First taste: new vintage releases from Madeira Wine Company

The Madeira Wine Company (MWC) represents nearly three centuries of accumulated tradition. It is one of only two shippers on the island to carry large stocks of older Madeira wine. Cossart Gordon dates back to 1745 and is the oldest company still trading on Madeira.

As a result of mergers and acquisitions over the years it has become part of MWC, which also includes Leacock (founded a little later in the 18th century), Blandy (1811) and Miles (1814).

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for nine Madeira Wine Company new releases

In the mid-19th century the Blandy family was in a position to buy up stocks of old wines from other shippers that had been felled by the double whammy of oidium and phylloxera. This stood them in good stead and Blandy’s now plays a central role in the MWC which came under complete Blandy family control in 2010. Blandy’s still has wines ageing in barrel and demi-john going back to the 1920 Bual. It also has a museum stock of wines in bottle dating from the 19th century.

How Madeira is aged

No other wine develops quite like Madeira, which starts out as a light wine with high natural acidity. Once fortified, it matures with the benefit of oxygen in the island’s sub-tropical warmth. This serves to ‘maderise’ the wines, concentrating the sugars and accentuating certain volatile components.

The best wines – set aside to be either colheita or frasqueira (vintage) – are subject to the canteiro ageing process in cask, named after the racks on which the casks rest. In order to qualify as a colheita the wine must be from a single harvest and aged for at least five years in wood. Meanwhile a frasqueira must age for at least 20 years before bottling.

At their best, there is no wine more gloriously ethereal than vintage Madeira, nor a wine that’s quite so resilient. The ageing in extremis that would destroy most wines means that a Madeira will last and last, even after a bottle has been opened. These wines can be kept and revisited for weeks, even months!

Protecting vintage stock

Chris Blandy, managing director of MWC, represents the seventh generation of the family on the island. He explains the shipper’s current approach. ‘Over 150,000 litres of our stock has been ageing for 20 years or more and as a result of the canteiro ageing process, the angels have had more than their fair share. Today our philosophy is to continually improve the knowledge that we have on the process, from vine to wine, and to ensure that we are ageing more wine than we sell, therefore contributing to the protection of vintage stock for future generations.’

Since 2017 the MWC has released newly bottled wines in time for the annual Festa do Vinho timed to coincide with the start of harvest. As Chris relates: ‘Our colheita and vintage wine release programme is led by myself and our winemaker Francisco Albuquerque, supported by the tasting panel, to ensure that the wine is bottled at a perfect moment of consumption, whilst satisfying an ever-increasing demand from the global market.’

I was fortunate to have a preview of this year’s new releases earlier this year. All the wines come from one of the four principal white grape varieties: Sercial, Verdelho, Bual and Malvasia (Malmsey) in ascending order of sweetness.

All but one of these newly released wines comes from Blandy’s. The tasting started with a quartet of 2010 colheitas (or ‘single harvest’ ), followed by newly released frasqueira wines back to 1976.

These can be paired with a variety of different foods as I suggest in my tasting notes below. But my feeling is that the vintage wines are so thrilling that they really deserve to stand on their own. These are wines for meditation!

Madeira Wine Company new releases

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