The 100 year old wine who...

...climbed out of the bottle and disappeared

If you're the average UK wine buyer, chances are you will be buying 90% of your wines from the supermarket, most of which are ready for drinking now.  Occasionally you may buy a nice bottle or 6 on holiday, or from a wine merchant, and you may keep them for a few years.  Mostly, the wine you'll drink will be less than 10 years old unless you've got a penchant for Vintage Port or Grand Cru Bordeaux.  Or you have a lot more cash than me.
Even serious wine drinkers and experts are challenged to get their hands on wine that's more than 20 years old.  Try buying something decent for a 30th birthday from the year of birth.  When it got to my brother's 40th, I fell back on single malt whisky from his year of birth - it was far easier and probably more reliable.
So when I got the chance to try a wine that was over 100 years old, I jumped at the chance.  After all, I'm celebrating one  year of Purple Teeth!  

You might be wondering what the wine is.  Well, I got to taste it when I was out crewing at IWC.  Although it wasn't one of the wines submitted for the competition, I'm not going to mention it by name just in case it was a previous submission. In any case, the chances of you getting your hands on a bottle are slim to none. But, I can tell you that it was a Verdelho Madeira from Colheita (harvest/vintage) 1912.  I've not tasted many Madeira wines in my drinking life, and I've never even cooked with it, so what I knew about Madeira was mainly theory from my wine studies.  There are 4 main types of Madiera wine (Portuguese fortified wine made in the Madeira islands) which are named after their predominant grape variety.""

1.  "Sercial": often drunk as an aperitif, is pretty much dry with high acidity and a flavour of almonds
2. "Verdelho": (a grape also known as Verdejo in Spanish speaking countries) has a bit of sweetness, smokey notes and high acidity
3. "Bual":  medium-rich in texture and pretty sweet with raisin flavours
4. "Malvasia": often known as Malmsey, the sweetest of all Madeiras with coffee caramel flavours, and again, high acidity that stops it becoming too cloying

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I surprised Mr Purple Teeth with a small sample and he was just as stunned as I was.  Yes, there's the smokey tone that older wines often have, and of course this wine style is deliberately oxidised (meaning that though it's a white wine at base it's quite a dark brown colour with nutty and caramel aromas and flavours like an Oloroso or Amontillado Sherry).  Here any similarity to those sherries ends.  There's just so much acidity and still some lifted citrus fruit notes on the palate it's simply unbelievable that this wine is not only 100 years old, but indeed has been open for quite a while. After swallowing, the very long finish is reminiscent of candied orange peel. It's mouthwatering, juicy and just right as a light dessert replacement, or alongside a small salted caramel truffle.  (Yes, dear reader, I checked that for you, so you don't have to). It's not very sweet, but sweet enough to pair with say a tart lemon dessert.  I'd been under the misconception that Madeira was somehow a "dull" drink and only fit for cooking with, and yes, this was a misconception!  What class in a glass that can last 100 years and still be worth drinking as you watch the Strictly elimination show.  (I needed it just to get through seeing that terrible tartan tango for the second time).

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So what makes Madeira different from other wines that means it can really last a lifetime?  Well, this wine is built to last.  Madeira, as a fortified wine, was invented back in the 15th or 16th Century when sailors found that the large vats of wine they were taking on their long voyages to the new world and elsewhere were spoiling at sea.  Some way of preserving the wine was needed, and initially a distilled sugar alcohol was added in a method similar to Port.  (Now most fortified wines are fortified with grape "brandy").
What we now know as Madeira came about as a further accident when one ship actually made it back to port with some of the wine. Clearly there weren't many drunken sailors on that trip. And we can thank them for their abstinence as it was soon discovered that the wine which had been on a round trip tasted even nicer due to the heat of the sun and the extended aging.  Now don't try this at home!  Pretty much all of the wine on your rack will be destroyed if you leave it in the heat of the sun for any length of time.    

Eventually, around the 17th Century, the process of aging the wine with heat in "estufas" or warm rooms/lofts for 5, 10, 15 or even 20 years was refined. Modern day high quality Madeiras are still made in a similar way, though cheaper versions are available where the aging process is expedited by almost "cooking" the wine by running heating elements through it at up to 55 °C for a minimum of 90 days.  Vintage Madeiras can still undergo traditional aging for up to 100 years.  

This wine style suffered a great decline in popularity at the hands of the Russian Revolution and the American prohibition, but luckily production has survived and quality wines are still available.  Got a 40th birthday coming up?  I've found some UK suppliers of 1974 Madeira, though sadly none of 1914 with which to bring in the New Year.  Of course, these wines are over £100 a bottle but for about £40 you can pick up one as a 21st present from 1992 or 1993.  Maybe you'll want to consider buying one now for a new baby to drink with them on their 21st - at least that way you won't have to worry about storing it correctly or it going past it's best.  But as with any major wine purchase, do seek advice from an expert.  

Meanwhile, I've piqued my own interest in this wine style, and I hope to explore it more in the future.  Hopefully I've whetted your appetite to try it too.


Cheers!

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