238 Port anD the Douro
and gone but Taylor is the only British company to have been handed down through the
generations without having been sold, bought or taken over. The company was founded in
1692 by Job Bearsley, who started out in the port of Viana do Castelo around 1670. Like so
many Port shippers, Taylor began as general traders and the enigmatic 4XX symbol, which
continues to form part of the company’s livery, originated as a wool mark.
The Bearsleys left the firm at the end of the eighteenth century and a number of
families, Webb, Sandford, Grey and Carmo, came and went before the first Taylor entered
the partnership in 1816. Joseph Taylor joined a firm known as Campbell, Bowden &
Taylor but within ten years he was running the firm under his own name. In 1836 he
was joined by John Fladgate, and two years later Morgan Yeatman, a wine merchant
from Dorset in southern England, became a partner in the firm. Joseph Taylor himself
died in 1837 but his name was retained. In 1844 Fladgate bought Quinta da Roêda and
John Fladgate, ennobled as a baron by the Portuguese, took his title from the property.
Due to his daughter’s marriage, Quinta da Roêda later went to Croft but Taylor duly
compensated for this by acquiring Quinta de Vargellas in 1893. Having been devastated
by phylloxera, the property produced a miserable six pipes, but by the great harvests
of 1908 and 1912, Vargellas was making up a third of Taylor’s 300-pipe vintage lote.
Today it serves as one of the company’s flagship estates. Quinta de Vargellas and São
Xisto in the Douro Superior are joined by Quinta da Terra Feita and more recently by
two properties from Borges, Quinta do Junco and Quinta de Casa Nova, making up a
substantial holding in the Pinhão valley.
Much of Taylor’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century success was due to the Yeatman
family who continued to run the firm until Dick Yeatman, great-grandson of the Dorset
wine merchant, died in 1966. His widow, Beryl, briefly took charge and asked her
nephew Alistair Robertson to join the firm as a partner. He was ably supported by two
partners: Huyshe Bower (Sales Director and a cousin of Dick Yeatman) and the late
Bruce Guimaraens (Estates Director and a descendant of the Fladgates and of the family
who sold Fonseca Guimaraens to Taylor shortly after the Second World War). This is the
team that steered Taylor through the 1974–1975 revolution and transformed a small old-
fashioned concern into one of the most successful of all players in the Port trade. Their
not-so-secret weapon has been LBV, a style which Taylor popularised during the 1970s
(see page 45).
The success of Taylor’s LBV has undoubtedly been reinforced by their reputation as
one of the leading producers of vintage Port. For over a century two vineyards, Quinta de
Vargellas and Quinta da Terra Feita, have provided the backbone for the blend. In great
years like 1927, 1963, 1977, and more recently 1994, 2000 and 2007, Taylor’s vintages
have a massive structure with a characteristic ‘peacock’s tail’ of powerful tannins on the
finish. Few other wines rise to the challenge in comparative tastings although Taylor is
sometimes pipped at the post by wines from its sister company Fonseca, which seem to be
slightly more opulent in style. Taylor were the first of the current generation of shippers
to commercialise a single-quinta vintage Port. In good interim years, both Quinta de
Vargellas and Quinta da Terra Feita are bottled individually. Whereas Vargellas tends to