1792 Malmsey Vintage Madeira

[Mario Ferreira]

I found this very interesting piece, written by Mr Robert Carnachan, published by the "San Francisco Chronicle" in its section "Letters to Wine" on January 12th, 2005.
Praise for Mr Carnachan :) (and also thanks to the SF Chronicle for printing the Article).
/MF ---------------------------------------------------

History in a glass

Editor -- I was attracted to the article on vintage Ports ("A wine for the ages") in the Dec. 15 issue of The Chronicle. The statement, "Vintage Ports may be the longest-lived wines" particularly caught my eye. In the article, reference was made to favorably tasting an 81-year-old Cockburn vintage Port in 2003, implying that these wines were extremely long-lived.

The reason that I was intrigued was that 34 years ago I purchased a bottle of 1792 Malmsey Madeira. As the United States bicentennial was only four years away at that time and I knew that Madeira was the favorite of our founding fathers, I decided to hold it until 1976 and drink it on July 4, thereby drinking the very vintage enjoyed by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others in celebration of what they had done to found the country that we live in today.

Madeira enjoyed the favor of our founding fathers due to England's embargo on shipments of French wine to the colonies. It was all right to bring in wine from the island of Madeira, which belonged to Portugal. And Madeira actually improved in traveling through the tropics.

The opening of the Madeira was delayed until Sept. 17 because my wife and I moved from Claremont to Sonoma in July. However, the great day arrived and we found the 184-year-old bottle of wine was still good. It was powerful, well blended and seemed to have an alcoholic content above the 20 percent indicated on the Sotheby's label. It was a true Madeira in flavor with a hint of smokiness. The wine was very well balanced and within 20 minutes or so, it became very smooth. The one area it differed from any other Madeira that I had tasted was its underlying smokiness.

ROBERT S. CARNACHAN
Greenbrae

[JohnG]

This story seems suspiciously close to that surrounding the 1792 which became the famous Napoleon Madeira of 1840, the history of which was recounted by (inter alia) Alex Liddell.

I like to think that romantic myths can be constructed around this wine!