1980 Taylor

Tasting notes for individual Ports, with an index sorted by vintage and alphabetically.
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Tasting notes for individual Ports, with an index sorted by vintage and alphabetically.
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Will W.
Taylor’s LBV
Posts: 183
Joined: 14:33 Thu 11 Aug 2016

1980 Taylor

Post by Will W. »

The question of optimal, vintage port-decanting times would appear to constitute an insoluble conundrum: there are the minimalists such as Mr. Bridge, CEO of The Fladgate Partnership, and those who set out to consume a bottle over two or three days, in the expectation that the wine might be enriched by lengthy exposure to air. If I understand correctly, Mr. Bridgeman – a United Kingdom-based connoisseur of flawless taste – is the leading exponent of the latter school. Whilst it has been my tendency to conform to date to the decanting practices of Mr. Hersh and his American brethren, a niggling suspicion that a number of recent bottles might have been more to my taste with greater or lesser time out of the bottle has served to encourage domestic experimentation. Something approximating the Bridge Model was applied in this instance; that is, to a bottle of 1980 Taylor’s vintage port which was decanted for four hours on 21 April 2020.

In the glass, burgundy-maroon hues of a largely translucent nature were crowned by a clear rim. The nose seemed a bit tight and was most certainly not suggestive of much that is sweet insofar as sour cherry, green apple, rhubarb and even linden tree in full flower touched upon the olfactory nerve. At the fore-palate, the mouth was consistent with the bouquet insofar as gentle citrus notes predominated. A measure of sweetness did become evident at the mid-point, with strawberries and a touch of caramel making themselves known; at the back, these notes came to be coupled with wood, with the lot of them making for a warming finish of some length. This bottle was well balanced and agreeable in every technical respect, although somewhat unlike the effect upon the nose and palate of the last bottle of this wine drawn from the same case, at least as I came later to remember it. At any rate, the aforementioned technical proficiency would explain the final score. What the said numerical result does not indicate is the absence of any sort of creative flair in the contents of the bottle under review. Was this a reflection of the relatively short decant time? Who knows? Clearly, more experimentation with another bottle from the same case is in order, methinks with something approaching a lengthy, Bridgemanesque decant.

-91 points
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