The Present

Alistair Robertson was born in Oporto in 1937 into a family with close connections with the Port wine trade. Alistair’s early youth was spent in Portugal and after school in England he went on to do national service in the Scots Guards. At this time he met Gillyane Scoones, whom he was later to marry, and his future father-in-law, who was director-general of the Brewers’ Society, advised him to join the brewing industry where he displayed a talent for sales and marketing.

When Beryl Yeatman issued her invitation, Alistair was therefore well qualified to take over. While the company was financially sound and had large mature stocks of Port wine and an unmatched reputation, it did not sell enough to make a reasonable trading profit. Port wine sales generally had not recovered after the World War II and in the post war period many smaller Port firms were merged into larger ones. 

Alistair set about pushing through changes, including the re-organisation of the company and a drive to increase sales. In this he was ably assisted by Huyshe Bower who sought out and developed new international business for Taylor’s, reducing the firm’s historic dependence on the British market and allowing it to benefit from the growing interest in fine wines in places such as North America and Asia. This pioneering work laid the foundations for the global recognition that Taylor’s enjoys today.

Alistair’s most significant and far-reaching innovation was LBV.

Alistair’s idea was to produce a Port wine of a single year that had been fined and filtered so it could be drunk by the glass, without decanting, as soon as it was bottled. This was achieved by allowing the wine to remain longer in the wood than a Vintage Port, in other words by ‘late bottling’. Taylor’s Late Bottled Vintage was launched in 1970 with the 1965 vintage. Although initially met with a measure of scepticism by some members of the Port wine trade, LBV was a resounding success and gradually other Port houses launched their own versions. 

The firm’s extensive reserves of fine cask aged tawnies, built up over the years, also came into their own. In 1973 the Instituto do Vinho do Porto (IVP), the trade’s governing body, created new rules allowing producers to state the age on the labels of old tawny Ports. Taylor’s was the first major house to take advantage of this, launching a full range of 10, 20, 30 and 40-Year-Old Tawnies which it continues to offer to this day.

The task of supervising the wine making and looking after Taylor’s extensive Port wine stocks as well as the skilled and delicate work of making up the blends fell to Jeremy Bull, Taylor’s technical director and one of the most experienced tasters in the Port trade. Jeremy Bull’s involvement lasted for a quarter of a century, providing valuable continuity.

The 1970s saw the start of a revival in the market. Larger facilities were needed and in Vila Nova de Gaia new bottling facilities were built and additional lodge space acquired to accommodate the stocks of ageing Port wine needed to support the growth in sales.

Up in the Douro Valley, a new winery was constructed at Lugar das Lages, the site of Taylor’s first Douro property purchased in 1744, and new vineyards were planted using modern landscaping techniques.

The eventful year of 1974 saw the purchase of the fine old estate of Quinta de Terra Feita. The acquisition of Terra Feita, from which Taylor’s had been buying wine since the previous century, was part of the firm’s strategy of securing and controlling its sources of very high quality grapes for its Vintage Ports.

1974 also witnessed the April revolution which brought about a change of regime in Portugal and introduced a period of political and economic turmoil, a challenging time for Taylor’s and for the country as a whole.

However, the return of stability in the 1980s was followed by good years for the wine trade. Under Alistair Robertson’s leadership, Taylor’s focused on research into both winemaking and viticulture. Bruce Guimaraens, as estates director, played an important role in the development of the firm’s quintas during this period. The advances in both wineries and vineyards, always tempered by a respect for traditional methods, bore fruit in a series of highly acclaimed Vintage Ports including the Taylor’s 1992, awarded 100 points by the influential wine critic Robert Parker.

Next: Into the Future >>