Creating a personal Madeira blend

[Peter Reutter]

Ever since starting to collect Madeira wines I had dreamed about creating and maturing my own blend. The initial plans were to buy a small wooden cask, import about 100 liters of Madeira wine and mature the wine in cask for a couple of years. Since the bulk export of Madeira wine is prohibited by European laws these days, the only way today is to buy the wine per bottle. After long talks with friends in the wine producing business, I realized that a small cask would add a wood flavor to the wine much to strong. The ratio of wine to cask surface would require at least a cask of about 80 liters in volume. As I made plans to buy the cask, I soon found out that this was going to become a very expensive experiment. 80 liters would require about 115 bottles of 0,7 liters of a good quality 10 year old blend, adding up to 115 x 25 Euros = 2875 Euros. Adding a cask of medium quality would make a total of about 3000 Euros. So this project came to a sudden death before it even started.

I still wanted to create my own blend, but I realized I had to start at a smaller scale. So at a long weekend in February I set out with a 10 liter glass bulb, 12 bottles of a 10 year old blend and a wide variety of old vintage Madeiras to add certain characteristics that the blend should later have. Like the 1835 Nicolas Brown Madere for acidity, or the 1900 Torreao Boal for a bitter coffee taste. This might sound a little to simple and I admit it took me two weeks of repeated blending of small batches (28 batches of the size of 50ml ) before I even came close to what I had wanted in the first place. It took another couple of weekends in March and May and then (with all the limitations of a non-professional) I had finally created something worth repeating on a larger scale. So at the beginning of June I filled the glass bulb with 10 liters of the MadeiraWineGuide blend. If you take the 10 year old blends with an exact age of 10 years, the medium age of this blend is 30 years, 29.6 years to be exact. If you take the 10 year old blend as one wine, a total of 7 different wines went into the blend.

It was my strong impression that the small batches of the first blending try-outs always improved with a few weeks of rest. So I plan to let the blend rest for a half a year, then do some fine adjustments if necessary. Since the wine is not in cask further maturing will be minimal of course, but my guess would be that it takes some time for the different wines to blend into a new, harmonious Madeira. I will keep you informed of the progress and tasting notes are to follow

Peter

[Eric Ifune]

Facinating Peter! Waiting to hear your results. It might even inspire me!

[Andy Velebil]

Very intriguing Peter, do let us know how it turns out later this year.

[Peter Reutter]

So far, this is what it looks like:

MadeiraWineGuide blend mini.jpg (31.33 KiB) Viewed 1677 times

Peter

[Peter Reutter]

So by chance I found your tasting note, Roy, and I have to admit I am very flattered

NV Madeira Wine Guide Special 30 Year Old Blend Madeira
375 ml bottled 6/30/09 by Peter Reutter as a gift for my 52nd birthday. Opened during my brother Mitch's 50th birthday weekend. Medium-tawny amber color with an orange-gold rim. Wild bouquet of molasses, mahogany, pecan and tangerine made for a heady scent. Soft and silky, yet viscous in the mouth this was something special and I'd love to know what the components were. Stunning, sharp acidity and within the Verdelho-Bual range of sweetness. Wonderfully nutty pecan nuances emerge in the packed midpalate with caramel and citrus peel flavors. The drying nature of the finish is supported by sumptuous velvety texture and exquisite length. Thank you Peter!
94 Points (2010-02-04)

So right now (May 2010) the blend is made from exactly 10 different wines (counting the 10 YO as one wine). The base is 10 year old Boal blend from Barbeito, about 8 bottles of it. Thinking very simplistic in the beginning I added small amounts of other wines I felt had main characteristics that I wanted in my blend.
So we had Nicolas Brown Madere 1835 for acidity (you remember that one, may be the most acidic Madeira I have ever had ) 1900 Adega de Torreao for a bitter coffee note, Borges 1935 Boal for a molasses finish, 1907 Blandy Boal for vanilla, 1878 Justino Fanal (probably TNM) for orange peel and so on.
After starting in early 2009 with small batches I was completely surprised by how different the dynamics of blending were going in a huge 10 liter glass bulb compared to the small batches I had made before. For the next couple of months I made small corrections but ever so slighty and only with lots of time in between. I am still not completely satisfied, but I decided to let it rest for half a year and see how things evolve. Anyway blending seems to be a much more complex job than I ever imagined
And by the way, when you count the 10 YO as exactly 10 years, the wine has an average of 42 years, so I will change the name to 40 year old And because of the little amounts of wine added, there is still the complete 10 liters left.
Peter
Peter

