What is your comfort zone?

[Roy Hersh]

When looking to make a purchase of Madeira, what is the pricing comfort zone for you? Some people like to buy quaffers to sit around and enjoy during their read of the Forum, while others prefer to have a majority of serious sippers for special occasions. Regardless ... what price range feels comfortable to you when buying a bottle of Madeira? Also, what is the most you have ever spent on a Madeira bottle?

[*sweetstuff]

I often look for 10-15 year old 'reserve' Madeiras but have found very little in the way of Sercial or Verdelho, the Madieras with which I'm least familar.

I am used to spending $100-125 max on a very special bottle of Vintage, which means that I don't buy much these days. My recent purchase (q.v) last week was a $180 Vintage Boal, which was the most I've ever spent on a bottle of Madeira, and for an 1860, was nearly a gift from the wine store and highly unusual these days. Obviously, Madeira needs to get more $25-50 bottles into this market. There are precious few, with the exception of an occasional Broadbent, to whom we owe thanks.

[John Danza]

The madeira that I typically have in the house will be either the 10-year Broadbent Malmsey or the RWC Historic Series Malmsey. Both of these go for about $40 in my area. That pretty much establishes my comfort zone on madeira price for everyday consumption.

The most I've ever paid for madeira was $400. I did that twice, buying the 1834 Barbeito Malvasia from RWC.

All the best.

[Gary Banker]

I'm comfortable spending up to $200. Above that, it depends on what the bottle is. The most that I have spent is $350 for 1884 Blandy's sercial.

I don't drink large quantities, so I can rationalize that allows me to concentrate on greater quality and age. A bottle will last week or two. After seeing how madeira prices have risen in the past, I think that in the future I'll be glad for what I'm buying now.

I haven't seen any 10 year-old under $40 in the area for a while; even Broadbent is over $40. Except for Blandy 500ml bottles, 15 year-olds are mostly $50-$55, so it's not much of a jump to harvest/colheita wines or recent vintages.

I think that for sercial or verdelho, H&H have very good 10 and 15 year-old wines. The RWC Charleston sercial is also good.

Gary

[Scott Anaya]

For everyday type Madeira's I only have Blandy's 5,10, and 15 yr choices in the smaller bottle formats and they tend to be kinda pricey at my liquor stores. So I generally only buy them occasionally, which means I drink less Madeira than I'd like. I'd love it if more affordable Madeira hit my market for daily drinking purposes.

Fearing that ancient Madeira is getting drunk up and will become ever more expensive, I am picking up maybe one old bottle per year.

The most I ever paid was $335 twice last year. One an 1850 D'Oliveira Reserve Verdelho and the other an 1880 D'Oliveira Terrantez. I still cringe at those dollar amounts per bottle, so maybe this is just outside my comfort zone, but in the close my eyes and just do it zone.

[Reidar Andersen]

The youngest I buy here in this country ( will return to that in the thread below when I have finished my answer to Peter about shipping ) are 10 year olds. ( Sometimes I buy Borges 5 year Malmsey which is very nice ).

I love Malmsey/Malvasia and Justino's cost $ 37 ( identical to the same under Broadbent label ) and H&H's cost $ 45.

Most expensive is Borges Family Reserve 1720 Pather which I bought from Patrick Grubb around 2002 for £ 1.000 plus British VAT ( 17.5 % ).
I say plus VAT since Norway is not memebe rof EU so I got refunded the VAT. :?

[Roy Hersh]

ReObviously, Madeira needs to get more $25-50 bottles into this market.

Did you happen to buy the Barbeito VB which is a blend of even parts Verdelho and Boal? It was $25 and a very nice drink at that price point. Sadly, there is not alot of Madeira out there under $40 that I want to put in my mouth. I really liked the Borges 15 year old that Reidar mentioned a year or so ago. I grabbed a bunch while there in May and wish I had brought a 2nd shipper. Darn fool.

I did just refire the pipe line this week on a bunch of the '68s though. I love that stuff!

Scott A.,

Check out my tasting note on that 1850 in tomrrow's FTLOP Newsletter in the Madeira featured article. You can open that when we meet and I'll open something equally as crazy.

