“Fortified wines don’t follow fashion. They outlive it.”It is a line that could easily sound like a cliché. At the Big Fortified Tasting 2026, it felt more like a working principle.
Now in its 16th year, the Big Fortified Tasting (BFT), organised by Alex Bridgeman and Michael Bridgeman, remains one of the few UK events entirely dedicated to fortified wines. Not as a nostalgic category, but as a living, shifting segment that continues to redefine its role in the market.
This year marked a subtle but important evolution. A new venue, a refined format, and a stronger emphasis on “Highlight Sessions” designed to create direct engagement with producers rather than passive tasting. The intention was clear: less noise, more depth. And that shift reflects a broader reality.
A category in tension
Fortified wines are in a complicated position. They are simultaneously among the most historic and the least understood categories in wine today. Port, Sherry, and Madeira are not declining in a simple sense. They are fragmenting.
At the lower end, pressure is undeniable. Duty increases in key markets such as the UK have significantly affected entry-level categories, such as LBV Port and Special Reserve. These wines, once essential for volume and accessibility, are increasingly squeezed between rising costs and changing consumption habits.
At the same time, premiumisation is accelerating. Older tawny Ports, Colheitas, VORS Sherries, and aged Madeiras are not just surviving - they are gaining visibility. Not because the category has suddenly become fashionable, but because it offers something that very few other wine styles can: controlled, deliberate ageing as part of the product itself. And yet, this creates a structural imbalance.
The middle of the category is weakening. As one producer noted during the tasting, 30-year-old tawny Port is “a little bit lost” - too complex and expensive for newcomers, not rare enough for collectors. The result is a polarisation: accessible entry wines on one side, and highly aged, high-value wines on the other.
Port, Sherry, Madeira: three different trajectories
What became particularly evident at BFT 2026 is that these three categories are not moving in the same direction.
Sherry is undergoing a slow but deliberate repositioning. The focus is shifting towards authenticity, smaller production, and styles such as en rama and VORS. The challenge is generational: how to communicate a category that is structurally complex and resists simplification. The opportunity lies in gastronomy, versatility, and its ability to function beyond the traditional “aperitif” role.
Port is more commercially stable, but internally divided. Tawny styles, particularly those aged 20 years or older, are gaining traction for their drinkability and flexibility after opening. At the same time, the emergence of 80+ year-old Ports introduces a new ultra-premium tier that is less about consumption and more about rarity, narrative, and access to historical stock.
Madeira remains the most niche, but also the most intellectually respected category. Its durability, stability, and ageing potential are unmatched, yet its market remains limited, often driven by specialist audiences rather than broader consumer demand.
Across all three categories, the core issue is not quality. It is a translation. Age statements, solera systems, oxidative versus biological ageing, bottling practices - these are not intuitive concepts for most consumers. Even within the trade, understanding is often uneven.
Producers are increasingly aware of this gap. Some simplify. Others lean into storytelling. Some, particularly in Port, are rethinking how age is presented altogether, balancing regulatory constraints with market clarity. But none of these solutions is straightforward. This is precisely where the Big Fortified Tasting positions itself.
Not as a showcase of brands, but as a space where the internal logic of fortified wines becomes visible. Where producers, buyers, educators, and specialists engage directly with the structures behind the wines - not just the wines themselves.
Rather than trying to explain the category as a whole, it focused on specific entry points. Two masterclasses, in particular, framed the conversation in sharply different ways: one through the lens of Sherry and long-term ageing systems, the other through Port and the divergence of styles from a single vintage.
If the broader conversation around fortified wines today revolves around communication, Sherry sits at the centre of that challenge.
Álvaro Domecq: Sherry and the problem of understanding
The masterclass with Álvaro Domecq did not attempt to simplify the category. Instead, it exposed why simplification is so difficult in the first place. It was led by María José Sánchez Barceló, representing Bodegas Álvaro Domecq, who framed the wines not as a fixed system but as something that becomes clear only through context, ageing logic, and the way the solera is actually managed over time.
The winery itself provides a useful starting point. Founded in 1800 and still owned by the same family, its identity is shaped not only by longevity but also by a key moment in 1946, when Pilar Aranda took over management and became the first woman in Jerez to produce and commercialise her own wines. The comparison made during the session - “our Madame Clicquot of Sherry” - is not accidental. It positions Sherry within a broader narrative of category-defining figures, but also highlights how rarely such figures are actually visible in the Sherry world. For much of its history, these wines existed in the background.
