Great Vintage Port Tasting

Vintage 1994

The Wine Society 18%, which was founded in 1993 by among others Sten, and which we are now all members of, has since 2005 had many Great Tastings, meaning a tasting with at least 20 Wines from the Vintage or House. We have had several vertical House tastings and we have had horizontal Vintage tastings of most major declared vintages all the way back to 1947, and now the time had come to Vintage1994 which should be perfect now when being 30 years old.

We have ranked the 1994 vintage as an Outstanding vintage port, and together with 1997 this is the best Vintage in the 1990’s. See more here

In this tasting we had first selected 40 vintages to be tasted in 4 flights on two days. But after some discussions and additional ports provided by the members of the club, we ended up with two extra bottles. So, we started on May the 16th with two flights of 10 wines, then we continued with two flights on May the 18th, each flight with 11 wines. So the group points for these 42 wines are from the 14 members of the Wine Society 18%.

We then had some extra bottles that did not make it into the official tasting, half bottles etc, so on May the 19th the three of us, Sten, Jörgen and Stefan, had 7 more 1994 vintage ports. So, the group point for these are only from the three of us. These wines were the following: Berry Bros, Ferreira, Kopke, Marks & Spencer, Morgan, Pousada and Real Vinicola.

Our conclusion after the tasting is that Vintage 1994 is for sure in many aspects an outstanding vintage. The top producers have made impressive Vintage Ports that will also keep well for some more decades in the cellar. Compared to generally declared Vintages in the 60’s and Vintage 1970 there are however fewer producers delivering top quality, many of them are actually not living up to the general reputation of 1994 and are already peaking or past the peak.

First flight:

Second flight:

Third flight:

Fourth flight:

Extra flight:

Extra bottles Quinta da Eira Velha and Quinta do Vesuvio:

Tasting notes. Note that the points are for the actual bottle tasted. Read about how we set point on the page "How to understand our points valuations"

Sort on: Name Sten's rank Jörgen's rank Stefan's rank Group's rank

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