Webshop › Winery › Douro › Taylor's

Douro - Taylor

Few Port houses carry a history as long or as storied as Taylor's. It all begins in the early 1670s, when an English merchant named Job Bearsley arrived in northern Portugal trading salt cod — the beloved bacalhau — with little indication that he was laying the foundations for one of the great wine dynasties of the Douro. The firm was formally established in 1692, and the distinctive "4XX" logo that still appears on every bottle today started life as Bearsley's woolmark, stamped on bales of wool long before it ever graced a cask of Port.
 
The family wasted little time in exploring the potential of the Douro Valley. In the early 1700s, Bearsley's son Peter became one of the first British traders to venture deep into the rugged, mountainous Upper Douro in search of exceptional wines — a bold undertaking at a time when the region was barely accessible. His brother Bartholomew pushed even further, purchasing an estate in the Douro in 1744, known as Lugar das Lages, where Taylor's has made wine almost without interruption ever since. The one notable exception came during the Peninsular War, when the property briefly served as a field hospital for Wellington's troops.
 
The Taylor name arrived in the early nineteenth century, when Joseph Taylor joined the firm as a partner in 1816. As his health declined in the 1830s, he set about finding the right successors — two men from the British wine trade who would shape the house for generations to come. Morgan Yeatman, a wine merchant from Dorset, and John Fladgate, who operated in London, were his choices. Fladgate arrived in Oporto first, in 1836, and two years later the partnership was formalised, giving the house the name it still carries today: Taylor Fladgate & Yeatman.
 
The twentieth century saw Taylor's cement its reputation as one of the most innovative houses in the Port trade. In 1934 they introduced the first dry white Port, and in 1970 they launched the Late Bottled Vintage — a style that opened Port wine up to an entirely new generation of drinkers and remains one of the most popular categories in the world today. Taylor's is now widely regarded as the reference point for Vintage Port, and the leading name in Aged Tawny Port production.
What sets Taylor's apart from virtually every other Port house is its independence. Since 1692, through ownership changes, wars and the sweeping transformations of the global wine market, the house has never been absorbed into a larger corporation. The Yeatman and Fladgate families have steered it throughout, and today it is managed by Natasha Robertson and her husband Adrian Bridge, who continues that tradition of family leadership as Managing Director.
 
Taylor's is also the founding house of The Fladgate Partnership, the group that brings together several of the Douro's most celebrated names under one roof. Alongside Taylor's, the Partnership includes Fonseca and Croft — the latter founded in 1588, making it one of the oldest Port houses in existence. Each house retains its own identity, house style and winemaking philosophy, which is precisely what makes the Partnership so compelling: it is not a homogenisation of Port wine, but a celebration of its diversity. Together, the group's wines are sold in over 105 countries, and the Partnership has also emerged as a significant player in Porto's tourism landscape, with The Yeatman Hotel and the Vintage House Hotel in Pinhão both forming part of its portfolio.
 
For PorteVinho, Taylor's stands as the embodiment of what great Port wine should be; uncompromising in quality, deeply rooted in the Douro, and shaped by more than three centuries of accumulated knowledge and passion.
 
Website producent: taylor's.pt↗
Display
Easy
Detailed
Photo only
List
List without photos
Sort
Name
Date
Price Ascending
Price Descending

Powered by EasyWebshop