From a magnum I opened six weeks ago (see my 1/25/24 TN) and has been sitting on my kitchen counter ever since (cork re-inserted), revisited occasionally since. Nothing has faded since. I could cut-and-paste. This might have gotten ever-so-slightly sweeter over the 6 weeks.
Agrees with others. Consumed over a few weeks. Multidimensional, layered, complex, structured. Hits all the right places when it comes to a wine with complexity. Signature flavors include toasted coco, resin, caramel, black molasses. Hints of citrus. A real treat.
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Black as midnight with brown edges under the light. Brown sugar and chocolate on the nose. Velvety and viscous texture with intense notes with notes of dark chocolate, lime zest, caramel, oats, and zipping acids. Lovely wine, quite unique.
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Really incredible experience. The color, the thick, almost oily consistency--this is a surprising wine from the very beginning. Overwhelming raisiny notes at the very beginning give way to every imaginable secondary flavor. Think baking spices, molasses, dark chocolate or raw cacao nib, hints of mint, soy sauce (really), tobacco, prune, plum cake, etc. It's almost impossible for me to describe everything going on here, because every sip is just that little bit different. All in all, a really incredible experience if you can get your hands on it. The only thing I can fault it for is the lack of razor-sharp acidity that something like a top-shelf Tokaji will have that makes it moreish. The acidity is there, but just shy of cutting through the syrupy quality, which makes it hard to drink more than an ounce at a time. Still, this is a wine to be savored, and an incredible experience if you can get your hands on it!
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Inpenetrable dark brown color. Dark cocoa powder on the nose. Intense, velvety textured dark chocolate with dried figs and raisins. Secondary notes of candied orange peel and amazing amaro notes. This is an intense sensory experience. Again, intense is the operative word, but balance is a close second. Amazing stuff.
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2023 Athens Wine Event; 12/8/2023-12/9/2023 (Athens, Greece): Tasted blind but pretty much all of us guessed PX of greta age. That ability to cover the wine glass to the point of changing its colour is a trait none but very old PXs have. Impressive wine and really so much alive and energetic, ( all these bottling were really bottled in the last facade or so , this being bottle 410 of 810 under the 46.2 bottling series) . Rich, touch cloying , covers the palate like a thin film of rich and sticky wine. An experience for sure and an ever so beautiful. 93-94 range.
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Spectacular, velvety mouth coating pennzoil nectar. Tar. I can't describe the experience. Foie gras, blue cheese and panettone accompanied this most special wine. All 10 at the table were blown away
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Super complex. Deep flavor, and yet still some fruit notes. Replaced a vintage port with this PX and was not disappointed. Shared WON with a 2009 Y’quem
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No notes taken. I didn’t even want to try the wine at first, as I don’t like sherry and it was served at the end of a long evening. I’m glad I did try it in the end. This is incredibly complex with new aromas wafting out of the glass with every sniff. The high and perfectly integrated acidity keeps the wine relatively light. The balance is great, and no alcohol is showing. Of course, still not really my style of wine, especially aromatically but it is an incredible feast for all senses and especially intellectually very appealing. I understand the high scores for this wine.
Decanting: No decanting needed.
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Had a bit of this wine with my dad on his 77th birthday. Consumed it again (from the same bottle) about 2 months later. Carmel, mocha, charcoal, and dates. A bit oxidized. Super complex. Beautiful bottle. The label says that the wine "will not degrade at all after opening"! What an interesting concoction. Likely has eternal life.
Lives up to its 100 point billing. Wow. Previous tasting notes hit the mark. If you lucky enough to taste history like this don’t turn it down. Well worth it
Rich, earthy nose.Really fun. Plenty of oxidative notes, dark chocolate, baking spices, a hint of fruit, and maybe something sweet. Similar on the palate, the sweet/fruity notes transforming into loads of cherry pie and more baking spices and earthy notes.
Truly wonderful. Score is perhaps a little low as it was tasted side-by-side with Valdespino Moscatel Toneles, which can't help but outshine anything and everything else.
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Do not drink this if you are not wearing seatbelts. Every positive adjective you have ever seen used to rate a fabulous wine applies here. Warning. One bottle serves 12 people. Recorked, it was still wonderful three days later.
To drink history such as this is a special treat. This is yummy and dense, I think others have already described the notes well. While this was lovely, I think people may be lettting the grandeur of the situation persuade their scores. For a RP 100 I was expecting something, well, perfect, and this lacked the dynamism for such a score. It is however delicious and pleasant and more important is the experience of drinking something with such age.
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Oh boy the sweetness ballance and flavor is just excellent integrated and flowing. I would decant if you have a chance if not it still doesn't disappoint. Glad a have another bottle on order yet sad its not a case.
Color of Motor Oil after 10,000 miles, with the same viscosity. Brown sugar, figs, IHOP Boysenberry syrup, but with acidity that keeps it from being a cloying sugar bomb. After about 45 minutes in the glass and drinking some of it, the sugar just started to be too much, but this could have been my palate's reaction. It's a wine that you can't drink much of without overwhelming your palate. Spectacular pairing with blue cheeses, three of which I served with the course [Blue Shropshire (Neal's Yard - England), Buttermilk Blue Affinee (Roth Kase - Wisconsin), Grand Noir (Kaserei Champignon - Bavaria Germany)].
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Yeah, definitely unlike anything I've ever had. The texture is motor oil but the nose and palate are insane. Christmas cake, fruitcake, cinnamon, marzipan, baking spices and so much more. This thing was no where near maturity. It might go another 100 years, seriously. Super fun and interesting bottle. I have 2 more and happy that I do.
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Very fragrant nose with incredible complexity. Notes of espresso, caramel, prune, dried fig, chocolate, and tree bark. There is so much going on that a new flavor is discovered each time you smell the wine... The palate is very sweet, but not at all cloying with surprising acidity, more prune notes, fig, raisins, chocolate, cocoa, caramel, and baked fruits. Viscous mouthfeel and very, very long finish. Absolutely incredible wine, what an experience!
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Hard to rate as so unlike anything I have had before. Very dark in colour. Very complex nose with everything from fig through soy without being cloying and sweet. On the palate concentrated. As Cowinelover describes it "the basalmic notes sprint out before handing the batan over for figs and roasted nuts, and toffee" though some soy in there too and not overly sweet. Plenty of length. Outstanding with blue cheese - it to some degree it overpowered the cheese. Initially PnP but finished about 4 hours later. I could not really discern significant development over the evening.
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Probably the last bottle I’ll have of this and I’m sure going to miss it. Has everything going on all at once — fresh and fruity, butterscotch and soy sauce, and everything in between. What more could you ask for? I couldn’t imagine how it could be better, so I’ve gotta go all the way on the score.
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Thick, complex, chocolate, molasses, spices, hugely rich, etc. Obviously ultra-sweet but the complexity made is special. But despite all the superlatives and in the context of it being an ancient 1946 vintage and 100-rating, it kind of underwhelmed against such high expectations. This was enjoyed over several months and was consistent throughout. Drinking great right now and will outlast me.
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Inky black in color, clear looking as best as I could see through this ink jar! Botanicals nose of herbs with some tangerine peel and melted black licorice Flavors of dried herbs, molasses, Creme Brule and toasted caramel. Medium acidity, full bodied. Drink or hold.
Jose Rodriguez Memorial Dinner
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Incredibly rich and smooth with pronounced flavors of raisin and fig, molasses/brown sugar, cinnamon, chocolate and wood. Still has solid acidity and some faint notes of primary fruit of plums, black cherry and raspberry. A real treat.
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Drank over about a two week period. Didn’t seem to fade once opened. Thick and viscous but still managing to maintain balance. So much flavor and aroma packed in to this it’s hard to describe. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had anything quite like it. Wonderful.
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Raul Perez tasting; 6/17/2022-6/22/2022 (Oinoscent): Brought to drink at Oinoscent as a gift to Raul Perez -/- harvested in 1946, bottled in 2011, unholy depth and complexity, mocca, coffee notes, sweet spices but above and beyond all, buckets of figs, 17% alcohol, walnut liquor, luscious body, never ending caramel flavoured finish. A perfect way to end this night
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Jim's Retirement Party (Libertyville, IL): Small glass, Rich milk chocolate and molasses with sweet spice. Unctuous, syrupy textures without seeming too sweet. Lots here. A joy to sip.
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Finished the party with this and everyone was totally wowed. Hard to describe. Black and thick, balsamic with lots of raisin. Incredible finish and mouthfeel. Don't know if it is 100 points like parker gave it but that may be a limitation of my pallet. Still, this is something really special and, while pricy, I'm glad I had the opportunity to try it. 98 - 99
From a bottle first opened September 22, 2021. This was the final wine of 13 poured at a wine tasting charity fundraiser. Aromatically remains very fragrant with prounounced notes of balsamic, fig, soy, and a massive blast of toffee. On the palate, this remains concentrated, but the time in bottle has softened this where the balsmic notes sprint out before handing the batan over for figs and roasted nuts, and toffee that reminded me of Christmas just a few weeks earlier. The toffee was universally picked up by tasters with no experience with this wine. A couple of tasters speculated the wine was an aged Port. On the finish, this was all about finesse - gliding along with an aftertaste of all the flavors but nothing predominant.
I found the elegance and subtlety of the bottle tonight worthy of a +2 bump from my September score of 94.
Oh, and I still have a little left before completing the epitaph on this bottle!
Drank over several months with a Coravin. Finished it last night. No tasting notes to add others haven't already posted but this was an incredible experience. Perhaps we could feel that joy that WW2 had just ended when the grapes were planted! Usually paired it with pecan pie.
3 Terrific Rose Champagnes, 5 Great Cabernets, and a Fabulous Dessert Wine. (Yan's China Bistro, Walnut Creek, Ca.): Our host provided this dessert wine and it had a small test tube of wine for you to sample and determine if it is ready to drink before you open the bottle. Upon opening the bottle, the wine exploded with flavors and bouquet, lots of raisins, plum, caramel, molasses, and Asian spices on both the nose and palate, the taste was like a complex nectar, rich, mouth filling, mouth coating, and mouth watering, the long, long, long finish led to a wonderful, exotic aftertaste that demanded you pour another glass. Everyone that tasted raved about this dessert wine. 3 photos uploaded, and one shows the plastic wrapped sample test tube of this nectar.
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So you’re trekking along the outer banks of Quebec Canada with your syrup-hunting pig (Daisy), your two trusty Vizslas (Carpathian and Zoltan), and a 2-foot high Middle-Earth hobbit with bad hygiene, on a Narnia type quest for the most potent syrup known to man, when you suddenly stumble across a black maple tree skillfully grafted with Brazilian sugarcane grass that had been recently charred by Beelzebub’s belly breath the day prior. Curiously, you notice the roots of this mysterious tree seem to have dug their way directly to a nearby Pennzoil factory - apparently the Houston-based company has recently set up a satellite in Quebec (little known fact - just go with it). Anyway, being the adventurous chap you are, you grab your trusty Rambo First Blood Part II survival knife and tap the oil-sweating bark (minding not to disturb the small nest of fledgling Sri Lankan Devil Birds nestled in the branches above - what with all the Ministère des Forêts and the Migratory Birds Convention Act). As the black bile begins to ooze from the tree, you smartly snatch your Zalto stem from your backpack (somewhat surprised it survived the trip and didn't break as soon as you put it in your pack), and place it below the tap, hence beginning the arduous process of painfully watching drip by viscous drip of black gold-grease inch along your blade and dribble into your glass.
12 hours and 4 ounces later, you finally have a glass of what looks like the sap of Satan's left ventricle, black on black with a peculiar yellow rim. It's a black-out blind of a hue, with nothing to offer visually but impediment and blind sin. On the nose, it's as if the ripest and fattest fig completely imploded after being hit with a cluster bomb of carnivorous demon dogs. It smells sweet the same way a carny clown melting cotton candy in your nostrils smells sweet.
Taking your first sip is like trying to sift molasses through your front toofeses. Taffy-thick and cow-cud chewy, you can't drink it; you instead have to intentionally masticate it. You power through, because once the flavors melt on to the palate, you are endowed with blessings of liquified Medjool date, grilled plantain smothered in melted Baker's chocolate, hoisin, fig paste, Yule log cake topped with a sack-full of holiday spices, Valvoline SAE 60W motor oil, kerosene, balsam, and toffee. It's at once so insanely sweet and at the same time, somehow, not sickly cloying. There isn't a finish, rather just a rolling continuation of circulatory viscous and saturated flavors sticking to the sides of the mouth. It's beefy, luxuriant, profuse, and all of the Urban Thesaurus words one might be able to conjure up for utterly concentrated.
This is surely polarizing wine-food. I can see why some Robert Parker types would give it 100 points, and I can see why others would think it best to just put it in their lawn mower. Personally, I found it a fascinating creature to gnaw on literally and intellectually. I've never eaten a wine like this before. Oddly, this wine channeled my inner Point Break Johnny Utah surfer, as my primordial reptilian brainstem reaction and response was something to the effect of, "Whoa whaaat, is, up?!... Like, this argo bomb juice is a full-on sick trip, brah."
So with all that, where does that leave you? Do you buy it? Do you try it? Well, I can't help ya there. I can only thank our gracious host who grabbed this from his stash and was generous enough to share it with our group. It was a super cool freak wine that I thought was pretty killer. But if you're expecting d'Yquem here, you should pretty much just stick to your diluted Lambrusco and daughter's White Claw.
