2026: Very Very Old and 80 Year Old Ports at the bft

[Alex Bridgeman]

80YO and VVO Port

In the run up to the bft this year (2026) we were asked if we could organise a press tasting of a selection of the new categories of Port – 80 Year Old Tawny and 80 Year Old White.

At the bft 2026

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Always up for a challenge, I got on the phone and started to call people. The task was to put together a selection of wines that would be of enough interest to the right quality of audience.

The producers I spoke to were interested and willing to participate, provided the audience was the right calibre and the structure of the tasting gave the producers time to talk to the audience. The members of the media and key buyers for organisations likely to sell or serve these wines were interested and were willing to commit to being at the bft provided there was a range of wines from big and small producers and there would be enough time to taste the wines and speak with the producers.

Glasses waiting to be tasted

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Out of these two sets of parallel conversations was born the structure for a tasting. An audience of 14 people with 7 producers presenting their wines. Audience members would circulate around the producers’ tables, moving on at their own pace. Producers would generally have a couple of people at their table at any time and – if we ran the tasting for 70 minutes – would have about 10 minutes with each pair of audience members. 10 minutes felt like enough time for a tasting of one or two wines plus a short Q&A session.

[Alex Bridgeman]

The next step to actually delivering the press tasting was to sign up the producers who had already said they were interested. This is when things started to come a little unstuck. Chatting to Filipe Marinho from Quinta da Devesa, he apologised profusely but said that he would not be able to participate despite his earlier interest. I didn’t push, diary conflicts happen to the best of us.

Then the same thing happened when I was talking with Elisabete Almeida from Agri-Roncão. Initially very interested and wanting to show a tawny and a white from her range, she was now unsure. Given this was the second person having doubts, I wanted to understand what was causing the hesitation.

Some of Devesa's wines at the bft

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Quinta da Devesa have two old wines on the market. Both are prominently labelled 80 but what I wasn’t aware of at first was that both of these wines fall outside the definition of the regulations governing the new category of 80 Year Old. Both are older, and qualify for the category of VVO or Very Very Old, now officially meaning older than wines within the 80 Year Old category. Both of these wines had been blended and bottled in 2024 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the current owner’s family acquiring the quinta and featured 80 prominently on the labelling, but pre-dated the 80 Year Old category so were governed by the regulations for Port wines more than 50 Years Old.

One of Elisabete’s wines was also over 80 years of age. The DR White VVO had been bottled to celebrate a 90th anniversary so also fell into the VVO category.

It turned out to be a very easy problem to fix.

[Alex Bridgeman]

80 features prominently

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Quinta da Devesa have two old wines on the market. Both are prominently labelled 80 but what I wasn’t aware of at first was that both of these wines fall outside the definition of the regulations governing the new category of 80 Year Old. Both are older, and qualify for the category of VVO or Very Very Old, now officially meaning older than wines within the 80 Year Old category. Both of these wines had been blended and bottled in 2024 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the current owner’s family acquiring the quinta and featured 80 prominently on the labelling, but pre-dated the 80 Year Old category so were governed at the time of release by the regulations for Port wines more than 50 Years Old.

One of Elisabete’s wines was also over 80 years of age. The DR White VVO had been bottled to celebrate a 90th anniversary and also fell into the VVO category.

The fix was no more difficult that a quick run of calls to the people invited attend the tasting to ask the question “Are you happy for us to include older wines as part of the 80YO tasting, and make the scope of the tasting 80 Year Old and VVO Ports?” I wasn’t surprised that no-one objected, so I was able to go back to Filipe and Elisabete and let them know the change of scope for the tasting — and both were very happy to include their wines.

Tasting the 80YO and VVO

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In the end we put together a terrific mix of large and small producers with Taylor showing their VVO plus Graham and Kopke showing their 80 Year Olds. We would have included Quinta do Noval’s (rumoured) 80 Year Old but they were not yet ready to announce and show the new blend. Alongside these names were a collection of boutique producers: DR, Maynard, Quinta da Devesa, Blackett and the newly launched JáFoste from Luís Rodrigues — one of the most prolific blenders in the Douro Valley. In total the tasting featured 8 producers, between them showing 11 wines. 3 of the wines were white Ports, 4 were VVO Ports. Retail prices of the wines ranged from £385 (Maynard, discounted at vintagewineandport.co.uk) up to £1,675 (Graham’s 80 Year Old, Hedonism).

Tasting notes to follow...