The aging potential of wine is generally a much debated question among wine drinkers. It is an essence of the wine drinking, open the appropriate wine for the "right" time and it is an exceptional charm to open an old wine, possibly from a vintage that has a personal meaning .

It is certain that Vintage Port is one of the longest-lived wines in the world. Even if one can Vintage Port drink young and a few vintage wines have been made in recent years also for early consumption , I am still of the firm belief that a great Vintage Port must age well and the best wineries invest all about for wines who develop over several decades. Dominic Symington, managing director and winemaker at the Symington Family Estates looks very similar to this fact. With six other family members into the 13th generation he heads the largest family- owned Portuguese wine producers, who include the brands of Dow , Warre and Graham. In February 2014 he presented in Leverkusen Graham's Vintage Port from five different decades as part of a Master Class for over 30 journalists, sommeliers and wine merchants .

The special fascination lies in the fact that Vintage Port develops and lives through different stages of maturity. This was obvious on the basis of excellent wines from different decades. The very young vintages 2007 and 2011 were still extremely youthful, partially closed and with great development potential. They need further bottle maturation. Because to include all the components, to show its full potential and develop special flavors, Vintage Port requires a maturation of at least 15 years. As you can see in 1997, who wakes up slowly. But the very big deal begins only after 30 years, as the vintage 1985 proved. All good to very good vintages show at this time optimum drinking time, so I would recommend the vintages 1977,80,82,83,85 and 87 to drink now. That even after this period in outstanding years is further potential, showed the 1970 Graham's , a wine that has for some years on a near-perfect drinkability plateau, which will surely continue for another two decades , and even after that , the wine continue to evolve , but this is difficult to predict at this time, even for experts. Time will tell.

The video of the Master Class with Dominic Symington shows some excerpts from the event and a narrated video track by Christopher Pfaff, showing the color development of the presented Vintage Ports from 2011-1970 .


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