My greatest day of wine (over)consumption. Ever. (Aaron and Tiffany's pad): ok, we finally hit the end of homage to conspicuous overconsumption of vinified beverages, and we do so with a Bikini Atoll-sized blast--surprise, surprise!--brought by A_M, chasing the Tusk, kind of like that mid 80s playoff game with Bird and 'Nique, where each would follow the other, hitting a further out and more off balance 3, leaving you breathless and not sure quite you saw. We were properly awed by the age of this wine, if flummoxed by the label and cork, which looked as if they had been glued and input, respectively, 5 minutes before our arrival, so new you could practically smell the ink. Our awe turned to gasps of horror, as this came out of the bottle in glops, with a color the combination of military green, used motor oil brown and an extrusion after a night of too much tequilla, from what I've heard, not that I have experience in such things. If the Amarone had a note of the concoction the witches whipped up in MacBeth, this doubles that, then put through a strainer for further concentration by the witches' demented great uncle, Ted Kaczynski, then blasts it out through an 80s boombox. There's nary a trace of tannins nor acidity--if you want that, move on to another CT entry--yet there's a wonderful savoriness that keeps the whole endeavor aloft, not unlike the slim piece keeping the Jenga tower from tumbling, and aloft it stays; in fact, I may still be tasting it. I could try, but ultimately couldn't come close to, matching csimm's description of the individual elements, but what I notice in his description, and my thoughts, both then and thinking back, is that the fruit isn't high among them--I'd also add burnt creme brulee as a descriptor, but don't get me started--but there are black cherries, currants, figs and prunes. The whole thing gives the experience of Thomas Dolby's line, "drinking heavy water through a stone", which of course I had to youtube 40 years later, with a large dose of absinthe thrown in, and yet, and yet . . . it didn't suck, being even more fun to consume than it's been to write about. Not only the most interesting wine I've ever eaten--plagiarism #2 of csimm--and with a steak knife to boot, but the most interesting I've ever drank. The complexity of this is mindbending, the persistence and intensity at least as much so; just as we thought we could relax our palates, the Albala pulled us back in again, Fredo. Went well enough with my wife's wonderful plum torte, except that it kind of obliterated it entirely, as it would any food I could think of between now and next Wednesday, although those with medical dispensations seemed to be enjoying it with their cigars. I leave knowing where this is in its tasting window to others with greater dessert wine knowledge and bandwith, but I do note that, somehow, some way, these better fortified wines, even with no apparent acidity and tannins, seem to go on forever (formaldehyde?). To say that was singular is almost an insult to singular, and I'm left utterly bereft in knowing how to score it, but I come up with my nosebleedingly high number for its wonderous complexity and uniqueness, gratitude to A_M for all, and relief that this event, no matter how extraordinary, was complete, my mind, tasting palate and everything else, at least in some form, intact.
Postscript: With Goldan's completely fair, constructively critical comment in mind and fully cognizant of my grandiloquent, narcissistic prose above, here's a more narrative, traditional summary: This comes out of the bottle a not particularly pleasing shade of green-brown-deep yellow, not so much as liquid but something closer to motor oil. Notes of figs, dates, super sweet cherries, raisins, prunes and cassis mix with secondary flavors of toffee, caramel, marzipan, the deep forest, and Xmas fruitcake to produce something powerful but teetering on the edge of sickly sweet, but pulled back by a savoriness (there are no apparent tannins or acidity to do this work), that, once you get over the unfamiliarity, is delicious. This will be a polarizing quaff for sure, but I loved it, for its uniqueness for sure, but even as a standalone drink, although I may have been influenced because of the extraordinarily great personal circumstances surrounding our consumption. I have no familiarity with how this will age and it's drinking well now, but I note that, despite a lack of typical structure, that is, tannins and acidity, many of the better of these fortified wines go on forever. If you like fortified wines and this is within your wine spend, this is highly recommended.
I will add my name to the long list of reviewers noting a little bit of this goes a long way. The recommendation is to pour 1 - 1 1/2 ounces (think shot glass). I love Sauternes, but don't drink Port. This took some study time for me, because of the unique characteristics of the wine.
Aromatically this ultra concentrated bottling predominated with alcohol, ripe fig, balsamic, prune, and madeira like hazelnut and toffee notes. My daughter-in-law also picked up hints of soy sauce. On the palate, this is an oily wine with figs, prunes, balsamic, nuts, burnt toffee, and a mildly acidic citrus like finish.
Five drinkers in our group, and overall impressions were favorable. The reading material notes this can continue to improve with age even after opening. Because this is so concentrated, it will probably take us both American holidays and into next year to finish the bottle. I will update my tasting notes as additional pours are consumed.
An interesting tasting experience with my father who was born a few years before this wine. I am glad to have tried it, but I do not see myself loading up on these bottlings after the two bottles we have (one started) are consumed.
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Wow. Oily thick. Initially a surprising amount of fruit and freshness, in the apricot peach sort of range. Then rich caramel and butterscotch and sticky toffee pudding. Hints of soy sauce. Interesting cooling notes like menthol or mint. Insanely long finish. Forever long. A little heavy and cloying — 4 people struggled (not quite the right word…) to finish 1 bottle. (I took one for the team and finished it! ) But excellent and fascinating nonetheless. Feels like it could age for 100 more years.
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Motor oil black and glass staining. Oxidized on the nose and incredibly sweet on the palate with minutes of length. Raisins, salted caramel, espresso, berry liqueurs, roasted nuts, saline…lots of descriptors come to mind but challenging to fully explain. Just know it’s complex and lives up to the hype.
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Truly remarkable stuff! From the 2017 bottling. Exotic and intoxicating nose and intense palate, with overwhelming complexity. Rhum agricole, raisins, Medjool dates, herbs a la Fernet Branca/Chartreuse, Gentian root, sassafrass, anise, treacle, Kalamata olive, coffee, hazelnut, cacao, salted caramel. Endless finish.
Opened to celebrate friends birthdays of 75, 74, and 80 years this month. And to celebrate its own 75th anniversary. Utterly profound and mind blowing!
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It's dark as motor oil, viscous. Legs for days, as they say. The predominant flavors for me are prunes, figs, apricots. Overwhelmingly sweet - you do _not_ want to drink large amounts of this stuff at once. A little goes a LONG way!
Overall quite good, but maybe not the ethereal bliss some other reviews might suggest.
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Black color. Small pour from a shot glass. Wonderful nose of coffee, tobacco, vanilla, bakery spices. Alive and fresh after 50+ years. Great dessert wine.
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From Coravin - very thick, luxurious mouthfeel, full of honey, figs and prunes, but with a nice acidity to balance the sweetness. We had it with dessert, but I think it would pair better with blue cheese. Also, would likely go with smaller pours next time. This is a very potent glass, and a little goes a very long way.
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During a Confrerie dinner. Generous offer of the host to accompany the cheese, a Parker 100 pointer. Made in 1946, bottles in 2011, talking about long term stamina as a business, wow! Personally Not a fan of Sherry and PX but this was really nice. We had a mini pour in a small liquor glass. Black motor oil color. Complex nose of tobacco, leather dried fruit. It is a sweet dessert wine for sure but it did not feel sickly sweet. The acidity works as well. Also what I liked is that it was not oxidative/maderized int eh aromas as Sherry often is.
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Saturday riesling and farewell (Chicago, IL): Motor-oil dark and thick. Opulent, luxurious, and viscous beyond belief. An intense chocolate and carob flavour on the nose and palate, with a lifted herbal element that gives this a freshness that is especially surprising given just how syrupy this wine is in texture. Never for a second does this feel cloying, though it is so rich that a little goes a very, very long way.
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Same as every previous bottle — absolutely seductive. Incredibly sexy wine of the utmost depth and complexity. Beguiling. A world of sensuality in a glass. Do not decant. Allow it to reveal itself in the glass.
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If you want to know what is a 100/100 wine just taste this bottle .With only one drop you smell the Nirvana.Ali Baba's cave of aromas. It's a monument. The 7 wonders of the world have forgotten this bottle. I want to smell this wine for my last breath...
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Absolutely beguiling. Bouquet of figs, honey, spices. Incredibly dark, thick and viscous, like used motor oil. Luscious on the palate with an unbelievably complex finish that lasts forever. When I taste this, I ask myself: How is this even wine? If you can try this, please do yourself a favour and do it! You won’t be disappointed!
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I Guess I Just Don’t Get It (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida): Exotic and very special. Thick as EVOO. Justly sweet yet not cloying. Distinct from port, Madeira or Tokaji in its combination of over ripe raisins and relatively fresh plum. Too overpowering for more than an ounce but not because of sugar, acidity or alcohol, just because of the concentration that quickly fills the tank. It seems like it could go on forever. Is this the best surviving wine of vintage 1946 from anywhere?
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Ethereal, unctuous, exotic, out of this world... are words to describe this wine. Decanted for 2 hours before consuming. Black as pitch, almost the color of 1 year old motor oil. Silky smooth finish that goes on and on. WOW!
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I can honestly say this is the best dessert/sweet/port like wine I've ever had. For the price, it should be, and yet it's worth it! It is very concentrated and thick -- yet warm, inviting, full and SMOOTH in the palate. Chocolate, cider, butter ... we drank this with friends the day after Christmas -- and Christmas flavors and smells is what it reminds me of. Accompany this with chocolate bar -- that's a must! This will last decades longer -- don't feel like you have to drink it all in one sitting as once opened, it will still last months -- as Parker says, it will outlive us all!
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Not much to add to the other reviews here. Yes, it is incredibly concentrated yet perfectly balanced and infinitely complex. I kept a bottle in the fridge for several months and it never disappointed, although I’m sure it evolved somewhat over time. A great value, considering how much enjoyment I got out of a single bottle.
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Asperg Wine Syndrome Tasting Group: X-Mas Tasting 2019: Glass: Zalto Universal Popped and poured. This wine is special and cannot compared with anything else. Deep, brown color. Oily, brownish-yellow-green legs that coats and paints the glass for seconds. Clean, pronounced and fully developed nose. It is super complex and ever changing. Plum, cinnamon, roasted walnut, nutmeg, autolytic notes. Warm, deep, pure harmony and balance. Intoxicating! On the palate super intense! High, ripe and perfectly integrated acidity. Again, pure balance and harmony. Mouthcoating without cloying. 17% abv, wonderfully balanced by the acidity. Ripe plum juicy, cinnamon, honey, walnut, espresso, chocolate, spices and so on and so on. Very long and complex finish. This wine is immortal and a really unique experience. Is it 100 points? I don’t know, but I cannot think of any flaws or how to make it better. 98-100
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Lots of different notes on the nose - Christmas cake, dark fruits, baking spices, violets. Intoxicating. Medium viscosity, impressive PX persistence on the midpalate, raisins, chocolate, just the right lift to avoid being cloying, such length. Excellent.
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Of all wines with more than 50 reviews on CellarTracker, this wine has the highest average score, edging out the 2001 Chateau d'Yquem (a wine with four separate perfect scores by top critics) by 0.1 points as of this note, meaning this wine could claim, with a straight face, to be "the best wine in the world". Needless to say, I had extremely high expectations when I finally pulled this bottle out of my cellar and spent approximately twenty minutes carefully chipping off the wax seal.
Poured into a glass, this "wine" resembles nothing so much as a test tube full of pure bromine, staining the glass a rich brown color as it swirls and drains from the walls at a glacial rate. The nose is vastly more complex than any other PX sherry I've tasted- there's fig and raisin and honey and all other the usual suspects, but there's also rosemary, balsam fir, soy sauce, yuzu, all notes I've never even detected in any other wine.
The first sip is- I won't say "intoxicating" because I can't even detect any alcohol despite the 17% ABV on the label- but it's an incredibly elegant and refined mix of savory umami, burnt caramel, 91% cacao chocolate, a well-hidden oxidative nuttiness (even if you don't like sherry this works so well) and polished acidity balancing out the treacly sweetness. It doesn't really ever "finish", per se, you just keep tasting different aspects as time goes by- 15 seconds in it's honey, then it transitions after 30 seconds to a peppery, bacon-like Syrah note, and then it's bitter herbs and menthol after a minute, then back to figs after 1'30- it's truly astounding how it continued to evolve. I splashed a few drops of water into the glass when I finished and swirled it around- it's very viscous so a lot of wine gets stuck on the sides of the glass- and even just the mostly-water wash was better than some moscatels I've had.
Expectations absolutely blown out of the park. Full 100 points because I can't give more. You owe it to yourself to buy a bottle of this and pop it open ASAP- it's the best deal in wine at twice or three times the current price. I would buy this before Yquem, I'd buy this before a Tokaji Essencia, I'd buy this before a first-growth Bordeaux or a cult Cali cab. What's more, since it's heavily oxidized and mostly sugar already, you don't need to worry about futzing around with a Coravin or opening it at a huge party so everyone drinks it- it's completely shelf stable, just cork it and put it back in its wooden box and it will last for months at a time, if not years, with no perceptible deterioration.
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WOW. Liquid raisins, plums & figs from sundried grapes ...bottled May 2017. Bottle # 437 of 825. Unique to say the least. Sweet and smooth so One does not even notice the 17% ETOH. Opened and pursuant to this lists advice kept in frig vacuum sealed for many weeks as this is purely for dessert sipping Did not lose one iota of taste. Shared at a group dinner and everyone was awed. Well worth the price of admission.
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otherwordly & sweet. Drank as the final pairing for my 50th bday dinner but most ended up drinking it after dessert. Popped and poured a little of this elixir into what was left of the glasses in the house (we'd used all the others). intense like you wouldnt believe. you almost lick it rather than drink it. amazing.
