MIT Madeira Tasting Recap

This is a follow-up to my previous post about the MIT Club of Boston Madeira tasting, held 6/16/16 at Gordon's Liquors in Waltham, MA.

The reason it took me so long to actually post something about it is that I'M STILL REELING FROM THE AWESOMENESS.

If I wasn't a total lover of Madeira before that event, I was after it. All the bottlings were excellent, with my favorite value Madeira being the Rare Wine Company Savannah Verdelho, and my favorite vintage Madeira being...you guessed it, the 1875 D'Oliveira Malvasia. That wine was absolutely stunning. It almost brought me to tears. It broke me down into my constituent atoms, and then reconstructed me a better person.

To try to reduce the tasting notes to words feels almost shameful, but it really made me feel like I was deep in a cellar or some old earthen catacomb, sipping the last of something that is all too rare.

I'm hoping to do another old Madeira tasting but these things take a while to put together, due to the fairly complex supply chain. Stay tuned if you're interested...

On a personal note, I got to meet a lot of great folks at the event whom I would not have met at one of my scotch tastings. Looking forward to getting to know them - and Madeira - even better!

MIT Madeira Tasting

I'm happy to finally say we're expanding our repertoire!

We're hosting an MIT alumni tasting of Madeira wine this Thursday, 6/16/16, at Gordon's Fine Wines and Liquors in Waltham, MA. I became interested in fortified wines (of which Madeira is a type) due to my interest in whisky, since a lot of whiskies are matured in casks that previously held fortified wines. Of all the types of fortified wines (sherry, port, Madeira, marsala, and vermouth are the notable ones), Madeira struck me because it has a lot of the rich, oxidative flavors found in some of my favorite whiskies...

...and it can be really freaking old! The oldest whisky I ever had was 50 years old (that's 50 years in cask, and just a few in a bottle), so it was distilled in the late 1950s or so. It turns out there are Madeiras that are much older than that, and we're tasting one at this event.

Here's the lineup:

• Rare Wine Company Charleston Sercial
• D'Oliveira 1937 Sercial

• Rare Wine Company Savannah Verdelho
• D'Oliveira 1973 Verdelho

• Rare Wine Company Boston Bual
• D'Oliveira 1977 Bual

• Rare Wine Company New York Malmsey
• D'Oliveira 1875 Malvasia

You read that correctly - one wine from 1937 and another from 1875. That's only ten years after the end of the U.S. Civil War! I've never tasted anything this old. I had a chance to nose both the 1937 and the 1875 recently and they smelled absolutely sublime.

Very much looking forward to sharing these historic wines with our fellow MIT brethren.