Even within Álvaro Domecq, many of the oldest stocks were not originally bottled under their own name. Before the 1990s, a significant part of the production was sold as almacenista wines to larger houses such as González Byass or Lustau. What is now presented as a finished identity is, in part, a re-emergence of material that had long circulated anonymously within the system. That structural invisibility still shapes how the category is perceived today.
The focus was on VORS - Vinum Optimum Rarum Signatum, or Very Old Rare Sherry - a designation that requires a minimum average age of 30 years. In practical terms, because of the solera system, the wines in the blend can extend far beyond that. In the case of Palo Cortado, the reference was explicit: components within the solera may date back over 100 to 150 years.
And yet, this information is not immediately legible in the glass.
The wines themselves move through fundamentally different ageing paths, but those differences are not organised in a way that aligns with how most consumers are used to understanding wine.
Amontillado, for example, begins its life under flor as a Fino, protected from oxygen, before losing that veil and continuing its ageing oxidatively. What results is a combination that does not easily translate into a single descriptor: freshness and sharp acidity alongside oxidative notes such as toasted hazelnut and candied citrus peel. The description given during the tasting — closer to lemon marmalade than orange — captures that tension precisely.
Oloroso follows a different trajectory entirely, ageing oxidatively from the beginning, building density and depth without ever passing through a biological phase. The profile becomes darker, richer, and more structured, yet still defined by a striking line of acidity.
Palo Cortado sits somewhere between intention and deviation. Originally destined to be a Fino, it diverges when flor fails to develop or is lost, often due to subtle environmental conditions — proximity to a window, temperature variation, position within the bodega. From that point, it continues to oxidise, resulting in a wine that combines the aromatic lift associated with biological ageing with the weight of oxidative development.
These are not stylistic decisions in the conventional sense. They are outcomes of a system that is both controlled and, at times, partially unpredictable.
Which brings the discussion back to the central issue raised during the session:
“The job we have to do is to convince the next generation.”
Not because the wines lack quality, but because their logic does not fit easily into contemporary frameworks of wine communication. Grape variety is not the primary reference point. Vintage is often irrelevant. Even age, expressed through systems like Solera, resists precise definition.
At the same time, the category's versatility was repeatedly emphasised. Sherry was described as a “13th ingredient” - not only a wine to be drunk on its own, but something that integrates into food, cooking, and pairing in ways that extend beyond traditional wine service. The classic pairing rule presented during the tasting - “if it swims, it’s Fino or Manzanilla; if it flies, it’s Amontillado; if it runs, it’s Oloroso”- offers a rare moment of clarity within an otherwise complex system.
Serving temperature, too, becomes part of that translation. These wines are not meant to be served warm, and in Jerez they are almost always presented chilled, reinforcing their role as dynamic, food-oriented wines rather than static, contemplative ones.
What emerges is a category that is internally coherent but difficult to read externally. And that difficulty is not accidental. It is the result of a system built over centuries, where identity is defined less by fixed markers and more by process, ageing conditions, and the gradual accumulation of time within a shared structure.
If the Sherry session exposed how time reshapes wine within a system, the shift to Port was grounded in something more immediate: decision-making at the winemaker level.
Kopke: one vintage, different paths
The session was led by Ricardo Macedo, winemaker at Kopke, a house with a history dating back to 1638. His role, as he himself described it, is not to reinvent the wines but to work within continuity - “to make the wines with the same style… to maintain.” That framing is important because everything that followed was not presented as innovation but as discipline.
Rather than building the discussion around categories, he reduced the question to a single variable: what happens to the same wine when you choose different ageing paths.
The wines in front of us came from the 2012 harvest. Same year, same origin, same production logic at the start. Fermentation took place in lagares, with full skin contact, extracting colour, tannin, and acidity - the structural elements that define a wine’s capacity to age. Robotic systems have largely replaced the traditional method of foot treading, but the principle remains identical: controlled extraction, not gentle handling.
At this stage, nothing in the wine determines whether it will become a Vintage Port or a Colheita. That decision comes immediately after.