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This bottle was opened on June 18th, 2017. Our group drank half that night and I put the cork back in and left it in the refrigerator and I have since opened the bottle and had some on three different occasions. The wine was in perfect condition. Last night, my good friend Michael and I decided to finish it. It was still in perfect condition and still a 99. It is just an amazing bottle of wine. I will open the next one for my birthday in the end of April. Not sure if it will be another 1946 or the 1955,
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Since it was my turn to be the designated driver to drive my family to our annual Black Friday dinner at my cousins house in Cold Spring I totally refrained from drinking until I got home. Then I poured a small glass of this wine. If any of you have followed my notes, I opened this bottle a year and half ago on Fathers day 2017. It still is drinking beautifully. Swirling flavors of candied fruit, orange peel, kumquats, dried figs, honey, candied nuts and deep chocolate. So many flavors it is hard to identify them all let alone list. Hopefully I will finish the bottle this year (I know I said that last year but it just did not happen) When I do I will find an occasion to open another one. It is just amazing to think that the bottle has been open a year and a half with no degradation.
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From the test tube sample that comes with the bottle. Wow... glass and palate-coating. Molasses, figs, caramel and lifted citrus notes. So many flavors that are hard to enumerate. This holds on the palate and lingers for what seems minutes. Not cloying in the least, with sharp, focused acidity that keeps this lifted and bright. Can't wait to break into the full bottle.
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This bottle comes with a little tasting vial, which has the quantity of a large sip, the type you would take when having port. A brilliant gimmick this vial if you ask me. We opened the vial two weeks ago, but I did not take any notes, so I am not rating this. The glass went around my father, my mum and my sister, before I got to try it. So I ended up with a nip. What are family for ey?! All I can say is that this is a very dark blackish brown, a bit like iodine. The nose and the palate were extraordinary. My family all love wine/port/sherry/etc. and we all agreed this was one of the most special and peculiar things we had ever tasted. What stood out most perhaps was the finish. It just did not want to end. Kept going and going, for over 10 minutes I think. I have been told by staff at Berry Bros & Rudd (one of the world’s oldest wine merchants) that you can keep an opened bottles for weeks on end. So there is no rush to drink up. Using a vacuum cork and putting it in the fridge will have this stay good for months on end. There is a review on CT that confirms that. A pricy bottle, indeed, but if you fancy something very different and very special, I can really recommend this.
The viscosity of motor oil, this truly stains the glass leaving a brown layer in its wake after its swirled around. Like drinking fig paste, incredibly rich and dense. One ounce goes a very long way of this sweet and powerful nectar.
This is virtually impossible to dislike, even by someone like me who isn't normally a fan of dessert wine. It's just so interesting and delicious, any wine lover must appreciate it on some level. For those who do appreciate dessert wines regularly, it will blow your mind.
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From a bottle open several months. A unique and spectacularly complex wine with a peacock’s tail finish that seems endless. The aroma too is a prism of color and nuance that is beguiling without even taking a sip. This is a heavy dessert wine, without the alcohol found in many ports. Worth extra effort to obtain a bottle and share with friends. Always a head turner. I give it 110 points.
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After the last of the 70 guests at the rehearsal dinner left. i poured myself a glass from the bottle I opened in June of 2017 It is still spectacular even after being opened for more than a year. No degradation whatsoever. I would say that this is the perfect dessert wine but as I once said I cannot measure perfection. There is a little less than a quarter of a bottle left and I will drink another glass with my daughter on her birthday in November..
1946 Bodegas Toro Albala Don PX (Pedro Ximenes) Convento Selección (Spain, Andalucía, Montilla-Moriles); $245/750 ml @ Benchmark Wines.
When a bottle purchased for the 71st birthday of my wife Jackie, I note that the abv is now 17 percent, and that it was bottled not in 2011 but in May 2017 (about a year ago), bottle number 310/827; so there has been incremental bottling; no further history available on that yet. We tasted what was in the sample tube (a most interesting idea for this kind of wine), perhaps 10 ml for the both of us.
Yes, extremely clingy, but the tears nearly fall back into the bowl without a pause into the venous-blood-colored liquid. Great harmony from notes of cherry candy, cherrywood smoke, vanillla, moderately sweet chocolate, veal demi-glace, and hints of licorice. And, on the palate, surprisingly moderate sugars, balancing acidiity, and tremendous, lacy finesse, perhaps the most surprising of its attributes. It has real delicacy and an integrated but complex expressiveness, this alone putting it up into high-classic scoring range. 98/100--but remember, these separate bottlings may have a different character to them. It would be lovely sometime to taste this bottling against the one Sr. Gutierrez noted. I agree that this may well outllive everyone who is old enough to buy some legally today; however, there's no reason not to enjoy it now. Drink 2018-2100, if we're still around on this planet to try it!
A very small pour, please! ___________________________________
Letter to JJBuckley from me:
18 pabv. Purchased a 1946 Don Px Toro Albalá as a birth year gift and have read the informative Luis Gutierrez tasting note. Am looking for more technical information and data, plus release dates and amounts, for this bottle. Am looking for more technical information and data, plus release dates and amounts, for this bottle. What was the source of the grapes? It appears to have been bottled in May, 2017, but must then of course have been one of at least two bottlings, given that it was originally reviewed or tasted in about August 2013 by Sr. Gutierrez, mentioning about 800 plus bottles at the time. There are a very great number of tasting notes on CellarTracker by purchasers (users) of that tool. Were the later bottllings reviewed critically, or do we assume that every bottling gets the same score from the same critic? Of course, analytical data would help. The Gutierrez score seems to be just about the only copyright score that has been paid much attention to, but there are other reviews cited, which would always be helpful, as numbers are of minimual usefulness to describe style and quality of what must be a very great wine, if my friends are to be believed. If a better means of communication for this sort of thing would be helpful to you, please feel free to suggest it. Very gratefully yours, John Trombley
This is a peculiar winery, a little eccentric and unusual, a family affair created in 1922 although their roots can be traced back to the 19th century. The core of the winery is located inside an old electricity plant in Aguilar de la Frontera, south of Cordoba, in the heart of the Montilla-Moriles appellation and directed by collector, inventor and entrepreneur Antonio Sanchez. They sell 650,000 liters of wine per year, of which 40% is exported and sold in 27 different countries. They are growing in the US, the UK, Australia, and also with increasing interest in Asia, mainly for the sweet wines, Antonio Sorgato, the export manager of the firm, tells me. We are selling sweet wines, but Fino, its much more difficult. This is not something unique to them, as the whole Montilla-Moriles is better known for its sweet, dark, unctuous Pedro Ximenez wines. All the wines they produce are of course fermented from Pedro Ximenez white grapes, but for the sweet wines the grapes are sun-dried, dehydrated into raisins, and the resulting wine is brown in color which gets darker as the wine ages and concentrates in barrel. The oldest examples are an opaque black with an amber rim as dense as motor oil. They have a most impressive collection of single vintage PX wines going back to the time of the Second World War. Luis Gutierrez (SOme of this may be copyright material; if it is I'll remove it.
So remarkable I give it 110 points. I can’t begin to enumerate the flavors except to say it is a dark peacock’s tail that shimmers and unfurls for minutes. I pity those who give it less than 100 points. What will they ever taste in their lives that is better? Nothing. They are doomed, never to recognize perfection. If you haven’t tried a glass, you must. Nothing more satisfying, saturated, or complex has ever before been bottled.
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This is in the top two sherry/dessert wines I have ever tasted (the other a 1904 oloroso). Sublime. Was the perfect follow on to Huet's Cuvee Constance '89 with dessert and matched the cheese plate perfectly. Intense concentration, insane length. Makes you go back for another sip compulsively just to check if it really can be that good. By the 9th wine I failed to mentally catalogue the aromas and flavours - its everything you have read here. My thanks to our host for providing this experience.
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So good I just giggle every sip. This is a remarkable dessert wine and I'm grateful to Steve for sharing it not once but twice with me. Ethereal integrated sweetness, lightness, Christmas spices, and magic.
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I still had a third of a bottle left over from Fathers day, so Michael and I decided to have a taste, our wives didn't want any so more for us. I had the same impression as I did on Fathers day. This wine is beyond words. Cannot rate it 100 because in all honesty after drinking wine for 50 years I do not know what 100 is supposed to be - I would imagine perfection whatever that is but this wine is as close to it as you can get. Honeyed figs, dates, orange rind, almonds, kumquats, sweet tea - this wine has them all in swirling flavors that just go on and on.
This is indescribably delicious. The time this spends on the palate and the peacock tail of shimmering flavors that appear and evolve are beyond compare. There is nothing like this wine, if you can even call it a wine.
Deeply saturated aromas of cherry, chocolate, soy. Amazing nose. Thick and viscous. Delicious elixir of mocha, black cherries, medicinal herbs, anise, black plums, earthy elements, with incredible length lasting two minutes. Yum!
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This bottle had a very distinct Chinese herbal medicine note the first day opened. Recorked and refrigerated -- this was singing on day two and three. Consistent notes w/ my first bottle.
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Monthly Men's Wine Dinner (Carmine's Bellevue): I don't know how to score dessert wines but this was better than d'Yquem so I'm going with Parker and giving it 100. It was crazy good, like drinking Christmas, perfectly balanced. Pair with fruitcake. Thanks Steve!
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Everything that has been said is factual. Honeyed figs, prunes, almonds, orange rind. This wine has it all. It is extremely rich - our group along with 6 people sitting at the next table who I offered some too could only finish half a bottle. I can only wonder how a few more years or a decade will effect this wine. I will save the other half bottle for our annual black Friday dinner in November.
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One of the craziest and most amazing things ever. Nose is complex and has Christmas pudding, toffee, fruitcake, etc, etc. Viscous, sweet (unctuous but not cloying). Mid-palate has some acidity and a spine of salinity that surprises and impresses. Length, length, length, at least 3 minutes. Utterly delicious.
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This is certainly one of the greatest dessert wines I've ever tasted. It offers incredibly rich and viscous flavors of mocha and dried black fig with overtones of citrus zest. It shows both weight and breadth on the palate. My guess is it is nowhere near its peak! I have little doubt this would drink well 50 years from now.
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Dinner at Andrew's place: This Pedro Ximénez was made from the grapes harvested after World War II in Montilla-Moriles DO, Andalusia. Taken from cask in September 2011, produced in batches of 825 hand numbered bottles, batches numbered 46.1, 46.2 etc (this bottle from batch 46.6). (So far, Bodegas Toro Albala has produced at least 13 batches, so that is over 10,000 bottles to date I understand ...). This PX was one of the first three sherries scored 100 points by eRP. ABV 17%. Does it live up to the hype? In my view, yes. Layered colour, quite bright for a 70 year old wine. A hugely complex bouquet. Coconut, vanilla pod, chocolate lammington cake, mint, molasses, toffee, espresso, cinnamon, camphor etc etc. Every sniff reveals a new nuance. On palate, it's vibrant and very alive. Pure and clean. It's viscous but not heavy, dancing across the palate. People saw different things in the flavour profile. Someone described a stout-like quality to the PX. Another person mentioned a herbal aspect. "Minty" said someone else. Flavours of raisins, Christmas cake, cinnamon, brown sugar, figs, espresso, almonds, spices etc etc. Great balance between sweet and umami. Very detailed and very long. The bottle disappeared very quickly in our small group. I imagine that this PX will outlive anyone reading this note.
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Agree with others' notes, as this is a remarkably concentrated and complex wine. However, I found it ridiculous. Interesting and fun, yes. Enjoyable, not so much. I served this with dessert at a dinner party for 12 after some great wines. Lots of comments, as this is clearly a "wow" wine. But when I cleared the table, there were very few empty glasses. It's like going to Vegas - over the top experience that's nice only briefly.
Very concentrated, very powerful, very complex. Perhaps the most complex, most unique wine I have ever had. I served it at the symphony wine-tasting fundraiser a couple of years ago, and it was a big hit, even more popular than the 100-point (RP) Bordeaux I also served.
Wine Advocate says "full of umami, with sweet cinnamon, Christmas cake, camphor, petrol, lemongrass, Belgian chocolate and butter. Incredibly complex and rich, sweet, balanced and smooth in the palate, it is both very sweet and somehow salty, and with time it develops a black olive note." I'm not sure I'm sophisticated enough to identify all those flavors, but it certainly is complex enough that I'll take the expert's word.
We drank this young (it was only bottled in 2011, which helps explain the super-concentrated part), but I expect it will get better for the next 30-40 years.
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Absolutely over the top, full throttle decadence. Deeply layered with tertiary aromas expressing themselves through an impenetrable black core. Menthol upfront opens up to nuances of prunes, raisins, tapenade, incense, fudge and espresso. I contemplated over this ounce and a half serving for quite some time before drinking it. On the palate the chocolate-driven raisined flavours are driven home. Huge, intense, and persistent yet balanced, approachable and not cloying. This one goes in the memory bank for a while.
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All sorts of stuff going on here -- Christmas cake, toffee, fudge, nutty tones... This is thick and viscous, but somehow not heavy at all. In fact, there is almost a crisp-ness here. Cool. Wow.
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Excellent. Looks like motor oil. Viscous, coats the glass and then your mouth. Sweet, but not cloying with just all kinds of flavors and layers of nuance going on. It was the end of the night and I didn't take notes, but definitely some baking spices and just so much more. Wow.
