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| Drinking Windows and Values |
| Community Tasting History |
| Community Tasting Notes (average 93.4 pts. and median of 94 pts. in 12 notes) - hiding notes with no text | | | Tasted by Chuck Miller on 1/9/2020: Opened in memory of my father, born this day 100 years ago. This is my second and last bottle, the first opened with my father in 2008. While it is a lovely wine, it will never be as great as my old man was!
What is there really to say about these old Madeiras? Certainly, it had some VA, notes of iodine and balsamico, and bracing acidity with a long, long finish. I look forward to sharing tastes with my other siblings as we gather during the coming year. (1769 views) | | | Tasted by mdefreitas on 1/22/2013 & rated 95 points: Madeira @ Bistro Cacao (A Malvasia Affair) (Washington D.C.): This showed so much better than my last taste back in 1999. Assertive and fragrant with a caramel, toffee and lime zest nose. Weighty on the palate, but still fresh and uplifting. Some volatile acidity, but not off-putting. Fantastic cling on the palate with a lengthy, zippy, juicy, orange peel finish. Wonderful acids on this outstanding bottle. (5514 views) | | | Tasted by bpj87 on 1/31/2012: Medium sweet with what I hoped would be a touch more acidity. Big nose of iodine and varnish. Oozes complexity. (5643 views) | | | Tasted by Yabusama on 9/26/2011 & rated 95 points: Dark brown color. Complex forward aromas of raisins, chocolate and spice. Rich flavors of chocolate, fig and tart citus. Viscous mouth feel with good acid backbone. Lip-smacking lingering finish that lasted for minutes. Everyone really enjoyed this one. (4795 views) | | | Tasted by acidqueen on 5/27/2011 & rated 95 points: Medium brown, green on edge. Open now for 3 months, getting coconut on the nose, and coconut, tobacco and chocolate flavors. Other flavors I can't identify which just make this more complex and pleasing. Wonderful Madeira.
After 6 months opened: very elegant Madeira. Acids are very fine and smooth. Salt, blond tobacco, apricots, fig and light honey flavors. Still getting the coconut nose, but milder and mixed with more of the tobacco. Tasted this side by side with the 1922 D'Oliveiras Boal, which was a huge contrast (see notes elsewhere). This wine is the elegant, jeweled lady next to the chunky Boal. (4955 views) | | | Tasted by rosesandthorns on 5/23/2011 & rated 90 points: Different bottle. This nose has a strange petrol coffee funk that I haven't smelled in other madeiras. Very strong and was not my fave. Serious greyhound acidity in the finish. I can't believe I'm saying this, but this wine needs more air time and actually tastes young and green. Toasted almonds, chestnut honey cake, sweet orange marmalade. (4802 views) | | | Tasted by rosesandthorns on 5/2/2011 & rated 93 points: This is a bad boy bual. Nose was like dark Turkish coffee, with this earthy green twig thing going on. Coffee, rich with toasty candied dark walnut toffee cake, soaked in some brandy and more coffee fudge. Incredible intensity in flavor, with gorgeous lighter toffee, valencia orange marmalade, a little lemon curd, candied almonds, coffee, that was very rich but not overbearing, thanks to the bracing acidity. The flavors stayed with me – great length and finish a mile down the road, up the hill, around the bed, all the way home. Impressive.
You’d think the 1920 would have unwound more, but this wine is very closed unless you decant for a few days. Not just open the bottle and cover with cheesecloth, but decant. Flavor profile very different than one of my all time favorites, the 1920 D’Oliveira Bual, see tasting note, but this was super special and a stunner. This wine was perfectly dressed, coiffed and accessorized with enough quirkiness to raise it’s cache in making it both seductive and approachable - not an easy feat.
