It is is of course commercially awfully expedient to have a vintage with three nice round noughts in it to sell. A cynic might therefore have approached samples of the 2000 vintage ports just released with a whiff of scepticism.
But Nature has undoubtedly done her stuff, producing a small crop of very concentrated, ripe wines. The port trade is every bit as justified in making a fuss about its 2000 vintage as its counterpart in Bordeaux – even if it may find rather fewer eager buyers. My tasting of nearly 40 examples at least once and many of them twice suggests that the vintage produced at least 15 truly fine wines, albeit in several different styles – perhaps more styles than there used to be.
A major new factor in shaping the style of vintage port to come seems to be a strange-sounding thing called a robotic lagar. A lagar is the Portuguese word for the shallow granite troughs in which port grapes have traditionally been trodden by foot, one of the port trade's most folkloric offerings to visitors to the region at vintage time.
All grapes have to be crushed before they will yield wine so that yeast can get at the sugars within. The port trade has expended considerable ingenuity over the years in developing alternatives to the expensive, time-consuming but undoubtedly effective foot-treading. In the 1960s when producers first ran short of labour, they borrowed a technique called autovinification from Algeria which extracted maximum colour in a short time without needing electricity (which was at that time unreliable in the Douro Valley where all port is made). Today, they seek a substitute that will make wines that are just as good or better than those made by foot.
Two Anglo-Portuguese groupings dominate the fine port trade. The Symington Family Port Companies produce all that is sold under the names Graham, Dow, Warre, Smith Woodhouse, Quarles Harris, Gould Campbell, Quinta de Roriz and Quinta do Vesuvio and many more besides. The grouping now known as The Fladgate Partnership since it recently acquired Croft and Delaforce also makes Taylor, Fonseca, and some own-label ports too.
Each has come up with its own modern replacement for the human foot: the Fladgate Partnership a series of piston plungers in sloping-bottomed tanks and the Syms a robotic lagar, just like the old lagares but with robots instead of humans doing the hard work, and offering control over the temperature, a refinement unknown in foot treading. I have seen neither at work, but on the basis of what I have tasted, I'd say that the robotic lagar has made a particularly delicious impact.
Both the Symington vintage ports with a significant proportion of grapes crushed by robotic lagares – Graham (36 per cent) and Dow (25 per cent) – were quite stunning, but in a rather different way from traditional young vintage port. Both obviously had massive charges of tannin, the natural preservative needed to sustain vintage port through what is to be hoped will be a very long life, but the quality of the tannins was quite distinctive. They were so ripe and gentle that it seemed to me both these ports, even the traditionally rather austere Dow, could be drunk with pleasure at a much earlier stage than most of their peers.
I should add that I came to this conclusion while tasting the wines blind among a range of 38 (not an exercise with British Dental Association approval) so there was no auto-suggestion here. I should perhaps further add however that when I got to the Smith Woodhouse in this blind tasting, I was also (wrongly) convinced that it was some robotic lagar effect that linked it to the Graham, instead of the simple Symington effect.
The flagship wines of the rival group also showed well (Fonseca much better when not tasted blind) but seemed much sterner. This of course is much closer to the traditional stereotype of a young vintage port. For port's oldest devotees, the presence of a gustatory steel girder is paramount and pleasure should not come into the picture for at least two decades.
But if vintage port is to make any appeal to a new generation of drinkers – the ones whom Paul Symington, one of a line of suits at the launch of his company's 2000s, was presumably so desperate to convince that 'these wines are incredibly sexy' – it may well benefit from the robotic lagar effect.
These are wines for enjoyment, not investment.
Favourite 2000 vintage ports – see my detailed tasting notes on purple pages.
These are listed with initial points out of 20 and very approximate suggested drinking period and guide price* per dozen bottles in bond.
Quinta do Noval Nacional 18.5+ Drink 2007-2030 (too rare to quote a price)
Taylor 18.5+ Drink 2015-2030 £340
Graham 18.5 Drink 2008-2030 £325
Niepoort 18.5 Drink 2010-2027 £340
Dow 18.5 Drink 2010-2030 £290
Quinta do Noval 18.5 Drink 2010-2030 £340
Fonseca 18 Drink 2015-2030 £340
Warre 18 Drink 2015-2030 £290
Cockburn Quinta dos Canais 18 Drink 2015-2030 £240
Niepoort Secundum 18 Drink 2015-2030 £290
Smith Woodhouse 18 Drink 2010-2025 £225
Quinta do Vesuvio 17.5+ Drink 2007-2015 £310
Churchill Quinta da Gricha 17.5 Drink 2015-2030 £278
Gould Campbell 17.5 Drink 2020-2035 £225
Quinta do Vale D Maria (van Zeller) 17.5 Drink 2010-2020 £180
*Based on an early, in bond offer of some of these wines by Montrachet Fine Wines of London SE1 (tel 020 7928 8151). Prices in Europe and the US tend to be higher than those of traditional UK merchants.
