For The Love Of Port

Roy,

First of all, the write up on your Madeira Tasting was a complete joy to read. Thanks for the virtual tasting education.

My question is concerning the 1862 D'Oliveiras Sercial Vintage Madeira –
"The family believes that cask aging is far better for Madeira than aging in bottle; therefore they only bottle what is needed to meet current market demands."

I assume that this same Madeira might be quite different depending upon the bottling date given the additional cask time in between bottlings?

Scott

Scott,

I have 1954 Barbeito malvazia bottled in 1995, 1996, 2002, and 2003. I am also curious about how much difference there might be between the earliest and the latest bottled.

Gary

Gary,

I don't drink Madeira but I would guess that the answer to your question is "not much" unless someone tells me these are treated like Solera's where you are really talking about a different wine each time it is released.

Given that your wine started life 53 years ago I wouldn't expect much difference between each of the bottlings from between 41 and 53 years old. The difference between first and last may be distinguishable but perhaps not from one sequential bottling to the next.

As I said, I'm just guessing here.

Derek

Derek is spot on. I'd be surprised if "blind" tasting all bottles, you could detect which were the two bottles with the most extreme age difference. I drink a good amount of Madeira as you'll read in the next 3 months, and I can say that I very seriously doubt that I'd distinguish almost any difference, even if I was looking right at the labels.

Now an 1862 that was bottled in 1974 or 2005, might certainly show some variation. Yet, I don't think that with over 110 years on the bottle with less cask aging, you'd really note much difference overall from the 2005.

For those with a love of Port, there is a greater difference in the bottle aging vs. cask aging of Colheitas and I will do a comparison in an upcoming article after proving the point to a number of friends.

One interesting thing is that Barbeito bottles rare vintages after demand if they don't have them in stock.

Last year I pre-ordered, months ahead, many bottles from them:

Barbeito 1946 B-1939 M- 1917 S- 1905 M-1934 M- 1936 B- 1931 V

They had IVM stickers T 0538633 numbered upto T 0538639 .
So "MY" bottles were all bottled on the same day ( July 2006 ).

The other 7 bottles had different stickers, that meant they were in stock.

This is very good, since the wine stays in the cask until the last drop !! :?

Reidar wrote:They had IVM stickers T 0538633 numbered upto T 0538639 .
So "MY" bottles were all bottled on the same day ( July 2006 ).

The other 7 bottles had different stickers, that meant they were in stock.

That is a very cool thing. It is almost like having sequential 100 dollar bills... very rare I would suspect!

Todd

You mentioned that you pre-ordered btls, is this omething that anyone can do? I don't particularly need any vintage but it is a very good service, does it mean you get a good price cause it has not gone through the hands of a dealer?

Tom

Put it this way, since I cannot get anything sendt in the mail, I want to have it ready upon arrival, especially things they may not have in stock when you pop up. Of course, if you have the right connections, you can drop a couple of middle men.