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My second time with this, and wow, do I ever feel lucky. This is sublime, and seems to have no end to its complexity. Superbly balanced and probably just beginning its plateau where it will easily hold for several decades to come. Dream like at times, it not only brought back good memories, but transported me somewhere else, too. very highly recommended
Served non-blind.
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Mostly raisins, followed by dates, black fig jam, with traces of coffee, cocoa and spices. Exceptionally balanced for such a viscous wine. Great mouthfeel. I'd prefer more complex aromatics to give a higher score. Not as multi-dimensional as I expected, give the scores. Should age very well.
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First of all, there ARE some negatives with this bottle....the 100pt score on the wood case and labels are tacky, the wax capsule is a nightmare to open, they claim this is limited to 876 bottles while they actually release in small badges....all those aside, this wine gave the WOW factor above its pure perfection so even with those nasty distractions, 100 is the only score possible.
Medicinal herby nose at first, kaleidoscopic palate of balsamic, black olive, anise, cassis, black chocolate, raisin, prune, cinnamon, licorice, tarragon, endless spectrum of herbs and spices with heavenly sweetness. The wine opens up with air and continue to evolve. Very vibrant acidity cut thru the rich sweetness to make it weighless on palate yet ripples thru on and on for a 20+min finish. The balance from beginning to end is impeccable. The taste doesn't cloy yet lingers for eternity, transcends sensory perception and linguistic comprehension into an spiritual experience. When served at the end of a drunk-fest, this wine is going to sober you up and recalibrate all senses, even make the mediocre fellow wines beside it taste better than before! A wine that deserves legendary status in the world of vinos.
What a fantastic wine. Near perfection. Blackberries, chocolate,coffee, leather, wax,thyme,mint, pepper...smooth and light with a very long after taste.In the top five of my favourite dessert wines. i'll dream of it ! I suggest to open the bottlle one or two days before drinking. One month latter it's better!
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Friends Spring Gathering with Will; 3/4/2016-3/5/2016 (Fresno): Most of the previous TN have said it all. An amazing wine. Color is amber/brown at the rim and black at the core. This quite literally looked like motor oil all the way down to its viscosity. Very full bodied, very viscous, hid the alcohol well as this was incredibly smooth. Raisins, dried dates and dried figs dominated the nose and palate. Just an awesome experience.
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I opened a bottle on Thanksgiving and I am still drinking it months later. It's every bit as good as it was the day I opened it. Recently purchased another for the cellar. Funny thing, bottles of this from Last Bottle do not include the tasting vile. Hmmm, you've got to wonder about that.
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Thick black and syrupy. Super sweet, smooth ripe black fruits, sherbet zest, rich and raisiny, leans to the dark side. Very fleshy, incredible length, black ripe fruits, rich earthy spice, tar, liquorice, graphite, dark plum, black currant, very refined and silky. Pure and very long, superb structure. Will last forever.
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Black, viscous liquid. Exactly like motor oil. Not the most appetising introduction to be honest.
Raisins, raisins, raisins on the nose. Super intense. Very concentrated. Touch of treacle, Gula Melaka, brown sugar, etc. On palate, very full bodied. Like a port but with more balance and lower alcohol. Lingering notes of chocolate and cocoa.
A stunner. Won't be to everyone's taste, but well worth trying. A great match for malai-cake and chendol, perhaps (gasp) as a syrup or reduction. Unctuous and sublime.
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This is Christmas in a bottle. Cinnamon and hazelnut show through with hints of orange peel and sugar plums and prunes. Just ridiculously beautiful juice. Blows the minds how smooth for a high alcohol fortified wine. A great treat and has been wonderful over three weeks and counting.
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I have done some research on this wine so let me start with that. I have read reviews from many talking about the availability of this wine and questioning the claim of only 825 bottles made. The fact is, there are several batches that have been made of this wine, 825 bottles per batch. On the bottle and the box it will say 46-1, 46-2 etc. Designating the batch number. According to my research as many as 13 batches have been made to date .The wine is preserved in tanks with nitrogen between batches as there are sometimes years between the release of one batch to the next.
The wine is spectacular. Like nothing I have tasted. Dark, inky black in the glass. The first note is of Fig with apricot, plum, molasses, dried dark fruit and hints of citrus with dark chocolate and mocha. Real difficult to get a handle on, my palate is just not that sharp. Drank about 1/4 of the bottle, looking forward to drinking and discovering everything hidden here over the next several months (or years) as I understand this wine, although made from 65 year old fruit is ageless in the bottle.
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Dark black with dark orange rim On the nose it smells like an aged tawny port, still smells youthful and vibrant though. Initial attack is viscous and racy all at the same time, ultra rich, toffee, raisins, fig, hazelnut. Truly amazing that is has acidity and structure to balance out the powerhouse of ripe raisined fruits. Still has a long long life ahead of it, so tasty though not sure it's worth waiting.
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What a way to end a dinner! Unique and exquisite+++ ... and that was after a 1990 Giroud Beaune Marconnets and a 1982 Chateau l'Arrosee. Dark, viscous, rich and beautiful. Notes of Toffee, cinnamon, coffee. Each of us enjoyed a 2nd glass. It went well with the Shropshire. I plan to try it with French onion soup (perhaps turtle soup) and vanilla ice cream. June 13: Finished the bottle with friends who are true lovers of this velvety nectar. Just as good a week later. Did not have it with a soup (that's for another day and another bottle), but there was a generous slice of a lovely cream pie that matched it quite well.
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Intense nose of spirit and raisin. Notes of sultana, dark rum, fig, and guava. Palate is thin but very smooth, with powerful alcohol and strong acidity. Mild, well-balanced flavour of liquid raisins, milk chocolate, and musk sticks. Tasty, but similar to - and not vastly better than - more common PX wines that are a tenth of the price.
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This was a real treat at the end of a very nice dinner with friends. Popped and poured. Viscous and very dark. Rich toffee, chocolate, and dried fruits on the palate. Special stuff.
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I really don't trust the statement that there are only 825 bottles produced, as this wine appears all over the place here in Switzerland alone. I myself have already drunk 4 bottles, so I really can't think that it is true.
Do I care? Not at all!!!!!
There is no bottle variation at all, so the tasting notes feel really a bit of a copy-paste exercise. The wine is incredible, massive, crazy fat and rich while avoiding being sticky or too sweet.
Nose excels with dried figs, rose water, dried fruit bread, and tons of umami! And again the Vasa Museum' all over the place.
Crazy elegant for such a thick wine and very very very very long.
One of the most interesting wines I've ever tasted. Inky black, tasting of coffee, chocolate, tar. My guests and I all agreed on the excitement, drank only a third of bottle - expect the rest to last indefinitely.
Insane & amazing - enjoyed last night at the end of the night with a group of fellow CT wine enthusiasts at Les Nomades in Chicago with souffles & frommage. Actually still quite youthful, very smooth and complex yet still quite concentrated & strong, no off notes at all and will probably quite easily go another 50 years if stored properly. Color ruby, nose sweet & concentrated but elegantly so - not cloying at all with notes of raisin, plum, mocha and a hint of smoke. Primary flavors very well integrated raisin, burnt sugar and plum with mocha & coffee on the late palate and a soft lingering aftertaste that went on FORever...this wine is really close to perfection in a bottle and it is not difficult to see where the RP 100 points came from. Probably the best fortified dessert wine I've ever had and among the very top handful of best wines of any varietal that I have had. Even at this price point this wine is worth it as a crown jewel in anybody's cellar.
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Crazy wine. Comes in a wood box and a tester vile. Super concentrated and young...will age forever. Probably one of the most exotic and complex things I have ever had. Think Port but thicker and wider array of fruits.
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Tasted the third time within a relatively short time, this time at the amazing maison manesse restaurant in Zurich (on the house!!!), from three different bottles but with identical notes. Amazing wine!
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Dried figs, rose water, dried fruit bread, bergamot, and boy all that umami! The most distinct thing however is the smell of the 'Vasa Museum', a museum in Stockholm, where an old ship is exhibited. When you enter there is this amazing and distinctive smell of very old wood and wax.
Crazy elegant and very very long.
On the downside: I hate that they put on the label an extract of the parker-Review and that the wine got 100 points, that just feels cheap!
3/9/2024 - Burgundy Al wrote: 96 Points
From a magnum I opened six weeks ago (see my 1/25/24 TN) and has been sitting on my kitchen counter ever since (cork re-inserted), revisited occasionally since. Nothing has faded since. I could cut-and-paste. This might have gotten ever-so-slightly sweeter over the 6 weeks.
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2/18/2024 - T.E.D. wrote: 97 Points
Agrees with others. Consumed over a few weeks. Multidimensional, layered, complex, structured. Hits all the right places when it comes to a wine with complexity. Signature flavors include toasted coco, resin, caramel, black molasses. Hints of citrus. A real treat.
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1/25/2024 - Burgundy Al wrote: 96 Points
The Roots Fund Charity Wine Dinner (Atelier - Chicago IL): Magnum. So much here- caramel, fig, dark chocolate, orange peel, Marcona almonds, and lots more. Good length.
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12/26/2023 - darrennelson12 Likes this wine: 99 Points
So nice … notes of chocolate and molasses .. so thick and velvety get syrupy.
Curious to try next to the 64 to compare …
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12/25/2023 - TexasBob Likes this wine: 98 Points
Black as midnight with brown edges under the light. Brown sugar and chocolate on the nose. Velvety and viscous texture with intense notes with notes of dark chocolate, lime zest, caramel, oats, and zipping acids. Lovely wine, quite unique.
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12/12/2023 - MAkita Likes this wine: 99 Points
Really incredible experience. The color, the thick, almost oily consistency--this is a surprising wine from the very beginning. Overwhelming raisiny notes at the very beginning give way to every imaginable secondary flavor. Think baking spices, molasses, dark chocolate or raw cacao nib, hints of mint, soy sauce (really), tobacco, prune, plum cake, etc. It's almost impossible for me to describe everything going on here, because every sip is just that little bit different. All in all, a really incredible experience if you can get your hands on it. The only thing I can fault it for is the lack of razor-sharp acidity that something like a top-shelf Tokaji will have that makes it moreish. The acidity is there, but just shy of cutting through the syrupy quality, which makes it hard to drink more than an ounce at a time. Still, this is a wine to be savored, and an incredible experience if you can get your hands on it!
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12/10/2023 - TexasBob Likes this wine: 98 Points
Inpenetrable dark brown color. Dark cocoa powder on the nose. Intense, velvety textured dark chocolate with dried figs and raisins. Secondary notes of candied orange peel and amazing amaro notes. This is an intense sensory experience. Again, intense is the operative word, but balance is a close second. Amazing stuff.
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12/8/2023 - Papies wrote: 93 Points
2023 Athens Wine Event; 12/8/2023-12/9/2023 (Athens, Greece): Tasted blind but pretty much all of us guessed PX of greta age. That ability to cover the wine glass to the point of changing its colour is a trait none but very old PXs have.
Impressive wine and really so much alive and energetic, ( all these bottling were really bottled in the last facade or so , this being bottle 410 of 810 under the 46.2 bottling series) . Rich, touch cloying , covers the palate like a thin film of rich and sticky wine. An experience for sure and an ever so beautiful. 93-94 range.
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12/7/2023 - dcwino wrote: 95 Points
Holiday Dinner - Mostly Bordeaux (Taberna del Alabardero, Washington D.C.): This is super concentrated and complex. A lot of dry apricot, fruitcake and dark spices. A bit overwhelming.
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12/3/2023 - Mchiarot Likes this wine: 99 Points
Spectacular, velvety mouth coating pennzoil nectar. Tar. I can't describe the experience. Foie gras, blue cheese and panettone accompanied this most special wine. All 10 at the table were blown away
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10/29/2023 - MrSkimo Likes this wine: 99 Points
Super complex. Deep flavor, and yet still some fruit notes. Replaced a vintage port with this PX and was not disappointed. Shared WON with a 2009 Y’quem
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9/28/2023 - Cailles wrote: 94 Points
No notes taken. I didn’t even want to try the wine at first, as I don’t like sherry and it was served at the end of a long evening. I’m glad I did try it in the end. This is incredibly complex with new aromas wafting out of the glass with every sniff. The high and perfectly integrated acidity keeps the wine relatively light. The balance is great, and no alcohol is showing. Of course, still not really my style of wine, especially aromatically but it is an incredible feast for all senses and especially intellectually very appealing. I understand the high scores for this wine.
Decanting: No decanting needed.
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9/22/2023 - drrobvino wrote: 95 Points
Had a bit of this wine with my dad on his 77th birthday.
Consumed it again (from the same bottle) about 2 months later.
Carmel, mocha, charcoal, and dates. A bit oxidized. Super complex.
Beautiful bottle. The label says that the wine "will not degrade at all after opening"!
What an interesting concoction. Likely has eternal life.
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7/13/2023 - Jamesdodds Likes this wine: 100 Points
Lives up to its 100 point billing. Wow. Previous tasting notes hit the mark. If you lucky enough to taste history like this don’t turn it down. Well worth it
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2/7/2023 - zachb1125 Likes this wine: 94 Points
Rich, earthy nose.Really fun. Plenty of oxidative notes, dark chocolate, baking spices, a hint of fruit, and maybe something sweet. Similar on the palate, the sweet/fruity notes transforming into loads of cherry pie and more baking spices and earthy notes.
Truly wonderful. Score is perhaps a little low as it was tasted side-by-side with Valdespino Moscatel Toneles, which can't help but outshine anything and everything else.
