Wine Reviews

Return to the Historic Port Wine Cellar District via the Luís I Bridge—one of six spanning the river—to tour the barrel aging
rooms at renowned port producer Taylor Fladgate. Taste numerous vintages, among them the rare 150-year-old Scion Port.

Scion from The Fladgate Partnership, a pre-phylloxera Tawny Port that David Guimaraens discovered in the cellars of a family that had sold wines to the firm for generations. It was a two-barrel lot that proved to be at least 150 years old, carefully tended and still fresh. The Fladgate Partnership agreed to buy it and Guimaraens bottled in it hand-blown Italian crystal decanters, nested in a wooden box designed after a 19th century instrument case.

Travel through time with just a few sips of Taylor Fladgate Scion. The tawny port was made from grapes grown in 1855 and aged for 155 years in an oak barrel. It’s a rare chance to taste a fortified wine from before the phylloxera epidemic.

This unique tawny port has a great story behind it and the taste lives up to the tale.

As the room of tasters, a veritable varsity squad of New York wine writers, took their respective places, the publicist for Portuguese port house, Taylor Fladgate, announced that this was a first…