The Yeatman Era

At the end of the 19th century the Upper Douro was a desolate place. So many vines had been destroyed by phylloxera that most Port wine, even most Vintage Port, was sourced from the Lower Douro. But the Upper Douro was the only place for high quality Port and if Taylor’s was to maintain its top-ranking position it needed an estate there to replace Roêda. By now a solution to phylloxera – grafting onto American rootstock – had been found, offering a degree of security to those with the determination and funds to invest in vineyards. Nevertheless such investors were rare and even today the hillsides of the Upper Douro are blemished by mortórios (‘dead vineyards’), old stone terraces, broken down and overgrown, that were simply abandoned when the vines died.

The vineyard eventually chosen was Quinta de Vargellas. Its acquisition proved to be one of the most significant and auspicious episodes in Taylor’s history. Located in the Douro Superior on the remote eastern reaches of the Portuguese Douro, Vargellas had acquired a reputation as the source of the finest Port wines as early the 1820s. Today it ranks among the great vineyards of the world.

Notwithstanding the outstanding reputation of the Vargellas wines, the acquisition was a bold step for the firm as phylloxera had wrought havoc on the property. By the time of the purchase, the production of its vineyards is recorded as having fallen to only about four pipes. The monumental task of rebuilding Vargellas fell to Frank Yeatman, the key figure in the history of the firm in the first half of the 20th century. Nicknamed ‘Smiler’, he was a formidable Port wine taster. Grandson of the first Yeatman partner, he was the first member of the family to live and work more or less permanently in the Douro. He supervised the making of the wine while his brother, Harry O Yeatman, was based in London looking after sales. Smiler was a much-loved figure, tall, charming and diffident. He calmly steered the company through two world wars and periods of great political and financial instability. Without him it is not clear that the company would have survived those troubled times. His other passions were golf (not perhaps an ideal game if you live in the Douro) and Ceylon tea which he shipped in by the chest every year.

In 1919 Harry O died and neither of his sons wanted a partnership, so Smiler briefly became the sole owner. The London house closed and from that point the company was run solely from Portugal.

However Smiler’s son Dick was keen to join the firm. He studied at Montpellier in France, the first British Port wine shipper to qualify there as a viticulturist. He joined the company at the same time as his cousin Stanley Yeatman. From 1923 the company was managed by Dick and Stanley under the experienced and benign guidance of Smiler, a successful partnership that would continue until the latter’s retirement at the end of 1949. By the end of his career Smiler had been responsible for no fewer than 50 Port harvests.

Under the leadership of Dick and Stanley the business thrived. Both had a keen interest in viticulture and in implementing new ideas. In 1927 at Quinta de Vargellas they created the first varietal blocks, separate terraces each containing a different Douro grape variety – a revolutionary idea in a region still accustomed to mixed plantings. By fermenting the grapes separately they gained much valuable knowledge about the traditional Douro varieties and laid the foundation for Taylor’s unique research library of single grape variety wines. They also planted parts of Vargellas that had not previously been cultivated. In 1935 they introduced the first Dry White Port to the market. In 1949 they bought the Fonseca Port house. And they developed a reputation for their picnics. They and their guests would ride in barouches from the railway station at Vargellas to the quinta with old Mrs Yeatman, Smiler’s widow, carried on a litter. And the picnic hampers were enormous. Ron Symington, of another Port house, was once overheard to say, ‘Shall we take a picnic or sit next to the Yeatmans?’

Dick and Stanley lived well but, in the austere post war years, the expense involved in making Port wine of the finest quality was not in reality funded by sales. Taylor’s had done well in the two decades leading up to the war and as a result Dick was well off and content to subsidise the firm. Although sales were slow he continued to add to the reserves of wine ageing in the company’s lodges.

When Stanley died suddenly in 1960 Dick bought his share and briefly became the sole owner before giving partnerships to Bruce Guimaraens of Fonseca, who was a descendent of one of John Fladgate’s daughters, Helen, and to Huyshe Bower, a relative of the Yeatmans who had joined the firm in 1959. When Dick died in 1966, his majority share passed to his wife Beryl who shortly afterwards invited her nephew, Alistair Robertson, to join the firm.

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