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2/2/2023 - hectic Likes this wine: 100 Points
Do not drink this if you are not wearing seatbelts. Every positive adjective you have ever seen used to rate a fabulous wine applies here.
Warning. One bottle serves 12 people. Recorked, it was still wonderful three days later.
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1/25/2023 - Incurable_Botrytis Likes this wine: 90 Points
To drink history such as this is a special treat. This is yummy and dense, I think others have already described the notes well. While this was lovely, I think people may be lettting the grandeur of the situation persuade their scores. For a RP 100 I was expecting something, well, perfect, and this lacked the dynamism for such a score. It is however delicious and pleasant and more important is the experience of drinking something with such age.
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1/20/2023 - ShadowIII Likes this wine: 98 Points
Stunning, lush, viscous, rich, dates, caramel, chocolate, orange zest, cinnamon, spice, long, long finish, ageless
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1/15/2023 - Kozakofthewest Likes this wine: 99 Points
Oh boy the sweetness ballance and flavor is just excellent integrated and flowing. I would decant if you have a chance if not it still doesn't disappoint. Glad a have another bottle on order yet sad its not a case.
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1/13/2023 - pclin wrote:
Not really my cup of tea, struggle to finish one small glass. RP 100 pointer, really for this??
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1/7/2023 - UFWS Likes this wine: 95 Points
Color of Motor Oil after 10,000 miles, with the same viscosity. Brown sugar, figs, IHOP Boysenberry syrup, but with acidity that keeps it from being a cloying sugar bomb. After about 45 minutes in the glass and drinking some of it, the sugar just started to be too much, but this could have been my palate's reaction. It's a wine that you can't drink much of without overwhelming your palate. Spectacular pairing with blue cheeses, three of which I served with the course [Blue Shropshire (Neal's Yard - England), Buttermilk Blue Affinee (Roth Kase - Wisconsin), Grand Noir (Kaserei Champignon - Bavaria Germany)].
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1/3/2023 - A Loech wrote: 96 Points
Unbelievably complex. So delicious!
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12/6/2022 - Peech Likes this wine: 99 Points
bottled in 2013 - bigger nose than the 1955. Much more fragrant, can feel how sunny and warm the vintage was, and also very nice herbs on the nose.
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11/14/2022 - Kemo Sabe Likes this wine: 96 Points
Yeah, definitely unlike anything I've ever had. The texture is motor oil but the nose and palate are insane. Christmas cake, fruitcake, cinnamon, marzipan, baking spices and so much more. This thing was no where near maturity. It might go another 100 years, seriously. Super fun and interesting bottle. I have 2 more and happy that I do.
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10/10/2022 - glou.sf Likes this wine: 99 Points
Very fragrant nose with incredible complexity. Notes of espresso, caramel, prune, dried fig, chocolate, and tree bark. There is so much going on that a new flavor is discovered each time you smell the wine... The palate is very sweet, but not at all cloying with surprising acidity, more prune notes, fig, raisins, chocolate, cocoa, caramel, and baked fruits. Viscous mouthfeel and very, very long finish. Absolutely incredible wine, what an experience!
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7/30/2022 - Get Real Likes this wine:
Hard to rate as so unlike anything I have had before. Very dark in colour. Very complex nose with everything from fig through soy without being cloying and sweet. On the palate concentrated. As Cowinelover describes it "the basalmic notes sprint out before handing the batan over for figs and roasted nuts, and toffee" though some soy in there too and not overly sweet. Plenty of length. Outstanding with blue cheese - it to some degree it overpowered the cheese. Initially PnP but finished about 4 hours later. I could not really discern significant development over the evening.
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7/17/2022 - sh6k Likes this wine: 100 Points
Probably the last bottle I’ll have of this and I’m sure going to miss it. Has everything going on all at once — fresh and fruity, butterscotch and soy sauce, and everything in between. What more could you ask for? I couldn’t imagine how it could be better, so I’ve gotta go all the way on the score.
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7/14/2022 - Stevey Likes this wine: 94 Points
Thick, complex, chocolate, molasses, spices, hugely rich, etc. Obviously ultra-sweet but the complexity made is special. But despite all the superlatives and in the context of it being an ancient 1946 vintage and 100-rating, it kind of underwhelmed against such high expectations. This was enjoyed over several months and was consistent throughout. Drinking great right now and will outlast me.
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7/13/2022 - wineismylife wrote: 96 Points
WIML96
Tasted non blind.
Inky black in color, clear looking as best as I could see through this ink jar! Botanicals nose of herbs with some tangerine peel and melted black licorice Flavors of dried herbs, molasses, Creme Brule and toasted caramel. Medium acidity, full bodied. Drink or hold.
Jose Rodriguez Memorial Dinner
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7/8/2022 - bayareadodgerfan Likes this wine: 95 Points
Incredibly rich and smooth with pronounced flavors of raisin and fig, molasses/brown sugar, cinnamon, chocolate and wood. Still has solid acidity and some faint notes of primary fruit of plums, black cherry and raspberry. A real treat.
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6/26/2022 - ovenmitt wrote: 95 Points
Drank over about a two week period. Didn’t seem to fade once opened. Thick and viscous but still managing to maintain balance. So much flavor and aroma packed in to this it’s hard to describe. I’m not sure if I’ve ever had anything quite like it. Wonderful.
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6/22/2022 - kostaslonis Likes this wine:
Raul Perez tasting; 6/17/2022-6/22/2022 (Oinoscent): Brought to drink at Oinoscent as a gift to Raul Perez
-/-
harvested in 1946, bottled in 2011, unholy depth and complexity, mocca, coffee notes, sweet spices but above and beyond all, buckets of figs, 17% alcohol, walnut liquor, luscious body, never ending caramel flavoured finish.
A perfect way to end this night
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6/11/2022 - Burgundy Al wrote: 96 Points
Jim's Retirement Party (Libertyville, IL): Small glass, Rich milk chocolate and molasses with sweet spice. Unctuous, syrupy textures without seeming too sweet. Lots here. A joy to sip.
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5/21/2022 - Oskiwawa wrote:
Third time I have had this wine and all have been outstanding. This thick, dark rich wine is unique and a great way to end an evening. Wonderful.
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5/20/2022 - petitblanc wrote:
A Celebration of Jose; 5/19/2022-5/21/2022 (Madison, WI): Beautiful deep coffee color, bursting with purple fruit, very clean and smooth, no hint of VA. The most appealing PX I have tasted. Not scored.
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5/2/2022 - americanstorm Likes this wine: 98 Points
Finished the party with this and everyone was totally wowed. Hard to describe. Black and thick, balsamic with lots of raisin. Incredible finish and mouthfeel. Don't know if it is 100 points like parker gave it but that may be a limitation of my pallet. Still, this is something really special and, while pricy, I'm glad I had the opportunity to try it. 98 - 99
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1/15/2022 - COWineLover wrote: 96 Points
From a bottle first opened September 22, 2021. This was the final wine of 13 poured at a wine tasting charity fundraiser. Aromatically remains very fragrant with prounounced notes of balsamic, fig, soy, and a massive blast of toffee. On the palate, this remains concentrated, but the time in bottle has softened this where the balsmic notes sprint out before handing the batan over for figs and roasted nuts, and toffee that reminded me of Christmas just a few weeks earlier. The toffee was universally picked up by tasters with no experience with this wine. A couple of tasters speculated the wine was an aged Port. On the finish, this was all about finesse - gliding along with an aftertaste of all the flavors but nothing predominant.
I found the elegance and subtlety of the bottle tonight worthy of a +2 bump from my September score of 94.
Oh, and I still have a little left before completing the epitaph on this bottle!
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12/25/2021 - happytom Likes this wine: 100 Points
Drank over several months with a Coravin. Finished it last night. No tasting notes to add others haven't already posted but this was an incredible experience. Perhaps we could feel that joy that WW2 had just ended when the grapes were planted! Usually paired it with pecan pie.
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11/2/2021 - AaronMaxwell Likes this wine: 98 Points
The most delicious motor oil looking wine I've ever drank!
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10/26/2021 - bestdamncab Likes this wine: 100 Points
3 Terrific Rose Champagnes, 5 Great Cabernets, and a Fabulous Dessert Wine. (Yan's China Bistro, Walnut Creek, Ca.): Our host provided this dessert wine and it had a small test tube of wine for you to sample and determine if it is ready to drink before you open the bottle. Upon opening the bottle, the wine exploded with flavors and bouquet, lots of raisins, plum, caramel, molasses, and Asian spices on both the nose and palate, the taste was like a complex nectar, rich, mouth filling, mouth coating, and mouth watering, the long, long, long finish led to a wonderful, exotic aftertaste that demanded you pour another glass. Everyone that tasted raved about this dessert wine. 3 photos uploaded, and one shows the plastic wrapped sample test tube of this nectar.
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10/10/2021 - navyramp Likes this wine: 98 Points
bottling date: 2013
near perfect. really.
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9/27/2021 - csimm wrote: 96 Points
So you’re trekking along the outer banks of Quebec Canada with your syrup-hunting pig (Daisy), your two trusty Vizslas (Carpathian and Zoltan), and a 2-foot high Middle-Earth hobbit with bad hygiene, on a Narnia type quest for the most potent syrup known to man, when you suddenly stumble across a black maple tree skillfully grafted with Brazilian sugarcane grass that had been recently charred by Beelzebub’s belly breath the day prior. Curiously, you notice the roots of this mysterious tree seem to have dug their way directly to a nearby Pennzoil factory - apparently the Houston-based company has recently set up a satellite in Quebec (little known fact - just go with it). Anyway, being the adventurous chap you are, you grab your trusty Rambo First Blood Part II survival knife and tap the oil-sweating bark (minding not to disturb the small nest of fledgling Sri Lankan Devil Birds nestled in the branches above - what with all the Ministère des Forêts and the Migratory Birds Convention Act). As the black bile begins to ooze from the tree, you smartly snatch your Zalto stem from your backpack (somewhat surprised it survived the trip and didn't break as soon as you put it in your pack), and place it below the tap, hence beginning the arduous process of painfully watching drip by viscous drip of black gold-grease inch along your blade and dribble into your glass.
12 hours and 4 ounces later, you finally have a glass of what looks like the sap of Satan's left ventricle, black on black with a peculiar yellow rim. It's a black-out blind of a hue, with nothing to offer visually but impediment and blind sin. On the nose, it's as if the ripest and fattest fig completely imploded after being hit with a cluster bomb of carnivorous demon dogs. It smells sweet the same way a carny clown melting cotton candy in your nostrils smells sweet.
Taking your first sip is like trying to sift molasses through your front toofeses. Taffy-thick and cow-cud chewy, you can't drink it; you instead have to intentionally masticate it. You power through, because once the flavors melt on to the palate, you are endowed with blessings of liquified Medjool date, grilled plantain smothered in melted Baker's chocolate, hoisin, fig paste, Yule log cake topped with a sack-full of holiday spices, Valvoline SAE 60W motor oil, kerosene, balsam, and toffee. It's at once so insanely sweet and at the same time, somehow, not sickly cloying. There isn't a finish, rather just a rolling continuation of circulatory viscous and saturated flavors sticking to the sides of the mouth. It's beefy, luxuriant, profuse, and all of the Urban Thesaurus words one might be able to conjure up for utterly concentrated.
This is surely polarizing wine-food. I can see why some Robert Parker types would give it 100 points, and I can see why others would think it best to just put it in their lawn mower. Personally, I found it a fascinating creature to gnaw on literally and intellectually. I've never eaten a wine like this before. Oddly, this wine channeled my inner Point Break Johnny Utah surfer, as my primordial reptilian brainstem reaction and response was something to the effect of, "Whoa whaaat, is, up?!... Like, this argo bomb juice is a full-on sick trip, brah."
So with all that, where does that leave you? Do you buy it? Do you try it? Well, I can't help ya there. I can only thank our gracious host who grabbed this from his stash and was generous enough to share it with our group. It was a super cool freak wine that I thought was pretty killer. But if you're expecting d'Yquem here, you should pretty much just stick to your diluted Lambrusco and daughter's White Claw.
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9/25/2021 - sfwinelover1 Likes this wine: 98 Points
My greatest day of wine (over)consumption. Ever. (Aaron and Tiffany's pad): ok, we finally hit the end of homage to conspicuous overconsumption of vinified beverages, and we do so with a Bikini Atoll-sized blast--surprise, surprise!--brought by A_M, chasing the Tusk, kind of like that mid 80s playoff game with Bird and 'Nique, where each would follow the other, hitting a further out and more off balance 3, leaving you breathless and not sure quite you saw. We were properly awed by the age of this wine, if flummoxed by the label and cork, which looked as if they had been glued and input, respectively, 5 minutes before our arrival, so new you could practically smell the ink. Our awe turned to gasps of horror, as this came out of the bottle in glops, with a color the combination of military green, used motor oil brown and an extrusion after a night of too much tequilla, from what I've heard, not that I have experience in such things. If the Amarone had a note of the concoction the witches whipped up in MacBeth, this doubles that, then put through a strainer for further concentration by the witches' demented great uncle, Ted Kaczynski, then blasts it out through an 80s boombox. There's nary a trace of tannins nor acidity--if you want that, move on to another CT entry--yet there's a wonderful savoriness that keeps the whole endeavor aloft, not unlike the slim piece keeping the Jenga tower from tumbling, and aloft it stays; in fact, I may still be tasting it. I could try, but ultimately couldn't come close to, matching csimm's description of the individual elements, but what I notice in his description, and my thoughts, both then and thinking back, is that the fruit isn't high among them--I'd also add burnt creme brulee as a descriptor, but don't get me started--but there are black cherries, currants, figs and prunes. The whole thing gives the experience of Thomas Dolby's line, "drinking heavy water through a stone", which of course I had to youtube 40 years later, with a large dose of absinthe thrown in, and yet, and yet . . . it didn't suck, being even more fun to consume than it's been to write about. Not only the most interesting wine I've ever eaten--plagiarism #2 of csimm--and with a steak knife to boot, but the most interesting I've ever drank. The complexity of this is mindbending, the persistence and intensity at least as much so; just as we thought we could relax our palates, the Albala pulled us back in again, Fredo. Went well enough with my wife's wonderful plum torte, except that it kind of obliterated it entirely, as it would any food I could think of between now and next Wednesday, although those with medical dispensations seemed to be enjoying it with their cigars. I leave knowing where this is in its tasting window to others with greater dessert wine knowledge and bandwith, but I do note that, somehow, some way, these better fortified wines, even with no apparent acidity and tannins, seem to go on forever (formaldehyde?). To say that was singular is almost an insult to singular, and I'm left utterly bereft in knowing how to score it, but I come up with my nosebleedingly high number for its wonderous complexity and uniqueness, gratitude to A_M for all, and relief that this event, no matter how extraordinary, was complete, my mind, tasting palate and everything else, at least in some form, intact.
