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1963 Taylor, part of a 1963 horizontal At my father’s in Sussex, on Saturday 2nd February 2008.

Links to relevant threads:

• Review of evening as a whole;
• Hedges and Butler 1963 magnum;
• Cockburn 1963;
• Croft 1963;
• Delaforce 1963;
• Dow 1963;
• Fonseca 1963;
• Graham 1963;
• Offley Boa Vista 1963;
• Taylor 1963;
• Noval 1963.

My wine of the night, though that vote was far from unanimous. A great colour of mature port, dark red, with neither purple nor brown. Nosing of an unspecified spice, and of chocolate. The spice strongly present in the mid-palate, though this feature identified by AHB (I think misidentified) as “bitterness†. Then a long sweet rich aftertaste lasting at least two minutes. Fantastic bottle of a great house in a great vintage.

The capsule, slightly out of focus, of the Taylor 1963.

The capsule of the Taylor 1963 being lightly hammered by Alex B.. Note the checks, albeit non-red checks.

The cork of the Taylor 1963.

Decanted for 6½ hours before drinking. Mid-red colour with a transparent centre, slightly lighter than the Fonseca 1963 shown at the same time. A lovely floral nose and some cinnamon infused rhubarb stew. Gentle, caressing entry that fills the mouth but there is an odd bitter streak I found off-putting (others described this as an interesting pepperiness that they liked), although this goes after a while. The bitterness is also apparent in the aftertaste. However, to keep things in proportion, this is a fine wine that just had an eccentric feature to this particular bottle. 8/8 or 93/100. Drunk 2/2/08.

Taylor's 63 was the port at a dinner I attended last night. I recognised features reported by Julian and Alex until it came to the aftertaste which, last night, was sadly not there apart from a slight bitterness.

The wine was absolutely correct in every respect. Very upright, but it did not really sing. Having said that, it was at the tail end of quite a heavy dinner, so maybe it was not the port's fault.