Taylor Releases 150-Year Old Port

by David Kiley (RSS feed)
Oct 23rd 2010 at 9:01AM

The venerable Taylor Company, in the Oporto district of Portugal released a tawny port that the company says has spent more than 150 years in the cask.

Taylor Scion is the name of the port that's been maturing since 1855, which makes the wine older than a mid nineteenth century wine blight named phylloxera that almost ended the European wine industry. The company bought the wine in cask back then, and it was scheduled for tawny blending with 30 or 40 year-old wines, but somehow it got left in the cellar.

About the decision to release the wine today, Adrian Bridge, CEO of the Fladgate Partnership, the owners of Taylor, alluded to it being a shame to blend something so special as this old wine. He claims that on its own the wine is not cloyingly sweet from age but still snappy from acidity and that it is "just quite extraordinary."

The price of the "extraordinary" Taylor Scion will be about $4,000 for each one of the 1,400 bottles that Taylor has produced. The wine is to be released in a special decanter enclosed in a wooden box that looks like a nineteenth century instrument case.

Tags: Port, Taylor Fladgate, Taylor Port, Taylor Scion