Postscript: With Goldan's completely fair, constructively critical comment in mind and fully cognizant of my grandiloquent, narcissistic prose above, here's a more narrative, traditional summary: This comes out of the bottle a not particularly pleasing shade of green-brown-deep yellow, not so much as liquid but something closer to motor oil. Notes of figs, dates, super sweet cherries, raisins, prunes and cassis mix with secondary flavors of toffee, caramel, marzipan, the deep forest, and Xmas fruitcake to produce something powerful but teetering on the edge of sickly sweet, but pulled back by a savoriness (there are no apparent tannins or acidity to do this work), that, once you get over the unfamiliarity, is delicious. This will be a polarizing quaff for sure, but I loved it, for its uniqueness for sure, but even as a standalone drink, although I may have been influenced because of the extraordinarily great personal circumstances surrounding our consumption. I have no familiarity with how this will age and it's drinking well now, but I note that, despite a lack of typical structure, that is, tannins and acidity, many of the better of these fortified wines go on forever. If you like fortified wines and this is within your wine spend, this is highly recommended.
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9/22/2021 - ogres3 Likes this wine: 97 Points
Really enjoyed over four days with brother-in-law in Crested Butte. Would consider buying again.
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9/22/2021 - COWineLover wrote: 94 Points
I will add my name to the long list of reviewers noting a little bit of this goes a long way. The recommendation is to pour 1 - 1 1/2 ounces (think shot glass). I love Sauternes, but don't drink Port. This took some study time for me, because of the unique characteristics of the wine.
Aromatically this ultra concentrated bottling predominated with alcohol, ripe fig, balsamic, prune, and madeira like hazelnut and toffee notes. My daughter-in-law also picked up hints of soy sauce. On the palate, this is an oily wine with figs, prunes, balsamic, nuts, burnt toffee, and a mildly acidic citrus like finish.
Five drinkers in our group, and overall impressions were favorable. The reading material notes this can continue to improve with age even after opening. Because this is so concentrated, it will probably take us both American holidays and into next year to finish the bottle. I will update my tasting notes as additional pours are consumed.
An interesting tasting experience with my father who was born a few years before this wine. I am glad to have tried it, but I do not see myself loading up on these bottlings after the two bottles we have (one started) are consumed.
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7/18/2021 - sh6k Likes this wine: 98 Points
Wow. Oily thick. Initially a surprising amount of fruit and freshness, in the apricot peach sort of range. Then rich caramel and butterscotch and sticky toffee pudding. Hints of soy sauce. Interesting cooling notes like menthol or mint. Insanely long finish. Forever long. A little heavy and cloying — 4 people struggled (not quite the right word…) to finish 1 bottle. (I took one for the team and finished it! ) But excellent and fascinating nonetheless. Feels like it could age for 100 more years.
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7/4/2021 - MAXIMUM SATISFACTION wrote: 97 Points
Motor oil black and glass staining. Oxidized on the nose and incredibly sweet on the palate with minutes of length. Raisins, salted caramel, espresso, berry liqueurs, roasted nuts, saline…lots of descriptors come to mind but challenging to fully explain. Just know it’s complex and lives up to the hype.
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6/4/2021 - MindMuse Likes this wine: 100 Points
Truly remarkable stuff! From the 2017 bottling.
Exotic and intoxicating nose and intense palate, with overwhelming complexity. Rhum agricole, raisins, Medjool dates, herbs a la Fernet Branca/Chartreuse, Gentian root, sassafrass, anise, treacle, Kalamata olive, coffee, hazelnut, cacao, salted caramel. Endless finish.
Opened to celebrate friends birthdays of 75, 74, and 80 years this month. And to celebrate its own 75th anniversary. Utterly profound and mind blowing!
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4/3/2021 - bendb Likes this wine: 94 Points
It's dark as motor oil, viscous. Legs for days, as they say. The predominant flavors for me are prunes, figs, apricots. Overwhelmingly sweet - you do _not_ want to drink large amounts of this stuff at once. A little goes a LONG way!
Overall quite good, but maybe not the ethereal bliss some other reviews might suggest.
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2/12/2021 - Collector1855 wrote: 96 Points
Black color. Small pour from a shot glass. Wonderful nose of coffee, tobacco, vanilla, bakery spices. Alive and fresh after 50+ years. Great dessert wine.
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12/28/2020 - osagher Likes this wine: 96 Points
From Coravin - very thick, luxurious mouthfeel, full of honey, figs and prunes, but with a nice acidity to balance the sweetness. We had it with dessert, but I think it would pair better with blue cheese. Also, would likely go with smaller pours next time. This is a very potent glass, and a little goes a very long way.
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12/26/2020 - RMundell Likes this wine: 97 Points
Really interesting and amazing wine.
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10/21/2020 - Alfaro wrote: 100 Points
Phenomenal!!! A Joy to Experience!
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10/20/2020 - Collector1855 wrote: 96 Points
During a Confrerie dinner. Generous offer of the host to accompany the cheese, a Parker 100 pointer. Made in 1946, bottles in 2011, talking about long term stamina as a business, wow! Personally Not a fan of Sherry and PX but this was really nice. We had a mini pour in a small liquor glass. Black motor oil color. Complex nose of tobacco, leather dried fruit. It is a sweet dessert wine for sure but it did not feel sickly sweet. The acidity works as well. Also what I liked is that it was not oxidative/maderized int eh aromas as Sherry often is.
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10/10/2020 - acyso wrote: 95 Points
Saturday riesling and farewell (Chicago, IL): Motor-oil dark and thick. Opulent, luxurious, and viscous beyond belief. An intense chocolate and carob flavour on the nose and palate, with a lifted herbal element that gives this a freshness that is especially surprising given just how syrupy this wine is in texture. Never for a second does this feel cloying, though it is so rich that a little goes a very, very long way.
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6/21/2020 - Lipsman Likes this wine: 100 Points
Same as every previous bottle — absolutely seductive. Incredibly sexy wine of the utmost depth and complexity. Beguiling. A world of sensuality in a glass. Do not decant. Allow it to reveal itself in the glass.
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6/3/2020 - Clever Wine Likes this wine: 100 Points
No wonder the British fell in love with Sherry. Simply timeless. This is art in a glass. A wine of royalty.
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5/17/2020 - worldwidewine Likes this wine: 100 Points
If you want to know what is a 100/100 wine just taste this bottle .With only one drop you smell the Nirvana.Ali Baba's cave of aromas.
It's a monument. The 7 wonders of the world have forgotten this bottle.
I want to smell this wine for my last breath...
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4/10/2020 - streethawk wrote: 100 Points
Absolutely beguiling. Bouquet of figs, honey, spices. Incredibly dark, thick and viscous, like used motor oil. Luscious on the palate with an unbelievably complex finish that lasts forever. When I taste this, I ask myself: How is this even wine? If you can try this, please do yourself a favour and do it! You won’t be disappointed!
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2/4/2020 - sdr Likes this wine: 94 Points
I Guess I Just Don’t Get It (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida): Exotic and very special. Thick as EVOO. Justly sweet yet not cloying. Distinct from port, Madeira or Tokaji in its combination of over ripe raisins and relatively fresh plum. Too overpowering for more than an ounce but not because of sugar, acidity or alcohol, just because of the concentration that quickly fills the tank. It seems like it could go on forever. Is this the best surviving wine of vintage 1946 from anywhere?
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2/1/2020 - Francophile1 Likes this wine: 97 Points
Ethereal, unctuous, exotic, out of this world... are words to describe this wine. Decanted for 2 hours before consuming. Black as pitch, almost the color of 1 year old motor oil. Silky smooth finish that goes on and on. WOW!
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12/26/2019 - jedwilson Likes this wine: 99 Points
I can honestly say this is the best dessert/sweet/port like wine I've ever had. For the price, it should be, and yet it's worth it! It is very concentrated and thick -- yet warm, inviting, full and SMOOTH in the palate. Chocolate, cider, butter ... we drank this with friends the day after Christmas -- and Christmas flavors and smells is what it reminds me of. Accompany this with chocolate bar -- that's a must! This will last decades longer -- don't feel like you have to drink it all in one sitting as once opened, it will still last months -- as Parker says, it will outlive us all!
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12/25/2019 - kalissa Likes this wine: 98 Points
Not much to add to the other reviews here. Yes, it is incredibly concentrated yet perfectly balanced and infinitely complex. I kept a bottle in the fridge for several months and it never disappointed, although I’m sure it evolved somewhat over time. A great value, considering how much enjoyment I got out of a single bottle.
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12/21/2019 - NoTrollingerPlease Likes this wine: 98 Points
Asperg Wine Syndrome Tasting Group: X-Mas Tasting 2019: Glass: Zalto Universal
Popped and poured. This wine is special and cannot compared with anything else. Deep, brown color. Oily, brownish-yellow-green legs that coats and paints the glass for seconds.
Clean, pronounced and fully developed nose. It is super complex and ever changing. Plum, cinnamon, roasted walnut, nutmeg, autolytic notes. Warm, deep, pure harmony and balance. Intoxicating!
On the palate super intense! High, ripe and perfectly integrated acidity. Again, pure balance and harmony. Mouthcoating without cloying. 17% abv, wonderfully balanced by the acidity. Ripe plum juicy, cinnamon, honey, walnut, espresso, chocolate, spices and so on and so on. Very long and complex finish. This wine is immortal and a really unique experience. Is it 100 points? I don’t know, but I cannot think of any flaws or how to make it better. 98-100
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12/20/2019 - lightning wrote: 97 Points
Lots of different notes on the nose - Christmas cake, dark fruits, baking spices, violets. Intoxicating. Medium viscosity, impressive PX persistence on the midpalate, raisins, chocolate, just the right lift to avoid being cloying, such length. Excellent.
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11/13/2019 - bubnos Likes this wine: 100 Points
Of all wines with more than 50 reviews on CellarTracker, this wine has the highest average score, edging out the 2001 Chateau d'Yquem (a wine with four separate perfect scores by top critics) by 0.1 points as of this note, meaning this wine could claim, with a straight face, to be "the best wine in the world". Needless to say, I had extremely high expectations when I finally pulled this bottle out of my cellar and spent approximately twenty minutes carefully chipping off the wax seal.
Poured into a glass, this "wine" resembles nothing so much as a test tube full of pure bromine, staining the glass a rich brown color as it swirls and drains from the walls at a glacial rate. The nose is vastly more complex than any other PX sherry I've tasted- there's fig and raisin and honey and all other the usual suspects, but there's also rosemary, balsam fir, soy sauce, yuzu, all notes I've never even detected in any other wine.
The first sip is- I won't say "intoxicating" because I can't even detect any alcohol despite the 17% ABV on the label- but it's an incredibly elegant and refined mix of savory umami, burnt caramel, 91% cacao chocolate, a well-hidden oxidative nuttiness (even if you don't like sherry this works so well) and polished acidity balancing out the treacly sweetness. It doesn't really ever "finish", per se, you just keep tasting different aspects as time goes by- 15 seconds in it's honey, then it transitions after 30 seconds to a peppery, bacon-like Syrah note, and then it's bitter herbs and menthol after a minute, then back to figs after 1'30- it's truly astounding how it continued to evolve. I splashed a few drops of water into the glass when I finished and swirled it around- it's very viscous so a lot of wine gets stuck on the sides of the glass- and even just the mostly-water wash was better than some moscatels I've had.
Expectations absolutely blown out of the park. Full 100 points because I can't give more. You owe it to yourself to buy a bottle of this and pop it open ASAP- it's the best deal in wine at twice or three times the current price. I would buy this before Yquem, I'd buy this before a Tokaji Essencia, I'd buy this before a first-growth Bordeaux or a cult Cali cab. What's more, since it's heavily oxidized and mostly sugar already, you don't need to worry about futzing around with a Coravin or opening it at a huge party so everyone drinks it- it's completely shelf stable, just cork it and put it back in its wooden box and it will last for months at a time, if not years, with no perceptible deterioration.
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5/26/2019 - gesusser Likes this wine: 98 Points
WOW. Liquid raisins, plums & figs from sundried grapes ...bottled May 2017. Bottle # 437 of 825. Unique to say the least. Sweet and smooth so One does not even notice the 17% ETOH. Opened and pursuant to this lists advice kept in frig vacuum sealed for many weeks as this is purely for dessert sipping Did not lose one iota of taste. Shared at a group dinner and everyone was awed. Well worth the price of admission.
