TN: 1865 Miles Tinta (from Bianchi family) Vintage Madeira

[Peter Reutter]

Opened last sunday:

Miles Tinta 1865
(from the Bianchi family)
Bottle:
Heavy bottle, blown in mold and rotated. Small stencils MILES MADEIRA and a damaged paper label reading "Tinta 1865, Res..., H..d. ... anchi, Fernando M. de Bianchi"
Color:
Bright tawny with golden rim.
Nose:
Piercing VA, then honey, butter and a rounded and pleasant herbal quality, also some petrol-like notes, very promising.
Palate:
Bone dry entry, highly acidic and rather spirity, reminding me of an old Cognac. Unfortunately allready dried out and faded. The wine improved considerably after a few hours, still very high acidity, but softened now, more pleasant and well developed Cognac notes. The finish is short and bitter, ending with cough medicine.
Footnote:
Tasted 11/2007. Hmmmm, I did expect more, since it was the first really old Tinta vintage for me. The wine was well beyond its peak, but still it was very interesting to taste. The nose rose expectations that the palate could note live up to... I will mark this one down for experience, not for drinking pleasure.
There was a Fernando Bianchi who was general manager for the Madeira Wine Company (Madeira Wine Association back then).

[Roy Hersh]

Interesting and I never even heard of this wine but do know of Miles. When do you presume this was actually bottled?

[Andy Velebil]

I've only had a couple bottles of Miles 10 year Malmsey. All I can say is the finish of those bottles was just as you described

The finish is short and bitter, ending with cough medicine.

[Peter Reutter]

Judging from the label and the cork, I would believe that the wine had been bottled before 1950. It looks like the small stencils MILES MADEIRA were painted onto the bottle some time later, as it so often happens with wines that the MWC aquired from somebody else (like all the Blandy and Cossart AO-SM wines).
Just this morning I took another sip from the wine and even though it is still rather flat and faded it gained again in complexity, very much like an old Cognac now, in fact I beginn to like this wine. I spilled a little of it and wiped it away with a kleenex that i hung up in my Madeira wine cellar, so the whole room is now perfumed with it - wonderfull!