Madeira of the week: 1832 Terrantez

After a splendid trip to Madeira, during the Christmas holidays, and tasting some astonishing Madeira's. I find that these underrated wines need some publicity. I have therefore decided to at least try to have one Madeira note published for each week of the entire 2012. I start with a magnificent bang of excellence.

1832 Barbeito Terrantez;
Golden with orange hue and yellow rim. Even as the cork went out of the bottle, it filled the room with aromas, pouring it into the glass, one could just sit and sniff it while the glass still rested on the table, getting ever more intense as the nose and glass finaly met up. Enormous intensity, layers, superb complexity, has almost every aroma you can think of, dried fruits, smoky hints, cakes, spices, wood polish, just ads and ads. Fresh and high acidity, intense, layered, fantastic length, minutes, could still taste it half an hour after the last sip. 100


This was tasted when visiting Barbeito outside Funchal, from the bottle above. I have never seen a note on this one, and never seen it for sale anywhere..... It's not listed in Alex Lidell's book on Madeira, and on the Madeira Wine Guide (which seems not to have been updated since 2006), it's not mentioned in the vintage guide. (There were a few other wines missing from that list as well). But another wine is, the 1832 Oscar Acciaioly Terrantez. On the 1795 Barbeito Terrantez, the Madeira Wine Guide states the following: "As Alex Liddell explains in his book “Madeira”, this wine originally belonged to the Hinton family. Oscar Acciaioly bought the wine from the Hintons. Later the wine was divided between his descendants. Mario Barbeito bought part of the remaining wine and returned it from demijohns to wood." Maybe this will be a future release and was bought in similar fashion, from the same source. As with the 1795 Barbeito Terrantez that I have actually tasted a few years back (a benchmark Madeira), this 1832 was magnificent as well.