[Eric Ifune]

Peter,
Will you treat this as a solera type wine, i.e. drawing off some, then replacing it with newer wine?
I'd love to get a 10 liter demijohn for myself!

[Moses Botbol]

That is just too awesome! Bravo. Must be nice to be one of your drinking buddies!

[Peter Reutter]

Eric,
I found the 10 liter demijohn by accident, when I cleaned out part of my parents house. It had this very old-fashioned wicker-case around with to big handles and so this thing asked for being taken away But of course you can get new ones in even bigger sizes. I also thought about a small cask, but then realized that the wood/wine-ratio would be heavily on the wood-side and probably kill the wine completely. Also there are small casks that have been sealed on the inside with a special cask-film so that it acts almost like a demijohn. But since demijohns are well established with Madeira I decided to go with the one I had.
I have not yet made up my mind about treating this as a solera or not. After realizing how difficult this blending bussiness is and how much influence even a small amount of wine can have - I am just frightened about how adding a half bottle or even a full demijohn-tenth of different wine will alter the whole blend.



Moses,
if we meet at a tasting some day (Roy might just do one more ) i will bring this wine along and I'll be happy to pour it



The whole thing started out of curiosity and I did completely underestimate the complexity and difficulty of this. But it has been very educating for me, teaching me a lot about Madeira wine. And most of the time it has been a lot of fun, especially the tasting part So anyone thinking about doing something similar be asured, it is definitely worth the trouble.

[Roy Hersh]

Peter,

I've been enjoying every post in this thread and wanted to give people the opportunity to chime in before I commented. As you've posted my TN here, it is obvious that i tried your last attempt at a blend. May I please ask to be given another chance to craft a TN on your upcoming effort? It would be an honor, although I can't guarantee you that I would taste it until an appropriate moment toward the end of the year.

I am enjoying this thread and hope that it continues! Your contributions to this Forum, always enrich those of us who get to read your fascinating and educational write ups.

Take good care and please wish your brother my best too!

Roy

[Moses Botbol]

I am suprised how sensitive the blend is to subtle additions and changes .

[Peter Reutter]

I used to add portions of 100ml to the 10 liter total, so that would be exactly one percent. I certainly do not have the best palate/nose, but when tasting and comparing a sample taken before the adding of a new wine with the result afterwards I could tell the change. So now I am down to adding just 50ml (1/2 percent of the total volume) and this works much better.
Another problem is acidity: Being limited to a 10 liter total I added rather concentrated wines to the blend because I was staring to run out of space in the demijohn. However all these concentrated wines have pushed the levels of acidity up to scary levels. I'm an acid freak and I still like the level of acidity in this blend, but I'm afraid I can't add much more.
I was thinking about Eric's comment with the Solera suggestion and may be I will do just that: Remove one or two bottles from the blend and fill it up with the "base wine" (10 YO Boal Barbeito) to sort of "water down" the blend (I hope this is the right word).
For the next few months I will just sit and wait and look (and taste ) what happens. There is a bottle shop with very nice 0,375 liter bottles coming with corks and shrink-foil caps close to my parents home and may be I'll just bottle all of the blend in these bottles and sit in my cellar and congratulate myself for the suddenly stuffed shelfs
Peter

PS: And I'll be more than happy to bring another sample, Roy!

[Moses Botbol]

A solera would be a dream. I can only dream about a Solera where 10 liters gets added/taken every year. I think that would be plenty of to make it worth while, lol..