Michael Alberty at Storyteller Wines in PDX poured this as the super pour this last Friday. Kudos to him for opening this special bottle and educating people about Madeira. (3127 views) | | | Tasted by jgo on 3/18/2011: 12/27/10 lovely (3230 views) | | | Tasted by mdefreitas on 2/28/2011 & rated 94 points: Barbeito Madeiras: The 65th Anniversary Celebration (The Modern, NYC): Sourced from the Favilla Viera family from vineyards in Sao Martinho. Perceptible sweetness yet relatively dry for a Malvasia. Chestnuts, walnuts, caramel and fruitcake. I last tasted this wine in 1999, as an earlier bottling. One would think that the extra years in cask for this newer bottling would sweeten this wine through evaporation. But if my memory serves, this seems more dry, nervy and edgy than the previous bottling; perhaps my memory is off? Regardless, this wine remains a wonderfully balanced, lengthy and extremely satisfying Madeira. Fantastic. (3550 views) | | | Tasted by Seth Rosenberg on 2/28/2011 & rated 94 points: Nutty nose with lots of acid. Brutally acidic on the palate with lots of nuts and orange peel. Huge structure and barely sweet. Like a drill. Monolithic. Jesus. Really true. Nose - 5/6, Palate - 5/6, Finish - 5/6, Je Ne Sais Quoi - 2/2 = 17/20. (3266 views) | | | Tasted by rjonwine@gmail.com on 5/21/2010 & rated 94 points: Tour and Madeira Tasting at Vinhos Barbeito (Vinhos Barbeito, Camara de Lobos, Madeira): Dark brown color with yellow green meniscus and ruby lights; deep, smoky, coffee, tart fig, fig cake nose; rich, mocha, tart lemon, very tart orange palate with depth and medium-plus acidity; long finish (2953 views) | | | Tasted by mdefreitas on 10/6/1999 & rated 91 points: Madeira @ Patroon (NYC): A medium honey-brown color, with no lightening on the rim. Sweet molasses and chocolate, with a slighly “brown spice” finish. The first Malvasia tasted at this tasting, and you can feel the step up in sweetness. Totally coats the mouth, and gets to those “hard to reach places” on the palate. Excellent. (3679 views) |
| By Julia Harding, MW
JancisRobinson.com (10/19/2011)
(Barbeito, FV Malvazia Madeira White) Subscribe to see review text. | By Roy Hersh
For The Love of Port, Issue #57 (5/21/2010)
(Favila Viera Malvasia Vintage Madeira) Subscribe to see review text. | By Richard Jennings
RJonWine.com (5/21/2010)
(Barbeito Madeira Malvazia Favilla Vieira) Dark brown color with yellow green meniscus and ruby lights; deep, smoky, coffee, tart fig, fig cake nose; rich, mocha, tart lemon, very tart orange palate with depth and medium-plus acidity; long finish 94 points |
NOTE: Scores and reviews are the property of JancisRobinson.com and For The Love of Port and RJonWine.com. (manage subscription channels) |
| Barbeito Producer websitePortugal ViniPortugal (Associação Interprofissional para a Promoção dos Vinhos Portugueses/Portuguese Wine Trade Association)MadeiraThe Madeira Wine Guide and For The Love of Port are two essential sites on the wines of Madeira.MadeiraFrom Mannie Burk@ Rare Wine Co :
When served in 1950, the wine was 158 years old, but in fine condition, still boasting Madeira’s trademark rich, sweet, velvety taste and roomfilling aromas of butterscotch, cocoa and coffee. Sir Winston insisted on serving the guests himself, asking each in turn, “Do you realize that when this wine was vintaged Marie Antoinette was alive?”
Madeira’s longevity earns it a special place in the realm of old wine. What other wine requires over a half century to mature? And what other wine, when a century old, still benefits from several hours of breathing and can stand up to weeks in a decanter, without losing its complexity or its richness? And how many wines can live for two centuries and still offer not only the pleasure of their antiquity, but also the enjoyment of drinking?
The robustness and longevity of Madeira, even once opened, allows for endless experimentation with food pairings and drinking occasions.
Madeira’s Mountain Vineyards:
Madeira is produced on a breathtakingly beautiful volcanic island of the same name which surges from the sea at a point 360 miles west of Morocco and 700 miles south of Portugal, which governs it. The history of Madeira’s wine is nearly as old as that of the island. The island was first settled by Europeans—led by the Portuguese explorer Zarco—in 1419. By 1455 a visitor from Venice wrote that Madeira’s vineyards were the world's most beautiful. Within a century, the wine from these vineyards was well established in markets throughout Europe and by the 1600’s it had become the most popular wine in Britain’s North American colonies.
America’s First Wine:
The popularity of Madeira in the American colonies got a huge boost in 1665 when the British authorities banned the importation of products made or grown in Europe, unless shipped on British vessels from British ports. Products from Madeira were specifically exempted. British merchants in Madeira took full advantage of this by establishing close ties with merchants in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston and Savannah. A steady trade developed in which wine from Madeira was traded for such American products as indigo, corn and cotton. This trade continued unabated until the early 1800’s, except when politics and war interfered in the 1770’s.
