vintage Port 197wrote the former; ‘Everything points to 1908 turning out to be the best year since phylloxera
swept away all the Portuguese vines,’ declared the latter. The weather during vintage was hot
and there was no rain. The grapes matured evenly and were free from disease. The 1908
Cockburn is reputedly their greatest-ever wine, and I tasted it for the first time in 2012.
It is now quite pale but ethereal with beautiful richness. I can certainly vouch for Dow
(last tasted at their bicentennial tasting in 1998), which has a deep amber-tawny colour,
slightly caramelised, milk chocolate richness with succulent texture and great complexity. It
is outstanding by any measures. Sandeman (tasted in 2003) and Taylor (tasted in 2007) are
fading fast but Cálem, though fragile, is still quite impressive.
1904 **** light wines; waning
The summer was very dry but rain in mid-September helped to swell the grapes. It seems
from a contemporary report that some growers picked too early and that although ‘there
were some very good grapes, the skins were hard and the grapes had little liquid in them.
The vines were so overloaded with grapes that, although the weather was favourable,
they could not bring them to ripeness, and it was found in some quintas that the last
wines were far more green than those made earlier’. Yields were in fact so much greater
than expected that the fortifying aguardente was in such short supply that it had to be
rationed. The large crop nonetheless produced some fine wines, lighter than in 1900 and
now fading into old tawny. Cockburn however was still deep in 2012; quite rich and
structured but a bit clumsy on the finish. It must have started out as a very tannic wine.
Sandeman was still just about alive when I tasted it at the Port Wine Institute’s Vintages
of the Century Tasting in 1999 – but was sadly corked when I had another opportunity
to taste it twelve years later.
1900 **** fine, delicate wines; some now fragile
The twentieth century began with a fine, abundant vintage that turned out well in spite of
an initial lack of body and colour. Harvest was late, starting on 1 October. Ernest Cockburn
wrote that ‘the vintage lots shipped showed wines of great delicacy with appreciable breed,
and although lighter in colour than many previous vintages they appealed to connoisseurs
of Port Wine’. The most recent 1900 that I have tasted (in 2007) was Taylor’s which had
been bottled in Ireland. Surprisingly deep and youthful in colour for a wine of 107 years,
fresh if caramelised on the nose, it is still elegant and in fine condition. I tasted Ferreira
and Sandeman at the IVP’s Vintages of the Century tasting in 1999. Although Ferreira
was more like a very old colheita than a vintage, Sandeman still retained a vestige of fresh
fruit and some milk-chocolate intensity. Dow’s (tasted at their bicentennial a year earlier) is
scented, high-toned with soft, tawny flavours and a medicinal finish.
Pick of the vintage: Taylor.