[Scott Anaya]

Roy,

Yes! Madeira definetly needs more affordable offerings for daily drinking.

And sweet, looking forward to the 1850 D'Oliveira Tasting Note! Always game for a group-type opening where my good stuff gets leveraged for more good stuff! I can and often do get to and thru Seattle on Alaska Airlines who allows one free of charge stopover

[Peter Reutter]

The most I ever spent was on a bottle of Barbeitos 1795 T. I simply had to have one for my collection, not because I liked it so very much, but simply for reasons of "completeness". That one was 900 Euros in 2006, about 1150 USD. I still feel a little bad about it, but it was the last bottling, so there was no time to waste and so I went for it.
Usually 200 Euros is my limit for anything down to 1850, maybe 300 for bottles down to 1800.
The everyday Madeiras have to do with no more than 40 Euros, but in Europe you can get a number of decent 10 YO wines for that. Also I have come to like some 3 YO that are not bad at all, and these sell for as low as 8 Euros (10 USD) and I think that is a very fair price. Makes you finally drink Madeira as often as you should. Also makes you keep the expensive vintages for the special occasions.
Peter
PS: Roy! I succeeded and so my attention is back to Madeira wine again!
Will open some special bottle for that and be back with a TN.

[Roy Hersh]

Congratulations, my friend!

I am very much looking forward to see what celebratory bottling of Madeira you open up for such an occasion. I am sure it will be most fitting!

[Peter Reutter]

Dear Roy,

I had the strangest tasting of Madeira for a long time last night and I still do not know what to make of it.

After passing that final specialist's degree (after 14 years of training :!: ) I decided to open a special bottle to celebrate. A few years ago I had bought two bottles of a Verdelho 1838 from a private source in Switzerland. Never been able to find out anything about these two bottles, the seller claimed he had inherited them from his grandpa, no more information about it. The bottles are evidently old, early machine made bottles, driven cork, lead foil capsule. Only a small paper slip label with "VERDELHO 1838", nothing else, no producer, no initials, nothing. I had seen a similar bottle at a shop in Lisboa/Portugal a few years ago, I bought it via email, but when I tried to pay for it two months later, they told me it was allready promised and sold to another customer and so I never got my hands on it.
So finally last afternoon i opened one of the two bottles, I decided for the one showing just the slightest signs of seepage. The cork was moist and quite short, but still in good condition. From the overall condition of cork and bottle and the design of the label I would guess that the wine had been bottled in 1910 to 1930. No proof for that of course, just a guess. As soon as the cork got out, the most anoying bottle-stink you can imagine filled the room. It was terrible! My wife said something about rotten cockroaches inside the bottle, but I couldn't find any... I decanted it three times to make sure the wine got good air contact, but it did not change very much. Six hours later the smell was still terrible and I feared for the worst. I wasn't VA but a wet cardboard-like smell mixed with ammonia... I decanted it once more and let it breathe over the night. This morning I went back to it to find the smell a little less unpleasant. Before I went to work tonight I finally gave it a try: When I took the first little sip my mouth got burned by pure acidity, lots of lemon fruit, no sweetness, not unpleasant but definitely undrinkable.
I wonder what tomorrow brings. Is this just unrefreshed wine that has become so overconcentrated that it passed the state of being drinkable? Or is it some mixed fake wine? (Even though I doubt that.) Or is it simply a wine gone bad? I will keep you informed...
Best Peter

[Alan Gardner]

Hi Peter,
Sorry about your experience which, fortunately, seems to be very rare. I've been fortunate enough to have many old bottles and can really only recall one that was undrinkable. Bizarrely, I recall it as being an 1839 Verdelho (unknown shipper) - but it was almost 20 years ago (before I had a computer) so maybe it, also, was the 1838 and my recollection is faulty. I recall thinking it was a bacterial infection - not corked and not vinegar either.

On the more general question of what to pay, I have two approaches. For 'everyday' I will try anything/everything that I find under around $30 - if it's good, I buy a case! The best buy ever in that category was the Broadbent 5-yr-old, which (in the original shipping to Ontario) I preferred (and still do) to the 10 yr-old.

