Taylor Fladgate Quinta de Vargellas 2012
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Robert
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James
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Winemaker Notes
Most often served after a meal, alone or with cheese, nuts, dried fruits or fine dark chocolate.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2012 Quinta de Vargellas Port, a typical Douro blend, was aged in large French oak vats for 24 months and bottled in 2014. It comes in at 103 grams per liter of residual sugar. This opens steely and gripping, with fine acidity, firmness on the finish and enough concentration in this lighter-styled vintage. The best of the trio submitted by Taylor Fladgate this issue, it does everything well and mostly exceeds expectations. It more or less combines a bit of the initial power displayed by the Fonseca and the expressiveness of the Croft, and adds silky texture, gloriously fresh fruit and fine flavor. It will need a little patience, but it will also be rather hard to keep your hands off of it. The good news is that it did seem to come around surprisingly fast, becoming a bit less impressive than on first impression. By Day 3, it was quite accessible and it drank fairly well. I still liked it a lot.
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Wine Enthusiast
Vargellas is always associated with violet aromas as well as the strength and power of its wines inside a velvet glove. The 2012 is concentrated yet soft and smooth on the surface. It’s fruity and fresh, while brooding with inner strength. Drink now for its fruit; wait until 2021 for its power and longevity.
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Wine Spectator
Pretty violet and red currant flavors dominate this fresh, fruity, silky style. Very suave midpalate, featuring accents of raspberry preserves. Finishes lively and sweet, with a lilting minerality. Drink now through 2040.
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James Suckling
Typical Vargellas character with flowers such as roses and poppies that turn to dark fruits and spices. Full body, lightly sweet, dusty tannins and a raspberry and blackberry character. Long and flavorful. All in elegance and finesse. Barrel sample.
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Wine & Spirits
A cold, dry winter set the stage for small berries and low yields at Vargellas, in the arid Douro Superior. As a young wine, this tastes of pure blackberry essence, long on earthy tannins and equally long on alcohol driving the fruit flavors through the finish. Floral scents of violets add an elegant note to the fruit. Vargellas often needs a decade or more to begin to show its potential and this may well be at its best in 20 years.
Other Vintages
2015-
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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.
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.