1980 Taylor Fladgate Vintage Port

[Otto Nieminen]

On 8.7.2006 we had the first off-line generated through this board in Finland. Antti Nevalainen aka Nevski and I and a few of my wino friends met up at my place to drink a few blind wines. It being a particularily warm day, it was perhaps understandible that only one port wine was served. The 1980 was a fine port if imbibed alone, but I think that as Taylors go, it would be a rather humble one. But we all enjoyed it anyway:

1980 Taylor (Fladgate) Porto Vintage - Portugal, Douro, Porto (7/8/2006)
Dark red still, little signs of age. The nose is lovely showing a bit of nuttiness, a bit of alcohol despite 7 hours decanting, expressive fruit dominant in the red berry domaine, some signs of coffee. The palate is very sweet as typical with Taylor, again red berry dominated, with resolved structure, but going strong. For my tastes needs still five years, but is a very, very fine Port indeed.

As a side comment, I suppose I can say what else we had, though not related to Port (I hope Roy doesn't mind): Chéreau-Carré Muscadet de Sèvre-et-Maine Cuvée des Ceps Centenaires Château de Chasseloir 2004 (bloody good), Changyu Cabernet Sauvignon Dry Red Wine 1992, Calera Pinot Noir Jensen Vineyard 1997, Calera Pinot Noir Mills 1997, Lungarotti Torgiano Rubesco Riserva Vigna Monticchio 1997, Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande 2000, Quinta do Côtto Douro Grande Escolha 2001 (TN to appear soon in the Douro wine section).

[Derek T.]

Otto,

It is great to see the FTLOP Offline tour has extended to Finland. Perhaps one day we can organise a European Offline in a mutually convenient location, or even at Roy's house in Seattle 8)

Derek

[Al B.]

Easy decant out of a bottle that a bright light easily shone through, came off some well settled lumps of sediment. Deep red colour, just transparent in the centre of the glass, vague hint of mahogany on the rim. Nose closed, dusty, with a hint of mint and chocolate underneath a fruit tone that took me ages to identify as sweet cranberries. Beautiful elegance into the mouth, restrained but full-bodied at the same time. Full of spiced fruit and dark cherries. Little obvious acidity but the tannins give a pleasing structure. The mid-palate makes you stop and think about how much is going on. The aftertaste is long and full of Christmas cake and dark chocolate. This is a great bottle of a good wine that is drinking superbly now but I believe might improve a touch with another decade of bottle age. Top quartile, but not at the very top, so I have awarded this a score of 8/9 or 93/100.

Interestingly, this was one of those very unusual wines that was superb to drink right from opening. The nose after decanting was of ripe damsons and was much stronger than when the tasting note was taken after three hours in the decanter. The damson theme carried through to the flavours in the mouth, although there you could also feel the tannins from the damson skins!

Elizabeth's comment was that this was far nicer than the £5 bottle of ruby we had finished off the night before

Alex

[Julian D. A. Wiseman]

… I voted for the 1980 — finding it to be 3¾-star port at 3-star prices …

Maybe I should revisit my nearly-full case of Taylor 1980.

[simon Lisle]

I've had several bottles of this over a ten year period and I'm fairly sure that this is quite poor for a Taylors port.I may have had poor bottles but they have been from different sources.