Winemaker Notes
#76 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2023
Another magnificent and finely-balanced old tawny blend of outstanding richness and complexity. This rare Port is traditionally enjoyed as a dessert wine or at the end of the meal. Ideal for summer drinking, Taylor's 20 Year Old Tawny may be served cool.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
Silky smooth and toasty with nuts, spice and firm acidity; elegant and complex; long and perfectly balanced; bright and exquisite.
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Wine Spectator
Offers a supple-edged feel -- think burnished leather -- while notes of dried peach and cherry, cinnamon, graham cracker and toasted pecan meld steadily through the lengthy finish.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The NV 20 Year Old Tawny Port was bottled in 2015 and 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 days 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.
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Wine Enthusiast
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.
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Decanter
A linear, delicate yet seamless style, with nutty and spicy aromas leading to dried apricot flavours encircled by tertiary leather notes. Rounded and characterful.
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Wine & Spirits
Luscious with butterscotch, fig and golden honey flavors, this is a gragrant, jasmine-scented Porto. The finish is a rush of yellow fruit sweetness, soft and nutty, classical in its balance of freshness and age.
Port is a sweet, fortified wine with numerous styles: Ruby, Tawny, Vintage, Late Bottled Vintage (LBV), White, Colheita, and a few unusual others. It is blended from from the most important red grapes of the Douro Valley, based primarily on Touriga Nacional with over 80 other varieties approved for use. Most Ports are best served slightly chilled at around 55-65°F. To learn more, see our full Port Wine Guide
The home of Port—perhaps the most internationally acclaimed beverage—the Douro region of Portugal is one of the world’s oldest delimited wine regions, established in 1756. The vineyards of the Douro, set on the slopes surrounding the Douro River (known as the Duero in Spain), are incredibly steep, necessitating the use of terracing and thus, manual vineyard management as well as harvesting. The Douro's best sites, rare outcroppings of Cambrian schist, are reserved for vineyards that yield high quality Port.
While more than 100 indigenous varieties are approved for wine production in the Douro, there are five primary grapes that make up most Port and the region's excellent, though less known, red table wines. Touriga Nacional is the finest of these, prized for its deep color, tannins and floral aromatics. Tinta Roriz (Spain's Tempranillo) adds bright acidity and red fruit flavors. Touriga Franca shows great persistence of fruit and Tinta Barroca helps round out the blend with its supple texture. Tinta Cão, a fine but low-yielding variety, is now rarely planted but still highly valued for its ability to produce excellent, complex wines.
White wines, generally crisp, mineral-driven blends of Arinto, Viosinho, Gouveio, Malvasia Fina and an assortment of other rare but local varieties, are produced in small quantities but worth noting.
With hot summers and cool, wet winters, the Duoro has a maritime climate.