Tawny Port 10 and 20 Years Old: Panel tasting results

Find the best 10 and 20 year old Tawny Ports, as rated by our expert panel in the January 2018 issue of Decanter magazine - just in time for Christmas...

These age categories are what many experts consider the best expressions of tawny Port, says Richard Mayson, who explains the intricacies of blending and house style…

Find the 10 and 20 year old Tawny Port panel tasting results here

It often used to be said that whereas ‘vintage Port was the king of Ports, tawny was the queen’. This rather outdated axiom would now be taken as sexist, but beneath it lies a comparison between the power and finesse of a great Vintage Port and the elegance and delicacy of a fine tawny.

Nowadays the talk is more about seasonality, with vintage Port (and its cohort Late Bottled Vintage, or LBV) thought of as a winter drink, whereas aged tawny Port, served slightly chilled or ‘cellar-cool’, is for the summer. But a glass of tawny can be a gloriously uplifting everyday drink at any time of year, especially as an opened bottle can be happily left on ullage for a month or so in the fridge.

Tawny Port with its stratified age structure can be difficult to understand. the designations of age permitted by the Port and Douro Wine Institute (IVDP) are indications rather than exactitudes. this gives the individual Port shippers the leeway to make up blends according to their house style, fine-tuning here and there with small quantities of younger or older wines to add dimension and finesse to the blend. The final lote has to be submitted to the IVDP tasting panel for approval, but a 10 Year Old tawny, bought in say 2018, is not a wine made in 2008.

House style

It is the process of ageing and blending that determines the style and character of a tawny Port. Having first been selected for its elegance and balance, the wine will age in lodge pipes: seasoned casks of between 600 and 640 litres. It becomes part of a chain of aged tawnies, with the shipper making up new blends followed by blends of blends.

Thus the characteristics of the individual wines gradually meld into the house style. Lighter, earlier maturing wines will go towards a 10 Year Old blend, with richer, more structured wines reserved for older tawnies. the finished lote may be made up of anything between 10 and 50 different component wines with younger, fresher, fruit-driven Ports balancing older, mature styles.

It is generally felt that the apogee of tawny Port is at the younger end of the age spectrum, with different tasters championing either 10 Year Old or 20 Year Old according to their belief. The 30 Year Old and over 40 Year Old categories tend to be bottled in tiny quantities and are not so widely available.

But sales of tawny Port have increased substantially in recent years, putting pressure on the shippers to set aside more stock and plan ahead. Some have been scouring the Douro in search of more mature wine, in which case an element of ‘Douro bake’ may enter into the blend.

Tawny Port: the facts

Permitted categories of Tawny:

• Reserve: a wine less than 10 years old, usually averaging about seven years old
• 10 Year Old
• 20 Year Old
• 30 Year Old
• Over 40 Years Old (or ‘Forty Year Old’ for the us market)
• Colheita: a dated tawny (minimum seven years old) from a single harvest
• Douro Bake: a wine matured in the hotter Douro Valley, which will mature more quickly with higher evaporation than one matured near the coast in Vila Nova de Gaia. Provided a wine is well nurtured, a hint of Douro Bake can be a positive advantage in a mature tawny; some shippers deliberately use a portion of Douro-matured wine in their blends
  

The scores

78 wines tasted

Entry criteria: producers and UK agents were invited to submit their UK-available 10 and 20 Year Old tawny Ports. Tawny Ports are intended to be drunk soon after bottling so there is no need for recommended drinking dates.

Exceptional 0

Outstanding 6

Highly Recommended 42

Recommended 17

Commended 7

Fair 4

Poor 1

Faulty 1

The results

The 20 Year Old tawnies trumped their younger counterparts in this tasting, offering impressive consistency in both quality and style, reports Amy Wislocki

It has to be said that our expert tasters were biased towards the 20 Year Old tawnies from the start. ‘They are the apogee of the tawny Port pyramid for me,’ said Richard Mayson. ‘You still get the freshness of youth, but also the complexity that comes with age.’

Rod Smith MW agreed: ‘20 years is the sweet spot because there’s still fruit there, but you have all the benefits of the oxidative style too. Plus, they’re great value! Whenever I taste 30 and 40 Year Old tawnies, I’m not convinced that they repay in dividends the extra that they cost in price and storage.’

Demetri Walters MW agreed: ‘40 Year Olds are more of a gamble. They’re nowhere near as consistent as the 20s.’ Mayson elaborated on that point: ‘It can be far more difficult for the older wines to achieve the same poise – that perfect balance between freshness and complexity. The older Ports have a tendency to be sweeter and more cloying to drink.’

And when compared to the 10 Year Olds in this tasting, the 20s again were ‘far more consistent in quality and style’ observed Walters, speaking for all three tasters. ‘They surpassed expectations, whereas the 10 Year Olds didn’t – the marks for the younger wines were all over the place.’

Ironically, the main gripe seemed to be that some of the 10 Year Olds tasted older than they should – ‘faded’, said Walters. ‘They definitely weren’t fresh enough,’ agreed Mayson. ‘You don’t expect 10s to be volatile and rustic.’ he felt it could be a problem of overdemand for a limited supply: ‘sales of tawnies have shot up recently, and shippers could be having trouble finding the stocks. And perhaps some of these 10 Year Olds haven’t been stored well in the Douro?’

‘To put it in perspective,’ interjected smith, ‘we didn’t have any disastrous 10s; there weren’t that many bad wines. It’s the variation we weren’t expecting. some were just too simple, or a concocted blend of ages that didn’t marry together well.’

The challenge with the tawny Port category in general, the tasters agreed, is to overcome the seasonality. ‘When most people think of Port, they don’t think of a wine like tawny, which has delicacy and finesse. They think of ruby and LBV, which are big, upfront and tannic styles,’ explained Mayson. Hence all Port styles are generalised as a winter drink, with sales spiking between September and Christmas. ‘But we need to encourage people to buy tawnies all year round,’ said Walters. ‘Chill them, take them on a picnic, enjoy them as an aperitif, a pudding wine or a wine of contemplation. They’re incredibly versatile.’

Smith agreed. ‘It’s a shame the results of this tasting are being published in the month of December because we need to get away from that Christmas stereotype. Tawny Port is the most accessible oxidised wine style around,’ he continued. ‘Most people won’t enjoy their first glass of amontillado Sherry or vin jaune or ancient Rioja, because these styles of wine are an acquired taste. But tawny Port is instantly lovable – and it remains one of the craziest bargains in wine when you consider the shippers’ storage costs.’

A chilled glass of tawny is the perfect way to end a meal if you don’t want dessert, our experts said, and urged readers to buy one or more of these bottles, keep it in the fridge, and enjoy it over a couple of weeks.

See all of the 10 and 20 year old Tawny Ports here