For Vintage Port, the logic is preservation. The wine spends a short period - around two years - in wood before being bottled. During this time, the objective is not to shape the wine through oxygen, but to stabilise it before sealing it into a reductive environment. From that point on, the evolution happens in a bottle, slowly and largely protected from external influences.
Colheita operates under a completely different logic. Instead of bottling early, the wine remains in cask, where oxygen becomes an active component of its development. The transformation is not simply aromatic; it affects texture, structure, and identity. What was once a dense, fruit-driven wine gradually becomes layered, oxidative, and more fluid in its expression.
Macedo did not present this as a stylistic choice in the modern sense. It was framed as a structural divergence - a point where the same material is directed into different systems of ageing, each with its own internal rules.
The white wines extended that idea further.
Produced from varieties such as Viosinho, Malvasia Fina, and Gouveio, white Port follows the same initial logic but evolves in a way that destabilises visual expectations. In its early stages, the wine shows pale, citrus-driven characteristics. Over time in the barrel, however, the colour deepens into gold, and eventually into amber tones that closely resemble aged tawny Ports. The visual distinction between white and red origin becomes increasingly unreliable, particularly at advanced stages of ageing.
What remains is structure.
In the glass, the white Colheita retains a line of freshness - citrus peel, often more akin to dried orange or apricot - while simultaneously developing oxidative notes of honey, nuts, and soft spice. The wood, importantly, is not new. It does not impose flavour in the way new oak might in still wines. Instead, it functions as a medium through which time operates, allowing gradual transformation without dominating the wine. This emphasis on time as an active process is reinforced by how the wines are handled after ageing begins.
Colheitas are not bottled at a fixed point. They remain in cask and are bottled on demand, meaning the wine continues to evolve until it is required for commercial use. Bottling is not the end of the process, but an interruption of it. Until that point, the wine is still in motion. At the same time, what appears to be passive ageing is in fact carefully managed.
Each year, wines from different casks are brought together, homogenised, and then returned to the barrel. This ensures consistency across the range and prevents individual casks from drifting too far stylistically. Evaporation - an inevitable consequence of long ageing - is addressed through adjustments in alcohol levels, maintaining balance as concentration increases over time.
There is, therefore, a constant tension between change and control.
And yet, despite the level of technical intervention, the underlying philosophy remains conservative. As Macedo made clear, Port is not a category that follows fashion. While still wines may adapt to shifts in consumer preference - towards freshness, lower alcohol, or different extraction profiles - Port operates with a different objective.
The role of the winemaker is not to redefine style, but to carry it forward.
If Kopke approached Port through the lens of a single vintage, unfolding it across different styles and ageing paths, what followed shifted the perspective entirely. The focus moved away from how one year can evolve, towards how decades - layered, blended and preserved can be shaped into something coherent.
Instead of tracking variation within a vintage, the tasting moved into a space where time itself became the variable. Not ten or twenty years, but eighty and beyond. Wines no longer defined by harvest, but by accumulation - of casks, of decisions, of continuity.
And it is exactly at this point that Port becomes more complex to read. Because while Kopke showed control over evolution within a known starting point, the very old category raises a different question altogether: not what happens to a wine over time, but how time is assembled, managed, and ultimately presented.
The 80-year-old Ports: time as material
From there, the tasting opened into a concentrated exploration of very old Ports, where different houses approached the same idea - age - through entirely different structures.
The presence of houses like Graham’s immediately set one benchmark. Their 80-Year-Old Tawny sits within a system defined by scale and continuity. Access to deep reserves allows for precision in blending, and as was mentioned during the conversations around the category, this kind of wine is only possible when you have a broad palette of very old material to work with. The wine is not a single story - it is constructed from multiple casks, layered over decades, and refined into a consistent house expression. The logic here is control: the ability to shape time rather than inherit it.
Alongside this, Quinta da Devesa offered a different reading of the same category. Both their Very Very Old Tawny and Very Very Old White Ports come from estate-held stocks, which changes the dynamic entirely. Instead of relying on large-scale blending across vast reserves, the identity is tied much more closely to what the estate has preserved over time. What becomes noticeable in the glass is not just concentration, but a certain tension - an attempt to retain freshness even at extreme age. This is not an easy balance, and it reflects a broader shift in the category, where age alone is no longer enough. There is an increasing expectation that even these wines should remain drinkable in a modern sense, not just impressive.
