Madeira Producers "House Style"?

[Marco D.]

I was wondering if anybody finds any particular style to the various Madeira producers' wine.

For me, I generally find the wines from Blandys a bit more luscious and sweet and the wines from Cossart Gordon a slight bit drier. From Barbeito I can make no generalizations, perhaps because they purchase so much finished wine?

Anybody have any other observations on house style? Does it even exist in Madeira?

[Gary Banker]

I would agree with the assessment of the Cossart Gordon and Blandy styles, at least with respect to the 5/10/15 year wines. I have not had enough of their vintage madeira to to tell, but I understand that MWC has bought finished wine from outside over the years, notably from D'Oliveira, and has sold it under various house names.

Gary

[Roy Hersh]

Whatever happened to Reidar, Heather and others here who were serious Madeira lovers too. Peter will probably be along too. I have my own strong opinions, but hope others will weigh in on this excellent topic. Thanks guys!

Marco ...

[Marco D.]

I have not had enough of their vintage madeira to to tell, but I understand that MWC has bought finished wine from outside over the years, notably from D'Oliveira, and has sold it under various house names.

Good point. I suspect a lot of older vintage Madeiras originated from sources other than what the label on the bottle reads. This would obviously make generalizations on house-style a bit problematic.

[Eric Ifune]

I also associate Blandys as a rounder and sweeter style relative to Cossart. More toffee and caramel. I associate D'Oliveria with a strong "backbone" or structure related to extract and acidity. Barbeito varies as Gary mentioned.

[Reidar Andersen]

Wow, Roy is waking me up. As Gary says, no generalization here. You never know where the bottles come from ( exept for Barbeito ). Especially MWC who bought a lot from D'Oliveiras around 1985.

In 1986 I bought 1882 V and 1910 S from MWC still with AO-SM "paint" on them. These have later both been repainted for a while to Blandy's and later to Cossart Gordon ( or vice versa ). Like the 1908 Bual at MWC, which you can get up the street for much less from D'Oliveiras.

Now RWC have a 1952 Leacock Verdelho for sale. I have it. BUT I have also looked into MWC's vintage room and seen ( some years back ) plenty of it with "CVM paint" and very close IVM number to mine.I even twice , at two different occasions , tried to buy with CVM on, but they refused me. Of course !

[Roy Hersh]

Reidar,

Welcome back my friend, to a show that never ends, where so glad you could attend ...

[Alan Gardner]

I recall a conversation I had with MWC (don't recall the individual) about 15 years ago on this subject. In particular we discussed Leacock which is more common in Canada than elsewhere (for those not Canadian, Stephen Leacock was one of our greatest humourists). Indeed they revealed that the 'branding' in Canada was primarily Leacock - but it was the identical product to Blandy's (the most popular in most other countries) and Cossart, Gordon.
I haven't done many 'blind' comparisons - the only ones have been the 1863 and 1870 soleras - but as there were several bottlings of these, the comparison wasn't really useful.
In my experience, the only difference I've detected was in a tasting of 5 and 10 year-old Buals (non-blind) from the various 'brands' and there I found the Miles bottling to be definitely sweeter. But I don't know if they 'adjust' the basic product according to brand.
As a comparison, I recall that several cognac producers adjust the sweetness level of their best-selling labels according to destination (e.g. in northern/colder countries the brand is sweeter) and I also recall that Harveys Bristol Cream is different even in Airport Duty-Free shops around the world. In the far east it is sweeter than in Europe. I presume this 'sweetness adjustment' uses legal additives (equivalent to grape concentrate) - NOT by the addition of sugar.
I also understand that Cognac (in particular) has the colour adjusted to suit local preferences.

And without getting too far offtrack, I'm sure most people recall the 'New Coke' debacle. This was actually the 'Coca Cola' regularly available in Canada (northern country - sweeter taste) that was an attempted 'back-market' to the US (because in Canada the marketshare loss to Pepsi wasn't evident, whereas in the US Pepsi was making significant gains).

[Reidar Andersen]

Just was playing around with Wine-searcher ( bad weather so my wife cannot send me out to work in our garden )
and found a shop ,The Vintage Shoppe, which offered Cossart Gordon Moscatel Madeira 1900 !

This I have never seen ( there MWC 1900 Moscatel in the vintage list ). Then I just guess it may be the D'Oliveira wines sold around 1985 and repainted?? :idea:

[Peter Reutter]

dear Reidar,
you are right of course, as the following picture of a Leacock AO-SM Moscatel 1900 bottle clearly shows. lokks like they sold this wine under the usual variety of company's different brands.

1900 Leacock Moscatel AO-SM.jpg (48.09 KiB) Viewed 1652 times

best
Peter

[Peter Reutter]

[quote="Roy Hersh"]Whatever happened to Reidar, Heather and others here who were serious Madeira lovers too. Peter will probably be along too. I have my own strong opinions, but hope others will weigh in on this excellent topic. Thanks guys!
quote]

i am back from the holidays, roy, so here is my opinion
since many of the old vintages were bought from other producers (like the mwc bought 1882 V, 1900 Mosc, 1908 B and 1910 M from d'oliveiras or d'oliveiras bought 1927 Bast and 1958 B from Torreao and so on, and just think about all the wines barbeito bought from araujo, hinton and others) it is almost impossible to find a "house style" in the vintage madeiras. with the blends i agree with most of the other madeira lovers that blandy is certainly on the rich side, where as cossart is often leaner, more elegant. miles and leacock are rather sweet imho. the d'oliveira wines are old style, heavy and roasted, the borges wines are more fruity, not as heavy as d'oliveira, quite similar to barbeito. my henriques experience is limited, so i will leave that open.
the vintages of the mwc are extremly heterogenous (i hope this is the right word) so i do not see a certain house style here, let alone that they keep selling the same wine under different brand names. the only real house style i can detect amongst vintage madeiras is d'oliveiras, whose wines i find rather heavy, concentrated, even woody sometimes, certainly with minimal or nil refreshing.

[Marco D.]

...the only real house style i can detect amongst vintage madeiras is d'oliveiras, whose wines i find rather heavy, concentrated, even woody sometimes, certainly with minimal or nil refreshing.

Interesting comment.... Doesn't d'Oliveira own a lot of vineyards? Perhaps they buy less from others and thus have a more consistant "house style" in the vintage category?

Doesn't H+H also own a lot of their own vineyards as well?