For two centuries, Madeira was the wine of choice for most affluent Americans. Francis Scott Keyes is said to have penned the Star Spangled Banner, sipping from a glass of Madeira. George Washington's inauguration was toasted with Madeira, as was the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Wealthy families from Boston to Savannah established extensive collections of Madeiras. Madeira became high fashion, and“Madeira parties” (a forerunner of today’s wine tasting) became major social events.
How Madeira is Made:
Madeira is produced from grapes grown on terraces cut into the island's steep mountainsides. Like Port, Madeira is a “fortified” wine to which brandy has been added. But unlike other fortified wines, Madeira is also heated for several months, either in special vats or in the attic lofts of the Madeira lodges.
This heating (called “estufagem”) had its origins in the days when merchant ships called at Madeira on their way to the East and West Indies. Beginning in the late 1600's, wines from Madeira's vineyards were frequent cargo on ships sailing to the Americas, as well as to mainland Portugal, England and India. According to legend, the value of a trip to the tropics was learned when an orphan cask, forgotten in a ship's hold, returned to Madeira from a trip across the Equator. The wine was found to be rich and velvety, far better than when it left, and a tropical cruise became part of the Madeira winemaking tradition.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, producers continued to send casks of their wines on long voyages, for no other reason than to develop greater character. The ocean traveling wines were called vina da roda (“wines of the round voyage”) and those that crossed the Equator twice were considered the best. Some Madeiras were named for the vessels with which they sailed (Constitution, Balthazar, Red jacket, Hurricane, Comet) or the places they had been (East Indies, West Indies, Japan, Argentina). Although this practice ended in the first decade of the 20th century, heating is still a critical step in the making of all Madeiras.
A Century of Change:
While the majority of Madeiras are blends of vintages and grape varieties, it is the vintage wines, and the now-vanishing soleras that are Madeira’s claim to greatness. Vintage and solera Madeiras are not simply a selection of the best wines from the best years, they are made from particular “noble” grape varieties after which the wines are named. These names—Malmsey, Bual, Verdelho, Sercial—not only describe a grape variety; they also describe a style, with Malmsey being the sweetest and richest (and therefore the most like Vintage Port) and Sercial being the lightest and the driest.
There are other grape varieties whose names you may stumble across on old bottles of Madeira. Terrantez and Bastardo, in particular, are grapes that were widely grown up to the late 1800's and whose old wines can still be found on occasion. The virtual extinction of Terrantez and Bastardo grapevines in the late 1800's coincided with the decline of the Madeira wine trade and resulted from the same causes: two diseases of the vine, Oidium and Phylloxera, both of which also struck the vineyards of Europe, but in Madeira caused much greater, and more lasting, destruction.
The Oidium crisis began in 1852 and lasted about a decade; during this time some 90 percent of the island's vines were destroyed by powdery mildew, and the number of firms producing wine decreased by over 75 percent. There was a brief period of replanting and rebuilding in the 1860's, but then Phylloxera struck in 1872, reducing the island's vine acreage to about 1,000 by the early 1880’s.
The Phylloxera crisis, too, passed, and by the turn of the century production had been restored throughout the island, albeit at somewhat lower levels. But the costs had been heavy. Madeira had largely lost its traditional markets—America, England and the British East Indian colonies. Relatively less of the classic grape varieties were now grown, as they gave way to more prolific, but less distinguished, varieties. And, of course, stocks of older wines had been largely depleted, after a half century during which little young wine was being produced.
Today, the world's supply of fine Madeira is negligible. However, those few examples that have survived from the 19th and early 20th centuries are among the world's most majestic wines, which no wine lover should fail to experience.
Over the past twenty years, our passion for these noble wines has grown with each passing month. We believe that they are among the greatest, most individual wines this planet has ever produced. They possess a richness and grandeur shared by only a few wines.
And their ability to age makes them absolutely unique. Most wines are dead and gone at age 100; and at best they are barely drinkable. But after a century, a Madeira can be just reaching its prime, possessing the depth of great age, but also the vigor of youth.
The gradual depletion of the world’s stocks of these irreplaceable wines has only encouraged us to try harder to find the wines that remain.
A Note on Prices and Quality:
As they have grown in rarity, and the sources of supply diminish, the price of Madeira on the world market has skyrocketed. Though many of the older wines arguably are worth whatever you may be asked to pay, the rising tide—combined with Madeira’s mystique—has also raised the prices of mediocrities to the levels of the greats. |
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