BUT - how we handle the rarer and more expensive Madeiras is that a group of us (we budget for 16 i.e. 1.5 oz each) buy several madeiras and meet "occasionally" - but always around beginning of December. We'll then have a 'bunch' of older madeiras with a meal (so typically start with the drier versions and finish with a malmsey) - if each person throws in $100 (say) we'll have the budget for 4 Madeiras at an average cost of $400 per bottle. That way we get to try 3 or 4 great old madeiras for $100 each! I know we only get about 6 oz total - but nobody has yet complained, and we've been doing this for nearly 20 years.
This also means we can even persuade people to pay more for a special item, so we've had several 1795's and a 1792 (and the ca 1780 that has been trickling out recently).
I recognise that getting 16 people may not be easy - although once we tried it, have NEVER had a problem getting contributors (yes, we'll sell off a place if somebody can't make it).
So, for example, this years event is expected to feature the 1907 Blandy Bual, and Malmseys from JB and d'Oliveiras, and maybe a 15 yr-old Sercial or Verdelho. Last year we had two different 1806 madeiras. Admittedly we bought these a few years back (but in the 2000's) - buying such Anniversary wines does require a bit of planning - if you wait to buy the 1907's this year you'll pay through the nose. But it's the approach that's important - who drinks more than 6 oz of madeira in an evening? (and those of you at the back staggering around saying "I do" probably shouldn't be).
I speculate that every single person reading this would happily pay $100 to try (at least 3) 100 year old madeiras. So look around and find those enthusiasts.
Incidentally, a wine club I'm associated with often serves ancient Madeira at its Christmas party in Toronto. Last year they sold about 100 servings of 1806 madeira at around $40 for a 1.25 oz serving (or $800 per bottle)!
Again, $40 to taste a 200 yr-old madeira is probably within everyone's reach (plus air fare to Toronto and hotel - which may not be!).

Alan

[Peter Reutter]

Dear Alan,

what a great insitution you have there, a "Madeira Tasting Group". I have tried to establish something like that in my area in Europe, but Madeira simply does not seem to be en vogue right now. A lot of people here still go crazy for watery Pinot Grigio...

There has been some development of the wine and I wanted to post the latest news on it:
The nose has opened up considerably after almost three days now, lots of rounded toffee and caramel, ginger cake, together with a pleasant diesel-like fragrance that can be found in old Rieslings. The bottle stink is almost gone, if i didn't know it had been there so badly, i could easily miss it.
The palate has also opened up a lot, but the acidity is still overwhelming, and the concentration is so high, it makes you throat sore. When the first acidic attack has passed there is lemon and other fruity aromas (pineapple, peach), pleasant but a little overpowered by the acidity.
I still think the wine is simply overconcentrated. If it stays like this, I will try to mix it with a little water and see what happens. I never would have though I'd say this... seems like a sacrilege to me...

Best

Peter

[Santo Roman]

The only comfort zone I have to watch for is my wife, other than that I try not to over due it.


Santo

[Eric Ifune]

I really liked the Borges 15 year old that Reidar mentioned a year or so ago. I grabbed a bunch while there in May and wish I had brought a 2nd shipper.

We really do need to find them a US importer.

The palate has also opened up a lot, but the acidity is still overwhelming, and the concentration is so high, it makes you throat sore. When the first acidic attack has passed there is lemon and other fruity aromas (pineapple, peach), pleasant but a little overpowered by the acidity.
I still think the wine is simply overconcentrated. If it stays like this, I will try to mix it with a little water and see what happens. I never would have though I'd say this... seems like a sacrilege to me...

Peter, perhaps mixing with a lesser Verdelho instead of water.

[Peter Reutter]

dear Eric,

thank you for the advice. i tried both ways, water and a 15 yo verdelho and both did not work. the verdelho was much better however, still the vintage wine came through all the way.

i bottled up the rest in a half bottle to keep it, my children can decide what to do with it in 20 more years or so...

best
Peter