The conversation becomes more interesting when moving to producers like DR and Jafoste, where the relationship to old stocks is less historically continuous and more actively constructed. The 80-Year-Old Tawny and the Very, Very Old White Port (including the 90 Aniversário) showed how the category is evolving beyond traditional definitions. In particular, the presence of very old White Port is not incidental. As was discussed during the tasting, this is a relatively new direction, driven by a growing interest in complexity on the white side of Port. Producers are no longer limiting white styles to younger blends or aperitif positioning. Instead, they are exploring how extended oxidative ageing can create depth comparable to Tawny, while maintaining a different aromatic profile - more lifted, more textural, often perceived as more versatile.
This shift is directly linked to demand. One recurring theme in the conversations was that the market is increasingly polarised. The lower end of the category has been under pressure, particularly following duty increases, which have significantly affected entry-level and mid-tier styles such as LBV and Reserve. At the same time, the premium segment has remained remarkably resilient. As one producer put it, working in the premium category insulates you to some extent - not completely, but enough to maintain stability. These wines are not volume-driven. They operate in a niche, but one with consistent demand, especially in markets like the UK, the US, and parts of Asia.
The emergence of the 80-year-old category itself is part of this dynamic. It is still relatively new - only formally established in recent years - and yet already several producers are investing in it. Not because it will ever become a high-volume segment, but because it adds something else: narrative, prestige, and a different entry point into the category. One remark during the tasting captured this quite clearly: for some consumers, an 80-year-old Port is not just a wine, but a symbolic purchase - tied to anniversaries, personal milestones, or simply the idea of experiencing something rare.
Maynard’s sits in an interesting position within this landscape. The brand has a long historical link through the Van Zeller family, but its modern trajectory reflects a conscious repositioning. Originally associated with large-volume retail, it has been reintroduced into the market with a clear focus on premiumisation. The 80-year-old Tawny, priced below many comparable wines in the room, illustrates a different approach: maintaining accessibility within a high-end category. It does not attempt to compete solely through exclusivity, but rather through value within rarity.
What ties all of these producers together is not a shared style, but a shared constraint. Very old Port depends on one thing above all: stock. And stock, at this level, cannot be created on demand. It has to be preserved, managed, and in some cases acquired over decades. As was explained during the tasting, even large houses do not consider their reserves sufficient; there is a constant search for additional old casks, and a continuous process of ageing new material for future releases.
This is where the category becomes structurally fragile. It appears strong - and in the premium segment, it is performing well - but it is also dependent on decisions made generations ago. The wines in the glass today are the result of choices that could not have been made with current market conditions in mind.
At the same time, the tasting made it clear that the category is not static. The increasing focus on very old White Ports, the creation of new ultra-aged segments, and the repositioning of historic brands all point to an attempt to adapt without losing identity. And unlike in many other categories, where innovation tends to come from new techniques, here it comes from how producers choose to interpret what they already have.
What makes the Big Fortified Tasting stand out is not the scale, but the clarity it gives.
You rarely see these wines in one place, in one moment, across so many producers and styles. And you rarely get the chance to hear them explained side by side - by the people who actually make, blend and position them.
Fortified wines are not simple to read from a label. Age does not mean one thing. Style is not always obvious. Even categories that seem familiar - Port, Sherry, Madeira - operate on very different internal logics.
You move from one table to another and start to see patterns. Where the category is stable, where it is shifting, where producers are confident, and where they are still testing the ground. The contrast between houses, between approaches, between generations becomes part of the experience.
And at the same time, the overall direction is quite clear.
The lower end is under pressure. That was mentioned openly in conversations. Duty, pricing, and changing habits - all of that is affecting the more accessible styles.
The premium segment feels different. More stable. More intentional. Not growing fast, but not shrinking either. These wines are not competing on volume, and they are not trying to.
There is also a noticeable shift in how certain styles are treated. White Port is a good example. Not long ago, it was largely seen as secondary, often limited to lighter, younger expressions. Now it is being pushed further, aged longer, positioned differently. Some producers are already there, others are clearly preparing to move in that direction.
None of this feels like a reinvention. It feels like a category that understands exactly what it is - and adjusts where needed, without trying to become something else. And that is probably the most accurate way to read what is happening right now.