1963 Taylor

Tasting notes for individual Ports, with an index sorted by vintage and alphabetically.
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Tasting notes for individual Ports, with an index sorted by vintage and alphabetically.
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Alex Bridgeman
Graham’s 1948
Posts: 14879
Joined: 13:41 Mon 25 Jun 2007
Location: Berkshire, UK

1963 Taylors Vintage Port

Post by Alex Bridgeman »

9 hours double-decanted.

A Berry Brothers bottling and one which has been in their cellars ever since. Deep red but transparent center, colour holding into the rim. Sweet, ripe fruit nose. A touch of mustiness, brambles and obvious alcohol. Full bodied entry, sweet but with a fierce mid-palate pepperiness from the unintegrated alcohol. The tannins in the mouth are well integrated but the alcohol is fierce. The aftertaste starts with a lot of red licorice and a very hot finish but has good length and development. The heat in the mid-palate spoiled this for me and made a good port poor, certainly below the average of what I would expect to drink this year. Very difficult to predict how this port will develop with the extremely obvious alcohol. I rated this a score of 3/2 for current drinking or 85/100.

[Footnote: On Roy's suggestion we poured the remainder of this wine back into the decanter and came back to it at the end of the evening. With the additional 3 hours of time in the decanter, this wine had changed substantially with the alcohol having integrated beautifully. To me, this was the wine of the night (just) and I thank Paul for letting me have the last glass as a birthday present, but I admit to a bias for this particular port as it was the one I was given as a 21st birthday gift. Scoring after having put this back in the decanter for three hours would have been 9/9 or 94/100 - this will have been one of the 15 best bottles I will taste this year, although probably not one of the best 5.]
Last edited by Alex Bridgeman on 15:35 Sun 14 Oct 2007, edited 2 times in total.
Top Ports in 2023: Taylor 1896 Colheita, b. 2021. A perfect Port.

2024: Niepoort 1900 Colheita, b.1971. A near perfect Port.
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RonnieRoots
Fonseca 1980
Posts: 1981
Joined: 08:28 Thu 21 Jun 2007
Location: Middle Earth

Post by RonnieRoots »

Nice one. I tasted this recently (thanks to Stevie, who brought the bottle), and it was superb. That bottle will most likely end up being in the top 5 of this year. 88)
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