5 things every sommelier should know about vintage Port

Think you know vintage Port? Here are five crucial facts every somm should be armed with, following the Taylor’s Port Sommelier Challenge 2025.

Vintage Port is the zenith of the category, accounting for only 2% of overall Port production but offering some of the most memorable fine wines on the planet, with only a few classic vintage declarations made each decade.

This week, 20 sommeliers from across the UK gathered at London wine merchant Berry Bros. & Rudd to take part in the inaugural Taylor’s Port Vintage Years UK Sommelier Challenge – following the naming of the Port house as the headline partner of the Taylor’s Port Top 100 Sommeliers 2025 in the UK.

Monday’s competition offered some of the country’s leading somms the opportunity to demonstrate their vintage Port knowledge, including a blind tasting of six vintage Ports and the composition of tasting notes, recommended drinking windows and food pairing suggestions.

The winner of the competition – due to be announced in September – will enjoy a two-night trip to Porto for two people, staying at the five-star Yeatman Hotel, including meals and a private tasting with David Guimaraens, Taylor’s Port technical director and head winemaker, plus a selection of Taylor’s vintage Port. Prizes will also be awarded to those placed second, third, fourth and fifth.

As part of this week’s event, David Guimaraens hosted an in-depth vintage Port seminar and Port tongs masterclass – and here are some of the highlights of his presentation…

1: Vintage Port: ‘ripening’ years and ‘concentrating’ years

According to Guimaraens, Port vintages can be loosely divided into ‘ripening’ years and ‘concentrating’ years. The former, with typically cooler and wetter growing seasons, are characterised by their fresher, more vibrant profile; the latter, usually the result of hotter and drier conditions, offer concentration and more robust tannins.

“As the wines age, cooler years will be much more attractive when young, and they hang onto their fruit,” Guimaraens explains. “Concentrated years tend to close down earlier, because they don’t have as much fruit … they take longer to come around, but they hold on to their fruit structure much more.”

As an example, Guimaraens contrasts 1963 – a ‘ripening’ year long thought of as one of the greatest Port vintages in history – with the ‘concentrating’ year of 1966.

“In the last 10-15 years, the ’66 has just kept going, going, going, and has overtaken ’63 as the ’63 has started to fade,” he says.

Examples of ‘ripening’ years: 1963, 1977, 1994, 2000, 2007, 2016.

Examples of ‘concentrating’ years: 1966, 1970, 1985, 1997, 2003, 2017.

2: The vintage Port life cycle

Great vintage Port is capable of ageing in bottle for many decades, but its character constantly evolves along the way. Guimaraens breaks this life cycle down as follows:

• 2-12 years: “It’s fun, it’s fresh, it’s fruity.”
• 13-19 years: “It’s a teenager. Like us as teenagers, sometimes we behave; sometimes we don’t. Some days they’ll show better than others.”
• 20-40 years: “Prime of life. Lots of energy, lots of fruit, but also maturity and knows what it’s doing.”
• 41-60 years: “Much more complex, but still some fresh fruit.”
• 61-80 years: “Starting to slow down, but very interesting and very wise. May not have much fruit, but will have lots of complexity.”
• 90-plus years: “Not all of us will get there. When we do, some of us might still have our wits; some not.”

‘Concentrating’ years are more likely to have a pronounced teenage period than ‘ripening’ years, with Guimaraens citing 2003 as a year that has recently emerged from that difficult phase to show its true potential.

3: Decanting: handle with care

This, says Guimaraens, is crucial. He explains: “Because a vintage Port is not filtered or fined, and because it ages in the way it does, there is a lot of sediment. With a young vintage, the sediment will be very fine, so young vintages are very difficult to decant … as the vintage ages, the sediment coagulates.”

Therefore, Guimaraens says, young vintages in particular should be stood upright for a period of time and handled gently – otherwise the fine sediment will make the Port cloudy and impair the aromas.

4: Coravin: a love/hate relationship

While Guimaraens acknowledges that Coravin can open up more possibilities for vintage Port in the on-trade, he says he has “a love/hate affair” with the wine preservation system – because of the danger of bringing up sediment when a bottle is tapped.

“So please, please, please be careful,” he says. “I know it’s giving opportunities for places to serve by the glass, but it can’t be a free-for-all.”

5: There’s more than one vintage Port

While Taylor’s classic vintage Port declarations will attract much fanfare because of their status and rarity – there have only been 16 over the past 50 years – the house bottles other vintage Ports, typically in years without a ‘classic’ declaration, that offer a different interpretation of the vintage Port template.

Quinta de Vargellas is an example of a single quinta vintage Port, sourced from Taylor’s totemic property in the Douro Superior, offering a highly aromatic, floral and precise character that is the backbone of the classic Taylor’s vintage style.

Meanwhile, the new Sentinels vintage Port combines some of Taylor’s key properties in the Pinhão Valley, resulting in a mellow, sweetly fruited flavour profile – which, when blended with Vargellas in a classic Taylor’s vintage, helps to fill out the mid-palate.

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