Taylor Fladgate 20 Year Old Tawny Porto (750ml)

With an intense amber, tawny color, the wine has opulent, voluptuous, spicy, jammy and nutty aromas with orange blossom notes and a fine oak influence coming from the long aging in cask. The full palate is very rich, with concentrated flavor and a long, mellow finish.

Pairs well with figs, almonds, pecan pie, desserts made with coffee or caramel, and crème brûlée. It can be appreciated at the end of the meal with walnuts or dried fruit, and it can be served cool in the summer.

This superb example of aged tawny Porto is made from selected grapes from the best vineyards of the Cima Corgo and Douro Superior. Taylor Fladgate is an area leader in winemaking technology, as one of only three Porto producers to pioneer the development of piston fermenter techniques, called Port Toes, that extract significantly greater flavor and aroma than conventional pump-over fermentation. Fermentation is halted by the addition of grape spirits before all the residual sugar has been fermented, creating a sweet, fortified wine. Individual wines produced in different vintages are aged in 600-liter oak casks for years, over which time they will lose their young, dark purple-black color to gain the distinctive “tawny” hue from which the wine takes its name. As tawnies age, the wines take on increasingly more nutty flavors and become more concentrated as the barrels lose 3% of their volume every year (the “Angels’ Share”) to evaporation. The 20 Year Old Tawny is a blend created using tawnies with an average of 20 years of aging.

A complex, wood aged wine, this 20-year-old has a perfumed, dry style. Walnut and spice flavors blend together with the spirit and mature acidity. It's rich, with just the right amount of age. -R.V.

The NV 20 Year Old Tawny Port comes in at 111 grams per liter of residual sugar. On first taste, this was simply Taylor: big, concentrated and serious. It was all that and a bag of chips, but over a couple of day it also demonstrated far more elegance. It seemed arguably better balanced than the 10 year old Tawny this issue. Simply filling the mouth on first taste, this shows fine complexity for its age and it does everything else rather brilliantly. Succulent and inviting, it finishes with waves of concentrated flavors. The fruit remains lifted and and it has a bright, transparent feel. It is hard to resist, often seeming like a bit of an overachiever. It's not the best tawny Taylor's submitted this issue, but it might be the best intersection of quality and price.