For The Love Of Port

Uncle Tom,
Interesting, your analysis. Does the 70% worked for the 70's as well ? From my point of view, it seems very tough to find 7 years in this decade that is "vintage-able".

The 1970s was a tough decade. The 1972 only 6 shippers declared, in 1973 vintages could not be declared because of the aguardente scandal with the German product brought in and found to be "tainted" and chemically produced. Anyway, 1974 everyone was too scared due to the Revolution but amazingly there were 11 shippers that did declare but these are very hard to find these days as very little was produced. Taylor and Fonseca produced but you never hear of them ... also there was so much rain dumped in June that the grapes wound up having very little concentration or quality. It was a better Tawny year and some good Colheita too.
1975 we know about with over 35 shippers declaring what they believed at the time, were the last vestiges of a free marketplace. 1976 only had three shippers declare that I know of: Taylor/Fonseca (Vargellas/Guimaraens) and Messias. 1978 was not very solid and there were a couple of excellent SQVPs produced but not enough felt either1976 or 1978 was capable of greatness for there to be a general declaration. Infantado produced their first SQVP this year. Very little Port was made in 1979 that was really good, but 13 or 14 producers declared anyway. Ports lacked concentration this year too as a late season (Sept. 16th) rainfall hurt badly at the time.

So although I am not Tom ... that is an answer to your question.