This year we thought it would be nice to taste all Vintage Ports from 1994 again. At 30 years of age also the slowest matured should be in a phase where they have opened up enough to fully enjoy them. This turned out to be true, all ports were in a good stage even if there is a significant difference in maturity between the wines of the more faster maturing producers and the more slowly maturing.
For the tasting we had collected 49 different Vintage Ports. We have ranked the 1994 vintage as an Outstanding, and there are for sure in many of the top producers that have made impressive Vintage Ports that will also keep well for some more decades in the cellar. There are however also quite many that do not live up to the general reputation of 1994 and are already peaking or even past the peak. After all it was still a wonderful tasting with many extraordinary wines. The clear winner was Quinta do Vesuvio, which got the highest score from almost all of the participants in the tasting.
Most of the top producers, like Fonseca, Taylor, Graham and Warre also ended up in the top ten. Some surprises in the top ten were Skeffington and Quinta do Sagrado from Calem.
All tasting notes, ranking and points can be found here.