1994 Vintage Downgraded by Richard Mayson on Decanter's Guide to Vintages?

[Jonathan S]

Hello fellow Port aficionados!

First of all, I love Richard Mayson's work, and his indispensable Port and the Douro (released in late 2018) is one of my favorite books on Port. However, I recently noticed that, although Mr. Mayson rated the 1994 vintage 5 of 5 stars in the 2018 edition of his book, he downgraded it to 4.5 of 5 stars for the most recent update on the Decanter website (which was October 2019). As a huge fan of the 1994 vintage and with so much acclaim (I could not find any evidence of any other Port expert having downgraded the vintage, including our very own Mr. Hersh, I was a bit shocked by this!)

Here is a link to the Decanter guide:
https://www.decanter.com/learn/vintage ... de-380297/

Any thoughts and insights?

Cheers to all as we prepare for the Vintage Port season1

[Moses Botbol]

Not sure how much I would take this as gospel. Frankly, I'll buy just about anything I see if priced accordingly.

[Glenn E.]

What are half stars, really? That's just fudging and means what you really have is a 10 star system.

I would personally still rate 1994 as a 5 star vintage, but I have heard some talk that the vintage is perhaps not as stellar as originally thought. I think it just went through a phase 3-5 years ago but has now come back out and is outstanding again. Remember that, on release, it was put on a pedestal with vintages like 1963 and 1945 so expectations for it are extremely high. I can see someone a few years ago thinking "it's not as good as I originally thought, so I'm going to mark it down a bit" but I think that's wrong. It's still a 5 star vintage to me, just maybe not on the level of the best vintages of the century. (From which you can derive that, at least to me, 5 stars does not mean "in the discussion for best vintage of the century." It just means it was an amazing year.)

Note that he only gave a full 5 stars to 2017, 2016, 2011, 2000, 1970, 1966, and 1963. Personally I would probably knock 2016 out of that group, and would argue that if you're going to exclude 1994 then you should also exclude 1963. There was discussion about 1963 for a while as well, but I think it pulled through so I'd give them both 5 stars. But that's just me.

I'd probably also add 2003 to the 5 star group, which he has at 4.5.