Page 98 - Wine Spectator (January 2020)

Wine & Soul’s Jorge Serôdio Borges and Sandra Tavares da Silva in their Douro vineyards

ans of Vintage Port: Get ready to take advan-
tage of a rare set of circumstances. Port produc-

S E E I N G Fers have declared the 2017 vintage on the heels
of their declaration of 2016, making these the first

tandem harvests generally declared since 1991 and
1992. In terms of style, the just-released 2017s are
more focused and tightly knit than the more rambunc-

tious and showier 2016s, but whichever way your tastes
lean, there are dozens of superb wines to choose from.

The 2017 vintage marked yet another warm and
dry growing season that resulted in a very early har-
vest in the Douro. But the weather pattern was more
Vintage Port lovers have a lot to even overall, with no heat spikes, compared with the

choose from thanks to back-to-back mercurial nature of 2016.
“April [2017] was warm, so we started early, and
years worthy of declaration
then it stayed warm and dry, so we finished early. But
it was a full growing and ripening cycle,” says Rupert
Symington, whose Symington Family Estates includes

the Port houses of Graham, Dow, Warre, Cockburn
By James Molesworth
and Quinta do Vesuvio. “In the end, we had very small
Photographs by Andréa Johnson berries and small bunches.”

The result is a small crop of very high quality. The

92 WINE SPECTATOR • JAN. 31 - FEB. 29, 2020