| Score: |
94 JGWA.
"How do you assess a wine like this? Slightly cloudy (even though the bottle had been standing up for three days: some advise that with very old wines like these ideally you don’t want to disturb the sediment at all, so you take them from their horizontal position in the cellar, transfer them to a decanting cradle and uncork them without letting the bottle reach a vertical position: once these old sediments are disturbed, sometimes they never settle again). It’s a brown/orange colour with a reddish core. Very evolved nose is a bit Madeira-like with acidity evident and an earthy, spicy character, although there’s still some fruit sweetness. Very mature, but still alive. The palate is spicy and complex with a lovely savoury, earthy edge, displaying hints of caramel and tar together with fruit sweetness. There’s lingering lemony acidity on the finish, that again reminds me of an old, dry Madeira. Still drinking nicely with great length and intensity. Very good/excellent." Jamie Goode, WineAnorak.com, Mar 2005 |