Peter Reutter's Madeira Blending Experiment?

[Barry Sunderland]

Whatever happened to Peter's Reutter's Madeira blending experiment?

[Peter Reutter]

Dear Barry,

I bottled three 0,375 l bottles at the end of 2011 for a special occasion. The rest of the blend is still in demijohn, about 9 l of the original 10 l are left. I started a new position at my job, so I have been very busy and had little time for the blending bussiness.

I would like to increase the overall blend volume to 20-25 liters, without making any sacrifice on quality. I started making little blend samples from a variety of opened old vintage Madeiras and a 10 year old "base wine", sort of like doing the initial blend. But since I no longer have some of the vintage Madeiras that partially went into the first blend, I will have to replicate the MWG blend using whatver I have in my cellar now. This is going to be interesting and of course I will have to taste a lot

Hopefully the 15 liters of the second blend will come close to the first one. Then I might just put the two together, adding up to 24 liters, leaving some reserve volume for fine tuning. I admit, after scoring 94 Points from Roy with the first blend (beginners luck), I am somewhat scared to ruin the whole thing, so I will proceed very slowly. And of course I will have to taste a lot

Best

Peter

[Bradley Bogdan]

It sounds like there's a great story to all of this that I'm just hearing about through this. I'm assuming this is chronicled int he newsletter somewhere, can anyone point me to where?

[Peter Reutter]

the original thread started here:

http://www.fortheloveofport.com/ftlopfo ... f=2&t=7091

Peter

[Peter Reutter]

and there is the MWG post about the blending:

http://www.madeirawineguide.com/10madei ... ira_blend/

[Barry Sunderland]

Thanks for the update, Peter. Keep at it!