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3/24/2019 - Peech Likes this wine: 99 Points
bottled in 2011, from double magnum - lots of potpourri, pine needle, sweet on the nose. Very rich, soooo viscous. Downright unctuous.
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1/27/2019 - mdefreitas wrote:
From the bottle (rather than the test tube sample)... and just as good as my note from 11/16/2018.
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1/20/2019 - sswine Likes this wine: 99 Points
otherwordly & sweet. Drank as the final pairing for my 50th bday dinner but most ended up drinking it after dessert. Popped and poured a little of this elixir into what was left of the glasses in the house (we'd used all the others). intense like you wouldnt believe. you almost lick it rather than drink it. amazing.
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1/12/2019 - markcic wrote: 99 Points
This bottle was opened on June 18th, 2017. Our group drank half that night and I put the cork back in and left it in the refrigerator and I have since opened the bottle and had some on three different occasions. The wine was in perfect condition. Last night, my good friend Michael and I decided to finish it. It was still in perfect condition and still a 99. It is just an amazing bottle of wine. I will open the next one for my birthday in the end of April. Not sure if it will be another 1946 or the 1955,
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11/27/2018 - wineguy75 wrote: 100 Points
This never disappoints. Best dessert wine in the world, hand down
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11/23/2018 - markcic Likes this wine: 99 Points
Since it was my turn to be the designated driver to drive my family to our annual Black Friday dinner at my cousins house in Cold Spring I totally refrained from drinking until I got home. Then I poured a small glass of this wine. If any of you have followed my notes, I opened this bottle a year and half ago on Fathers day 2017. It still is drinking beautifully. Swirling flavors of candied fruit, orange peel, kumquats, dried figs, honey, candied nuts and deep chocolate. So many flavors it is hard to identify them all let alone list. Hopefully I will finish the bottle this year (I know I said that last year but it just did not happen) When I do I will find an occasion to open another one. It is just amazing to think that the bottle has been open a year and a half with no degradation.
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11/16/2018 - mdefreitas wrote: 98 Points
From the test tube sample that comes with the bottle. Wow... glass and palate-coating. Molasses, figs, caramel and lifted citrus notes. So many flavors that are hard to enumerate. This holds on the palate and lingers for what seems minutes. Not cloying in the least, with sharp, focused acidity that keeps this lifted and bright. Can't wait to break into the full bottle.
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9/23/2018 - SLB83 Likes this wine:
This bottle comes with a little tasting vial, which has the quantity of a large sip, the type you would take when having port. A brilliant gimmick this vial if you ask me.
We opened the vial two weeks ago, but I did not take any notes, so I am not rating this.
The glass went around my father, my mum and my sister, before I got to try it. So I ended up with a nip. What are family for ey?!
All I can say is that this is a very dark blackish brown, a bit like iodine.
The nose and the palate were extraordinary. My family all love wine/port/sherry/etc. and we all agreed this was one of the most special and peculiar things we had ever tasted.
What stood out most perhaps was the finish. It just did not want to end. Kept going and going, for over 10 minutes I think.
I have been told by staff at Berry Bros & Rudd (one of the world’s oldest wine merchants) that you can keep an opened bottles for weeks on end. So there is no rush to drink up. Using a vacuum cork and putting it in the fridge will have this stay good for months on end. There is a review on CT that confirms that.
A pricy bottle, indeed, but if you fancy something very different and very special, I can really recommend this.
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9/12/2018 - Alex G. Likes this wine:
The viscosity of motor oil, this truly stains the glass leaving a brown layer in its wake after its swirled around. Like drinking fig paste, incredibly rich and dense. One ounce goes a very long way of this sweet and powerful nectar.
This is virtually impossible to dislike, even by someone like me who isn't normally a fan of dessert wine. It's just so interesting and delicious, any wine lover must appreciate it on some level. For those who do appreciate dessert wines regularly, it will blow your mind.
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9/10/2018 - Lipsman Likes this wine: 100 Points
From a bottle open several months. A unique and spectacularly complex wine with a peacock’s tail finish that seems endless. The aroma too is a prism of color and nuance that is beguiling without even taking a sip. This is a heavy dessert wine, without the alcohol found in many ports. Worth extra effort to obtain a bottle and share with friends. Always a head turner. I give it 110 points.
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8/10/2018 - markcic Likes this wine: 99 Points
After the last of the 70 guests at the rehearsal dinner left. i poured myself a glass from the bottle I opened in June of 2017 It is still spectacular even after being opened for more than a year. No degradation whatsoever. I would say that this is the perfect dessert wine but as I once said I cannot measure perfection. There is a little less than a quarter of a bottle left and I will drink another glass with my daughter on her birthday in November..
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5/19/2018 - sweetstuff wrote: 98 Points
1946 Bodegas Toro Albala Don PX (Pedro Ximenes) Convento Selección (Spain, Andalucía, Montilla-Moriles); $245/750 ml @ Benchmark Wines.
When a bottle purchased for the 71st birthday of my wife Jackie, I note that the abv is now 17 percent, and that it was bottled not in 2011 but in May 2017 (about a year ago), bottle number 310/827; so there has been incremental bottling; no further history available on that yet. We tasted what was in the sample tube (a most interesting idea for this kind of wine), perhaps 10 ml for the both of us.
Yes, extremely clingy, but the tears nearly fall back into the bowl without a pause into the venous-blood-colored liquid. Great harmony from notes of cherry candy, cherrywood smoke, vanillla, moderately sweet chocolate, veal demi-glace, and hints of licorice. And, on the palate, surprisingly moderate sugars, balancing acidiity, and tremendous, lacy finesse, perhaps the most surprising of its attributes. It has real delicacy and an integrated but complex expressiveness, this alone putting it up into high-classic scoring range. 98/100--but remember, these separate bottlings may have a different character to them. It would be lovely sometime to taste this bottling against the one Sr. Gutierrez noted. I agree that this may well outllive everyone who is old enough to buy some legally today; however, there's no reason not to enjoy it now. Drink 2018-2100, if we're still around on this planet to try it!
A very small pour, please!
___________________________________
Letter to JJBuckley from me:
18 pabv. Purchased a 1946 Don Px Toro Albalá as a birth year gift and have read the informative Luis Gutierrez tasting note. Am looking for more technical information and data, plus release dates and amounts, for this bottle. Am looking for more technical information and data, plus release dates and amounts, for this bottle. What was the source of the grapes? It appears to have been bottled in May, 2017, but must then of course have been one of at least two bottlings, given that it was originally reviewed or tasted in about August 2013 by Sr. Gutierrez, mentioning about 800 plus bottles at the time. There are a very great number of tasting notes on CellarTracker by purchasers (users) of that tool. Were the later bottllings reviewed critically, or do we assume that every bottling gets the same score from the same critic? Of course, analytical data would help. The Gutierrez score seems to be just about the only copyright score that has been paid much attention to, but there are other reviews cited, which would always be helpful, as numbers are of minimual usefulness to describe style and quality of what must be a very great wine, if my friends are to be believed. If a better means of communication for this sort of thing would be helpful to you, please feel free to suggest it. Very gratefully yours, John Trombley
This is a peculiar winery, a little eccentric and unusual, a family affair created in 1922 although their roots can be traced back to the 19th century. The core of the winery is located inside an old electricity plant in Aguilar de la Frontera, south of Cordoba, in the heart of the Montilla-Moriles appellation and directed by collector, inventor and entrepreneur Antonio Sanchez. They sell 650,000 liters of wine per year, of which 40% is exported and sold in 27 different countries. They are growing in the US, the UK, Australia, and also with increasing interest in Asia, mainly for the sweet wines, Antonio Sorgato, the export manager of the firm, tells me. We are selling sweet wines, but Fino, its much more difficult. This is not something unique to them, as the whole Montilla-Moriles is better known for its sweet, dark, unctuous Pedro Ximenez wines. All the wines they produce are of course fermented from Pedro Ximenez white grapes, but for the sweet wines the grapes are sun-dried, dehydrated into raisins, and the resulting wine is brown in color which gets darker as the wine ages and concentrates in barrel. The oldest examples are an opaque black with an amber rim as dense as motor oil. They have a most impressive collection of single vintage PX wines going back to the time of the Second World War. Luis Gutierrez (SOme of this may be copyright material; if it is I'll remove it.
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4/27/2018 - Lipsman wrote: 100 Points
So remarkable I give it 110 points. I can’t begin to enumerate the flavors except to say it is a dark peacock’s tail that shimmers and unfurls for minutes. I pity those who give it less than 100 points. What will they ever taste in their lives that is better? Nothing. They are doomed, never to recognize perfection. If you haven’t tried a glass, you must. Nothing more satisfying, saturated, or complex has ever before been bottled.
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3/13/2018 - crazywineguy Likes this wine: 95 Points
This is in the top two sherry/dessert wines I have ever tasted (the other a 1904 oloroso). Sublime. Was the perfect follow on to Huet's Cuvee Constance '89 with dessert and matched the cheese plate perfectly. Intense concentration, insane length. Makes you go back for another sip compulsively just to check if it really can be that good. By the 9th wine I failed to mentally catalogue the aromas and flavours - its everything you have read here. My thanks to our host for providing this experience.
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12/31/2017 - Quiet Lion Likes this wine: 100 Points
So good I just giggle every sip. This is a remarkable dessert wine and I'm grateful to Steve for sharing it not once but twice with me. Ethereal integrated sweetness, lightness, Christmas spices, and magic.
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12/23/2017 - markcic Likes this wine: 99 Points
I still had a third of a bottle left over from Fathers day, so Michael and I decided to have a taste, our wives didn't want any so more for us. I had the same impression as I did on Fathers day. This wine is beyond words. Cannot rate it 100 because in all honesty after drinking wine for 50 years I do not know what 100 is supposed to be - I would imagine perfection whatever that is but this wine is as close to it as you can get. Honeyed figs, dates, orange rind, almonds, kumquats, sweet tea - this wine has them all in swirling flavors that just go on and on.
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12/15/2017 - sharonandroland Likes this wine: 97 Points
Impressive concentration and complexity yet showing light footedness and lift.
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12/5/2017 - Lipsman wrote: 100 Points
This is indescribably delicious. The time this spends on the palate and the peacock tail of shimmering flavors that appear and evolve are beyond compare. There is nothing like this wine, if you can even call it a wine.
Deeply saturated aromas of cherry, chocolate, soy. Amazing nose. Thick and viscous. Delicious elixir of mocha, black cherries, medicinal herbs, anise, black plums, earthy elements, with incredible length lasting two minutes. Yum!
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11/23/2017 - esh44 wrote:
This bottle had a very distinct Chinese herbal medicine note the first day opened. Recorked and refrigerated -- this was singing on day two and three. Consistent notes w/ my first bottle.
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10/13/2017 - WStucker wrote: 100 Points
Wine of the year!!
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8/22/2017 - Quiet Lion Likes this wine: 100 Points
Monthly Men's Wine Dinner (Carmine's Bellevue): I don't know how to score dessert wines but this was better than d'Yquem so I'm going with Parker and giving it 100. It was crazy good, like drinking Christmas, perfectly balanced. Pair with fruitcake. Thanks Steve!
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6/18/2017 - markcic Likes this wine: 99 Points
Everything that has been said is factual. Honeyed figs, prunes, almonds, orange rind. This wine has it all. It is extremely rich - our group along with 6 people sitting at the next table who I offered some too could only finish half a bottle. I can only wonder how a few more years or a decade will effect this wine. I will save the other half bottle for our annual black Friday dinner in November.
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6/7/2017 - KingSlacker999 wrote: 100 Points
One of the craziest and most amazing things ever. Nose is complex and has Christmas pudding, toffee, fruitcake, etc, etc. Viscous, sweet (unctuous but not cloying). Mid-palate has some acidity and a spine of salinity that surprises and impresses. Length, length, length, at least 3 minutes. Utterly delicious.
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4/25/2017 - rmalloy Likes this wine: 99 Points
This is certainly one of the greatest dessert wines I've ever tasted. It offers incredibly rich and viscous flavors of mocha and dried black fig with overtones of citrus zest. It shows both weight and breadth on the palate. My guess is it is nowhere near its peak! I have little doubt this would drink well 50 years from now.
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4/1/2017 - G_H wrote: 97 Points
Farnsburg Rarities: Out of magnum: even out of magnum this wine is exactly the same as previous bottles. Amazing.
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1/1/2017 - HowardNZ Likes this wine: 98 Points
Dinner at Andrew's place: This Pedro Ximénez was made from the grapes harvested after World War II in Montilla-Moriles DO, Andalusia. Taken from cask in September 2011, produced in batches of 825 hand numbered bottles, batches numbered 46.1, 46.2 etc (this bottle from batch 46.6). (So far, Bodegas Toro Albala has produced at least 13 batches, so that is over 10,000 bottles to date I understand ...). This PX was one of the first three sherries scored 100 points by eRP. ABV 17%. Does it live up to the hype? In my view, yes. Layered colour, quite bright for a 70 year old wine. A hugely complex bouquet. Coconut, vanilla pod, chocolate lammington cake, mint, molasses, toffee, espresso, cinnamon, camphor etc etc. Every sniff reveals a new nuance. On palate, it's vibrant and very alive. Pure and clean. It's viscous but not heavy, dancing across the palate. People saw different things in the flavour profile. Someone described a stout-like quality to the PX. Another person mentioned a herbal aspect. "Minty" said someone else. Flavours of raisins, Christmas cake, cinnamon, brown sugar, figs, espresso, almonds, spices etc etc. Great balance between sweet and umami. Very detailed and very long. The bottle disappeared very quickly in our small group. I imagine that this PX will outlive anyone reading this note.
