Madeira hiding in my mother's cellar...

[Philip Harvey]

Now here's a find. Rooting around in my mother's cellar, I find two bottles of Maderia. Both have the faint remains of completely unreadable labels (probably the UK merchant's) but fortnunately, both bottles are beautifully stenciled "10 yr old Malmsey VJH" and "10yr old sercial VJH" respectively so no problem with identification.

On standing up, each has a complete wax capsule below which is a 'T' style rather than a driven cork as I guess you would expect . Shining the torch through the bottles reveals an alarming amount of lumpy sludge suspended in each. My mother has no recollection of either bottle and thinks they may well have been there when she bought the house ten years or so ago.

There's only one thing to do of course and the decanter and funnel filter are quickly fetched.

First the malmsey: Carefully running the wine through the filter fills the room with a wonderful sweet furniture polish smell and the first glass poured reveals a very dark slightly opaque nut brown colour – like the patina on your great grandma’s mahogany writing desk - cut through with a hint of green with distinctly green edges. A good swirl gives off wonderful rich sweet aromas which reminded me of hot christmas pudding smothered in melting brandy butter. To taste, lovely thick round mature flavours of dried peel, crème brulee, toffee and burnt toast. The wine is only just medium sweet on the entry and a lovely dry grippy finish with a fine toasty aftertaste. Really delicious wine.

Ok Ok, I know this isn't a 1795 Terantez or whatever, but a very pleasant find none the less and a testament to both the longevity of really any generic Madeira and the benefits of bottle stencilling!

Sercial note to follow.

[Andy Velebil]

Philip,
Its always great to discover some long ago forgotten bottle. Please do post when you open the other bottle.

[Roy Hersh]

Philip,

Excellent story. I am amazed at how many emails I get from around the world with people discovering bottles in their parent's or grandparent's cellars or bottles that were bequeathed to them. I usually am asked to put a value on these old wines and more often than not, the information they send me is inadequate, so I request a specific set of digital photos in order to authenticate the bottles.

Usually I am told they just want to sell the bottles, which I really try to discourage, explaining that the fun in drinking them will most likely surpass the effort to sell them, not to mention the modest price fetched for the bottle. Once in awhile though, I have had folks send me some extraordinarily rare finds, like a Long Island NY woman who has found a pair of bottles of Madeira from General Sherman (US Civil War) in her parent's cellar and sent me photos of the impeccable labels.

Anyway, thanks for your story of finding these two bottles which sound like they will make for some great sipping.