For The Love Of Port

Actually, your personal favorite producer of Madeira ... not necessarily the producer you currently own the most bottles of ... but if money was no object ... (we can always pretend) which producer would make up the largest proportion of your Madeira holdings?

Today, well it must be D'Oliveiras, because they still have stocks of old wines, and very excellent.. Can't help it, but I love their 1900 Moscatel so much, though I love sweet stuff ( and my doc disagees )

As much as I enjoyed Reidar's post, I am surprised that all of the Madeira lovers are not flocking in here to weigh in with their opinion. Are you all on vacation together?

For current releases, D'Oliverias both for the fantastic quality and their stock of old wine. I've loved every Blandys from the 2nd half of the 19th C that I've tasted. For QPR, I love Borges; I only wish I had more experience with their old wines.

For overall quality, pricing and availability it simply has to be D'Oliveiras. Their 1850 Verdelho is just marvelous, also the Boals from the early 20th century.
I also love the 19th century Blandys (T 1846!) and Cossarts a lot, but these wines are really expensive today, if you can get your hans on them at all.
Barbeitos have some good wines as well.
Borges' old wines are superb, also hard to find these days, in general their pricing is very moderate.
H&H's heavenly quartett is out of this world, but the pricing is insane...
Still it is amazing how just a couple of producers can manage to output such a wide range of different wines.

This is a tough question, as a producer's "bottling" may not have been made by that particular producer. So many bottles seem to transfer hands and then get "re-branded". A similar issue arose in this thread, which dealt with a producer's "house-style":
http://www.fortheloveofport.com/ftlopfo ... f=2&t=5670

But putting that issue aside, I would probably go with D'Oliveira... I've had so many stellar bottles from them... but probably because I've tasted bottles from that producer the most.

I've loved just about every Cossart Gordon vintage bottling I've tried... but alas not a lot of total bottles.

Overall my favourit is Henriques & Henriques; excellent vintages and very good young wines.
Their 20y Malvasia beats all competition in offering a wine that could be mistaken for a vintage.

The best Madeira wine experience up to now was the tasting of the four old reserves at H&H

Offcourse Oliveira for their huge range of vintages; though i'm not particularly fond of their nv wines.

Borges for their dry wines, both nv as vintage.

For the younger vintages and colheitas i'm particularly fond of the Arthur de Barros & Sousa wines

Barbeito has been my favorite to date. D'Oliveiras is great too.

I would like to try similar Madeira form different brands side-by-side.

That's better but where is Stewart, Richard, Heather, Steve, Andy ...

This could be really interesting.

Fortunately, I have enjoyed many great Madeiras in the last 2 years. Most of those were at 3 terrific events, the Leacock dinner in San Francisco, the Barbeito dinner in San Francisco, and the recent FTLOP Fortification Tour. I don't claim to be an expert, and there are many incredible Madeiras that I have yet to taste (1827 Quinta do Serrado Bual and 1802 Acciaioly Terrantez quickly come to mind) . But based on my experiences to this point, the top producer would have to be D'Oliveiras. My two favorites are both from D'Oliveiras; the 1850 Verdelho, and the 1875 Malvazia. Half of my top ten are D'Oliveiras wines. So right now the answer is easy, but subject to change with further exposure to more of these fantastic wines.

Considering what they make today, as a whole. I mean Frasqueiras, Colheitas, 10 20 30 40 YO, or even simple Madeiras. Old and new Stuff.
I will consider Barbeito. They have some great "Lotes" of those noble grapes.

Considering only old stuff, pre 1930, well, there are so much good things that came from Barbeito, Blandy's, ABSL or D'Oliveiras, that i really can't tell my favorite.


JR

Caro Joao,

Here I had almost given up hope that we'd see you here again. Without Squires' BB as a reminder, I thought you'd never find your way back.

"favorite" as deemed by my wallet is Barbeito, followed by D'Oliveiras, Blandy, and Broadbent