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12/12/2016 - KeithSurg wrote: 86 Points
Agree with others' notes, as this is a remarkably concentrated and complex wine. However, I found it ridiculous. Interesting and fun, yes. Enjoyable, not so much. I served this with dessert at a dinner party for 12 after some great wines. Lots of comments, as this is clearly a "wow" wine. But when I cleared the table, there were very few empty glasses. It's like going to Vegas - over the top experience that's nice only briefly.
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11/10/2016 - Kerryt wrote: 100 Points
Very concentrated, very powerful, very complex. Perhaps the most complex, most unique wine I have ever had. I served it at the symphony wine-tasting fundraiser a couple of years ago, and it was a big hit, even more popular than the 100-point (RP) Bordeaux I also served.
Wine Advocate says "full of umami, with sweet cinnamon, Christmas cake, camphor, petrol, lemongrass, Belgian chocolate and butter. Incredibly complex and rich, sweet, balanced and smooth in the palate, it is both very sweet and somehow salty, and with time it develops a black olive note." I'm not sure I'm sophisticated enough to identify all those flavors, but it certainly is complex enough that I'll take the expert's word.
We drank this young (it was only bottled in 2011, which helps explain the super-concentrated part), but I expect it will get better for the next 30-40 years.
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7/28/2016 - Duke88 Likes this wine: 96 Points
Absolutely over the top, full throttle decadence. Deeply layered with tertiary aromas expressing themselves through an impenetrable black core. Menthol upfront opens up to nuances of prunes, raisins, tapenade, incense, fudge and espresso. I contemplated over this ounce and a half serving for quite some time before drinking it. On the palate the chocolate-driven raisined flavours are driven home. Huge, intense, and persistent yet balanced, approachable and not cloying. This one goes in the memory bank for a while.
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7/15/2016 - SimonPh Likes this wine: 98 Points
Incredible intensity and power, with fruitcake, nuttiness and a luscious richness that persists on the palate for minutes.
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7/13/2016 - esh44 wrote:
All sorts of stuff going on here -- Christmas cake, toffee, fudge, nutty tones... This is thick and viscous, but somehow not heavy at all. In fact, there is almost a crisp-ness here. Cool. Wow.
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7/10/2016 - King Julien wrote: 98 Points
Final glass of Coravin bottle started 5/27/2016. Same as previous tastings.
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7/3/2016 - Thoughtful Likes this wine: 98 Points
Recent purchase. Stunning aged PX. Like liquid treacle. Full of the deep rich flavours of concentrated grapes.
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6/21/2016 - jeffm_fla Likes this wine: 97 Points
Excellent. Looks like motor oil. Viscous, coats the glass and then your mouth. Sweet, but not cloying with just all kinds of flavors and layers of nuance going on. It was the end of the night and I didn't take notes, but definitely some baking spices and just so much more. Wow.
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6/12/2016 - King Julien wrote: 98 Points
Second Coravin glass, was as amazing as the first!
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5/27/2016 - King Julien wrote: 98 Points
Poured 1 glass via Coravin, very thick and dark, almost like syrup. Outstanding!
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5/20/2016 - Tim Heaton Likes this wine:
My second time with this, and wow, do I ever feel lucky. This is sublime, and seems to have no end to its complexity. Superbly balanced and probably just beginning its plateau where it will easily hold for several decades to come. Dream like at times, it not only brought back good memories, but transported me somewhere else, too. very highly recommended
Served non-blind.
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4/30/2016 - DarinC Likes this wine: 94 Points
Mostly raisins, followed by dates, black fig jam, with traces of coffee, cocoa and spices. Exceptionally balanced for such a viscous wine. Great mouthfeel. I'd prefer more complex aromatics to give a higher score. Not as multi-dimensional as I expected, give the scores. Should age very well.
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4/10/2016 - bacchuszuo Likes this wine: 100 Points
First of all, there ARE some negatives with this bottle....the 100pt score on the wood case and labels are tacky, the wax capsule is a nightmare to open, they claim this is limited to 876 bottles while they actually release in small badges....all those aside, this wine gave the WOW factor above its pure perfection so even with those nasty distractions, 100 is the only score possible.
Medicinal herby nose at first, kaleidoscopic palate of balsamic, black olive, anise, cassis, black chocolate, raisin, prune, cinnamon, licorice, tarragon, endless spectrum of herbs and spices with heavenly sweetness. The wine opens up with air and continue to evolve. Very vibrant acidity cut thru the rich sweetness to make it weighless on palate yet ripples thru on and on for a 20+min finish. The balance from beginning to end is impeccable. The taste doesn't cloy yet lingers for eternity, transcends sensory perception and linguistic comprehension into an spiritual experience. When served at the end of a drunk-fest, this wine is going to sober you up and recalibrate all senses, even make the mediocre fellow wines beside it taste better than before! A wine that deserves legendary status in the world of vinos.
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3/19/2016 - worldwidewine Likes this wine: 99 Points
What a fantastic wine. Near perfection. Blackberries, chocolate,coffee, leather, wax,thyme,mint, pepper...smooth and light with a very long after taste.In the top five of my favourite dessert wines. i'll dream of it !
I suggest to open the bottlle one or two days before drinking. One month latter it's better!
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3/4/2016 - Vinophiliac559 wrote: 96 Points
Friends Spring Gathering with Will; 3/4/2016-3/5/2016 (Fresno): Most of the previous TN have said it all. An amazing wine. Color is amber/brown at the rim and black at the core. This quite literally looked like motor oil all the way down to its viscosity. Very full bodied, very viscous, hid the alcohol well as this was incredibly smooth. Raisins, dried dates and dried figs dominated the nose and palate. Just an awesome experience.
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2/27/2016 - Savannahman Likes this wine: 99 Points
I opened a bottle on Thanksgiving and I am still drinking it months later. It's every bit as good as it was the day I opened it. Recently purchased another for the cellar. Funny thing, bottles of this from Last Bottle do not include the tasting vile. Hmmm, you've got to wonder about that.
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1/26/2016 - Vini Ciclismo Likes this wine: 98 Points
Thick black and syrupy.
Super sweet, smooth ripe black fruits, sherbet zest, rich and raisiny, leans to the dark side.
Very fleshy, incredible length, black ripe fruits, rich earthy spice, tar, liquorice, graphite, dark plum, black currant, very refined and silky. Pure and very long, superb structure. Will last forever.
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12/30/2015 - Oenovice Likes this wine: 95 Points
Black, viscous liquid. Exactly like motor oil. Not the most appetising introduction to be honest.
Raisins, raisins, raisins on the nose. Super intense. Very concentrated. Touch of treacle, Gula Melaka, brown sugar, etc. On palate, very full bodied. Like a port but with more balance and lower alcohol. Lingering notes of chocolate and cocoa.
A stunner. Won't be to everyone's taste, but well worth trying. A great match for malai-cake and chendol, perhaps (gasp) as a syrup or reduction. Unctuous and sublime.
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12/24/2015 - rpk99 Likes this wine: 99 Points
This is Christmas in a bottle. Cinnamon and hazelnut show through with hints of orange peel and sugar plums and prunes. Just ridiculously beautiful juice. Blows the minds how smooth for a high alcohol fortified wine. A great treat and has been wonderful over three weeks and counting.
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11/26/2015 - Savannahman Likes this wine: 99 Points
I have done some research on this wine so let me start with that. I have read reviews from many talking about the availability of this wine and questioning the claim of only 825 bottles made. The fact is, there are several batches that have been made of this wine, 825 bottles per batch. On the bottle and the box it will say 46-1, 46-2 etc. Designating the batch number. According to my research as many as 13 batches have been made to date .The wine is preserved in tanks with nitrogen between batches as there are sometimes years between the release of one batch to the next.
The wine is spectacular. Like nothing I have tasted. Dark, inky black in the glass. The first note is of Fig with apricot, plum, molasses, dried dark fruit and hints of citrus with dark chocolate and mocha. Real difficult to get a handle on, my palate is just not that sharp. Drank about 1/4 of the bottle, looking forward to drinking and discovering everything hidden here over the next several months (or years) as I understand this wine, although made from 65 year old fruit is ageless in the bottle.
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11/6/2015 - cadams wrote: 98 Points
Dark black with dark orange rim
On the nose it smells like an aged tawny port, still smells youthful and vibrant though.
Initial attack is viscous and racy all at the same time, ultra rich, toffee, raisins, fig, hazelnut. Truly amazing that is has acidity and structure to balance out the powerhouse of ripe raisined fruits.
Still has a long long life ahead of it, so tasty though not sure it's worth waiting.
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10/15/2015 - ADiamond Likes this wine: 100 Points
A beautiful selection by the owner of Etapas in Barcelona. What a way to end a perfect meal, with perfection.
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9/21/2015 - worldwidewine wrote: 99 Points
The most generous wine ever tasted.Near perfection!
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6/7/2015 - Labrador Likes this wine: 97 Points
What a way to end a dinner!
Unique and exquisite+++ ... and that was after a 1990 Giroud Beaune Marconnets and a 1982 Chateau l'Arrosee. Dark, viscous, rich and beautiful. Notes of Toffee, cinnamon, coffee. Each of us enjoyed a 2nd glass. It went well with the Shropshire. I plan to try it with French onion soup (perhaps turtle soup) and vanilla ice cream.
June 13: Finished the bottle with friends who are true lovers of this velvety nectar. Just as good a week later. Did not have it with a soup (that's for another day and another bottle), but there was a generous slice of a lovely cream pie that matched it quite well.
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5/14/2015 - Drinking Trees wrote:
Intense nose of spirit and raisin. Notes of sultana, dark rum, fig, and guava. Palate is thin but very smooth, with powerful alcohol and strong acidity. Mild, well-balanced flavour of liquid raisins, milk chocolate, and musk sticks. Tasty, but similar to - and not vastly better than - more common PX wines that are a tenth of the price.
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1/17/2015 - Oskiwawa wrote: 95 Points
This was a real treat at the end of a very nice dinner with friends. Popped and poured. Viscous and very dark. Rich toffee, chocolate, and dried fruits on the palate. Special stuff.
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12/23/2014 - Torben Hald wrote: 100 Points
The best PX, fantastic smell and taste
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10/31/2014 - G_H wrote: 96 Points
I really don't trust the statement that there are only 825 bottles produced, as this wine appears all over the place here in Switzerland alone. I myself have already drunk 4 bottles, so I really can't think that it is true.
Do I care? Not at all!!!!!
There is no bottle variation at all, so the tasting notes feel really a bit of a copy-paste exercise. The wine is incredible, massive, crazy fat and rich while avoiding being sticky or too sweet.
Nose excels with dried figs, rose water, dried fruit bread, and tons of umami! And again the Vasa Museum' all over the place.
Crazy elegant for such a thick wine and very very very very long.
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10/7/2014 - ehodin Likes this wine: 98 Points
One of the most interesting wines I've ever tasted. Inky black, tasting of coffee, chocolate, tar. My guests and I all agreed on the excitement, drank only a third of bottle - expect the rest to last indefinitely.
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9/19/2014 - ikkaariainen Likes this wine: 98 Points
Insane & amazing - enjoyed last night at the end of the night with a group of fellow CT wine enthusiasts at Les Nomades in Chicago with souffles & frommage. Actually still quite youthful, very smooth and complex yet still quite concentrated & strong, no off notes at all and will probably quite easily go another 50 years if stored properly. Color ruby, nose sweet & concentrated but elegantly so - not cloying at all with notes of raisin, plum, mocha and a hint of smoke. Primary flavors very well integrated raisin, burnt sugar and plum with mocha & coffee on the late palate and a soft lingering aftertaste that went on FORever...this wine is really close to perfection in a bottle and it is not difficult to see where the RP 100 points came from. Probably the best fortified dessert wine I've ever had and among the very top handful of best wines of any varietal that I have had. Even at this price point this wine is worth it as a crown jewel in anybody's cellar.
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7/9/2014 - golf and wine wrote: 98 Points
Crazy wine. Comes in a wood box and a tester vile. Super concentrated and young...will age forever. Probably one of the most exotic and complex things I have ever had. Think Port but thicker and wider array of fruits.
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4/3/2014 - G_H Likes this wine: 96 Points
Tasted the third time within a relatively short time, this time at the amazing maison manesse restaurant in Zurich (on the house!!!), from three different bottles but with identical notes. Amazing wine!
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3/21/2014 - G_H Likes this wine: 96 Points
Markus' 50th birthday (Markus' house): Identical to previous notes wit this vasa notes. Quite intense porcini notes. Love it!
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2/23/2014 - G_H Likes this wine: 96 Points
A 100 evening - Marc and Martin turn 100 (Martin's House): This wine is incredible, massive, crazy fat and rich all without being sticky or too sweet.
Dried figs, rose water, dried fruit bread, bergamot, and boy all that umami! The most distinct thing however is the smell of the 'Vasa Museum', a museum in Stockholm, where an old ship is exhibited. When you enter there is this amazing and distinctive smell of very old wood and wax.
Crazy elegant and very very long.
On the downside: I hate that they put on the label an extract of the parker-Review and that the wine got 100 points, that just feels cheap!
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