1994 Tesco

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.
DaveRL
Warre’s Otima 10 year old Tawny
Posts: 512
Joined: 15:04 Tue 18 Mar 2014
Location: London

Re: 1994 Tesco

Post by DaveRL »

Thanks for the photos. A mystery. The cork being more red at one end does seem to indicate that it was used as a stopper, so Warre 94 seems quite likely. I wonder if a few Warre 94 were used to make up the quantities that Tesco needed, and you got lucky. It seems unlikely all Tesco 94 would be Warre. Does it taste like Warre or Quarles or perhaps Gould? Is it different to other Tesco 94?
LGTrotter
Dalva Golden White Colheita 1952
Posts: 3707
Joined: 17:45 Fri 19 Oct 2012
Location: Somerset, UK

Re: 1994 Tesco

Post by LGTrotter »

DaveRL wrote: 18:02 Wed 28 Feb 2018 Thanks for the photos. A mystery. The cork being more red at one end does seem to indicate that it was used as a stopper, so Warre 94 seems quite likely. I wonder if a few Warre 94 were used to make up the quantities that Tesco needed, and you got lucky. It seems unlikely all Tesco 94 would be Warre. Does it taste like Warre or Quarles or perhaps Gould? Is it different to other Tesco 94?
I'm not really much of a judge as I have been quietly sure that it was all one lot of port with some of them tasting a bit more jammy because they got a bit too hot somewhere in the supply chain and that idea seems out of the window. I also thought it most likely that it was all Quarles Harris. I have tried Warre 94 a few times but I there is no way I could spot it in a line up. This port did not seem particularly like or unlike Warre 94. I suppose that it was not dissimilar to the one I tried at Berrys port walk a few years back. The other difficulty is that I just had it as a bit of a slurp of an evening rather than paying much attention to it.
There have been a few variations on the Tesco 94 labels and capsules which may indicate different lots. This one looks similar to a picture in a previous note but it is slightly different. I still have a few of the original bottles with white labels, which in the early days did mention Quarles Harris.
God knows, or more prosaically the Symingtons, but they will not tell. It did strike me as unlikely that they would ship a lot of Warre to be sold in Tesco. But then again they were shipping one of their marques for this purpose so why not Warre? I don't know the answer but it was most interesting and I cannot think of any other obvious explanation as to how a Warre 94 cork got in that bottle.
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Alex Bridgeman
Graham’s 1948
Posts: 14880
Joined: 13:41 Mon 25 Jun 2007
Location: Berkshire, UK

Re: 1994 Tesco

Post by Alex Bridgeman »

A very interesting update to the thread. Thanks Owen.

There did seem to be two parcels of Tesco 1994 Finest hit the shelves; interesting that parcel 2 was Warre. With hindsight that was more of a bargain than we realised at the time when we thought it was Quarles Harris. Shame I have so few left, but I think all of mine were parcel 1 (bought from October 2010 to December 2011).

I still have one of the 1995 vintage left too — with the white label and clearly saying it was shipped by QH.
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idj123
Morgan 1991
Posts: 1116
Joined: 20:54 Tue 13 Nov 2012

Re: 1994 Tesco

Post by idj123 »

I recall an early bottle of the 94 definitely mentioning QH but the later bottles didn't. It was a bit stewy last time I tried a bottle (of the non-QH labelled version). Will now be tempted into trying another bottle (of the five I have left).
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