the second year, so if a private label is blended just for them, it needs to have occurred no later than 2005 (for the 2003 vintage) yet the wine seems to have appeared on shelves in 2011. This differs from most other wines, that can be blended and then bottled 'on demand'. So for these the 'winemaker' has chosen the blend - the 'private label' can only accept or reject the finished product - no changes are possible. Also the quantity (or the maximum) is also pre-determined.

[Andy Velebil]

So on that point, let's toss out the possible causes;

SFE bottled a BOB for someone else who ended up not taking it or didn't take all that was bottled and only later SFE found a buyer.

SFE held it back upon request of the buyer for a later release.

SFE decided they had too much of something relatively inexpensive that didn't sell under a different label and wanted to clear some inventory (this would generally entail recorking if original corks were branded and would be easy to spot 13 years later).

SFE bottled excess 2003 VP quality Port in the hopes they would later find a buyer for it.

Any other possibilities I missed?



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[Eric Menchen]

In the situation of 'Vintage Port' the wine is bottled in the second year, so if a private label is blended just for them, it needs to have occurred no later than 2005 (for the 2003 vintage) yet the wine seems to have appeared on shelves in 2011.

Technically, it could have occurred as late as 30 July 2006. But that's not 2011.
https://ivdp.pt/pt/docs/legislacao/361.pdf, Chapter 5, Article 23, Section 5.

O último engarrafamento deve ser efectuado até 30 de Julho do
3.º ano a contar da respectiva vindima e comunicado ao IVDP, IP para
efeito de actualização da conta corrente.

[Alan Gardner]

Isn't this fun - even though we still don't know what the Sainsbury port is (or was).

My 'recollection' is that prior to 86 (Portugal joining EEC) the rules were quite 'flexible'! I recall having a 1970 'Vintage Port', bottled in January1974! (guessed it was an Engish bottling (of Fonseca) from a barrel that was just 'forgotten'. Back then, the bottling date was often included - I note that neither of the Graham's 2003 and the Sainsbury 2003 include a bottling date.

Was the 30 July of the third year rule in effect in 2003?

[Al B.]

There are two approaches to supplying BoB Ports today, and which of these is used depends on the point in the production process when the customer places their order.

In 2008, Berry Brothers & Rudd approached Peter Symington and asked him if he could make a special blend from the SFE 2007 vintage Port base wines which would be unique to them. This he did, so the BBR 2007 vintage Port is from SFE but is a completely different blend from any other SFE 2007 Port. BBR's buying team were presented with a number of options by Peter Symington and helped to refine the blend to be the one which they wanted to offer to their clients under their own label.

On the other hand, in large vintages producers will sometimes hold back commercial quantities of stocks of an existing label. These may be held back for various reasons — lack of demand from the market at the time of release, desire to have stock for late release, potential orders (but not firm commitment) for large quantities from key buyers or some other reason. At some point, a decent sized stock holding of a mature port will be of interest to a buyer. If that buyer is a supermarket or a wine merchant they might want to take a lower margin and sell at a lower price. But the producer may not want to associate their brand with a market perception of lower price / lower quality, hence the producer agrees to supply the buyer but only on condition the bottles are anonymised. This is clearly what happened with the Sainsbury TtD 2003 Vintage Port. This would likely have been an existing blend, held in stock, labelled and released in 2011. It could have been a blend made specifically to order at the time of the blending in 2004/5 and held in stock on behalf of the buyer, or it could have been one of the SFE brands at the time which were being held for future release. We will likely never know which, but my guess would be this is one of the known brands which was labelled anonymously and recorked before being shipped. I can't imagine it was Graham because that would have also required rebottling, unless a batch was specifically bottled in plain bottles for later sale as a BoB.

A good example of the need to anonymise a brand can be seen with an example from Tesco in the UK about 5 years ago. Stores were selling Taylor 1985 Vintage Port at £75-90 per bottle alongside Tesco Finest Reserve 1994 at £15-20 per bottle. Imagine the brand damage that would have been done to Taylor if the 1994 had been branded as Taylor. Who would have bought the 1985 with such a huge difference in price? (Before anyone says, no it was not Taylor 1994 since the Tesco 1994 came from SFE.)

Historically there was also a third way. In the 1960s Avery's of Bristol were known to blend together pipes of Port from different shippers. The 1963 Avery Special Reserve is reported to have been a blend of 3 pipes of Sandeman, 2 pipes of Taylor and 1 pipe of Fonseca). I don't think it would be practical for anyone to still take this approach in the days of bottling before export.

[Zak Romaszko]

I actually had a bottle of this on the weekend and was wondering the same questions (but alas not curious enough to actually email them, although i reckon they'd be more than happily explain)!