Fonseca will release a 2018 Guimaraens Vintage Port and Croft will release a 2018 Quinta da Roêda Vintage Port, but Taylor’s is the only estate to declare a Classic Vintage – the first time that this has occurred under Fladgate ownership.
Declaring a vintage is normally a cause for celebration for Taylor’s managing director (and Fladgate CEO) Adrian Bridge, even more so when declaring a vintage for an historic third year running. But the 2018 declaration, coming as it always does on St George’s Day for the Fladgate Partnership, had a noticeable absence of ‘bunting’, in much the same way that her Majesty’s guns will remain silent on her birthday.
“The joy of declaring a new vintage is tempered somewhat by the health and wellbeing of our customers,” Bridge explained over a live Instagram feed on April 23rd, “we’ve made it, and declared it but we will not commercialise it until the start of 2021.”
“This is an unusual step but with most of our customers shut this is not a moment to be commercially launching a vintage port – a new port declaration is not what they’re looking for at this time, but rightly they are looking after their own businesses.”
“At the end of the day, though, we can’t not make the wine because of coronavirus, we have got to make the wine that is there. The climate does its own thing and we have to follow the wines.”
Coronavirus has already impacted Fladgate which owns four hotels in the North of Portugal and has meant that the opening of the ambitious €100m tourist attraction in Porto called The World of Wine, spearheaded by Bridge, has had to be delayed from its original July date.
Adrian Bridge, Mentzendorff tasting, One George Street, London, March 3, 2020
2018 makes it an historic three vintages in a row
Bridge admitted that declaring 2018 after 2017 and 2016 made it seem as if Fladgate ‘was on a run’ and would be declaring many more vintages in the future than is customary.
“I hope that we are declaring more – we hope to declare a least three vintages a decade and so far we have declared four in this just as we declared four in the last decade.”
The reason for this is a mix of factors: “The Duoro generally is being farmed better, so the Reserve Ports, the LBVs, the aged tawnies they will be getting better…the conditions, the attention to detail in every step of the process increases the possibility not necessarily the probability (of declaring more vintages), despite other factors, such as coronavirus. But we have to let the wine speak – if it is there we should make it.”
Bridge added that the virus would probably mean that 2020 would struggle to be a vintage because physical distancing measures meant that for the first time foot treading would not be possible.
Adrian Bridge at the traditional foot-treading of grapes at Quinta de Vargellas
“There will be no foot treading in 2020 and we believe that treading adds 1-2% to the quality, so the probability for 2020 is low, it is one of the factors that means it is probably not going to happen.”
Bridge revealed that the company was rapidly converting the lagares (shallow fermentation vessels) at Quinta de Vargellas to mechanised pressing, making the distinction that this was because of physical distancing not social distancing (as many people who do foot treading are often from the same family), and that they were making other measures to accommodation to keep staff safe.
“What we are seeing is that where we are doing some big construction at moment – some sub contractors will only work with people they know and not with people they don’t know. So we’ll be seeing how that plays out when you are mobilising 420 people that we use. But we will be having more distance which is a key factor.”
Although Taylors, Fonseca and Croft are all declaring a vintage port in 2018 it is only Taylor’s which is declaring a Classic Vintage – the first time that this has happened under Fladgate ownership – on account of the quality of the conditions in the Douro Superior.
Abundant ground water and hot summer weather, often key to producing great vintage port, has facilitated a wine that has excellent phenolic maturity but also multi-layered fruit and fresh acidity that is normally only found in cooler years.
“When we were tasting in the harvest we were aware that we were making something very good,” Bridge explains.
Fonseca will release a 2018 Guimaraens Vintage Port, the first bottling under the Guimaraens label since 2015, a wine that is more approachable and ready for early drinking. Bridge agreed that this is increasingly a market trend, dictated not just by a new demographic entering the market but a stylistic choice.
“Guimaraens is a bit like Shiraz… some people are preferring fruitier more powerful ports.”
Finally, Croft will release a 2018 single-quinta Vintage Port from its historic Quinta da Roêda estate.
Although weather conditions were exceptionally good in 2018 it did have its challenges such as a hailstorm on May 28 in which 74mm of rain fell in one hour, all as hail. The result was that many Pinhão vineyards were devastated including Taylor’s Quinta do Junco.
Taylor’s will be releasing 7800 cases of the Classic Vintage across its 103 territories which is more than it did in both 2016 or 1992, and a little less than the 2009s. In 2016 they released 6200 cases, and 12,000 in 2017. The average for Taylor’s is 16,000 cases with 1985 the last vintage where Taylor’s made a very large amount of a classic vintage, when it produced 27,000 cases.
The declaration is the third following announcements from Sogrape’s Sandeman, Offley and Ferreira estates last week.
All of the Fladgate Partnership ports are available in the UK through Mentzendorff.
