Otto,
I really appreciate your trip report.
We’re going to Lisbon/Madiera/Porto next March.
We’ve been to Lisbon and Porto, but not Madiera.
Thank you for your detailed report. It will be quite helpful.
We’ve started drinking Madieras so we’ll know what to expect.
Regards
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Like this?
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Yes, very similar except normally the planes do actually land! It was a lot worse in the past, before they built a runway extension on concrete stilts because the runway was super short too.
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Try landing in St Barts!
It’s exhilarating.
I have spent a lot more on wine since then, but relative to income, in 1983, the most I ever spent was a bottle of Petrus 1971 at the Wauwinet restaurant in Nantucket for $275. We debated this for several minutes, as it was a huge amount at the time.
We gave the somm a taste, who then came back and asked for another for the chef, and then looked longingly at the bottle and asked for another taste. I didn’t endear myself to him when I asked if he wanted some for his mother-in-law.
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I’m guessing you meant to put this in Your Most Expensive Bottle Purchase - #49 by Joe_G_a_l_e_w_s_k_i ?
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Otto, we may have been at d’Olivera’s at the same time. And a similar experience: bus loads of tourists coming and going while we slowly savored glasses of old vintages that were given just to us. Came home with two bottles, one from the early 20th century (not home as I write and not in my CT inventory, which I should correct). Loved Madeira the island, loved hilly Funchal, and developed a long term appreciation for this drink. Your notes are fantastic.
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This, or then it was the weirdest wine flex ever.
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Getting old.
Thanks @Otto_Forsberg for all the incredible information in this thread. I just got back from a week in Madeira and found this thread very helpful in planning activities on the island.
This was a family trip, so unfortunately I couldn’t persuade people to do multiple tastings but my partner and I managed to get away for a few hours one afternoon to visit D’Oliveiras, and am I ever glad we did. The experience was exactly as Otto describes. You sit down to a few glasses of entry-level wine poured by the slightly surly older women who run the place and then upon showing the slightest interest in the wines get treated to an absolutely unbelievable and totally free tasting. The experience was a little frenetic, since they keep showing up with bottle after bottle, but I did my best to take some notes:
- 2007 D'Oliveiras Madeira Verdelho Colheita - Portugal, Madeira (7/10/2025)
Winery tasting. Beautiful aromatics as others have observed, with notes of almond, hazelnut, caramel, dried orange peel, and a hint of baking spice. Medium body, medium dry on the palate, this is lithe and lifted, with a long, tart, nutty finish.
Posted from CellarTracker
- 2001 D'Oliveiras Madeira Boal - Portugal, Madeira (7/10/2025)
Tasted at the winery. Butterscotch, caramel, spice, a kind of rich musky, amber perfume on the nose. Round and medium sweet on the palate, fans out with notes of sultana raisins, walnuts, and ginger cake. Maybe a little lacking in acid for my taste.
Posted from CellarTracker
- 1994 D'Oliveiras Madeira Verdelho - Portugal, Madeira (7/10/2025)
Winery tasting. More medicinal on the nose than others we’ve tried today, this smells like a vintage amaro with hints of herbs, spice, and a whiff of smoke. Similarly lightly medicinal on the palate, quite tightly wound as well with real alcoholic bite and acidity collectively balancing the medium plus sweetness.
Posted from CellarTracker
- 1980 D'Oliveiras Madeira Boal - Portugal, Madeira (7/10/2025)
Winery tasting. Slightly more herbal on the nose than prior wines with notes of grapefruit, raisin, and old leather. The most complete and complex of the tasting so far. Round, yet balanced on the palate, with notes of nuts, spice, and yet lively citrus notes that I wouldn’t expect given the wine’s age. Exceptionally fine.
Posted from CellarTracker
- 1900 D'Oliveiras Madeira Moscatel Graúdo - Portugal, Madeira (7/10/2025)
Just an incredible privilege to be served this at the winery. Broad shouldered nose that smells of old wood and books, medicinal aged amaro, molasses, ginger, and dark chocolate/coffee. Incredibly concentrated and explosive on the palate, somehow contains the alcohol almost completely, with flavors of chocolate, dried fruits, citrus zest, caramel. Kaleidoscopic, a moving experience.
I really couldn’t believe it when they brought out the 1900 since it is the oldest wine I’ve tasted by far, and since they charge absolutely nothing for the tasting aside from giving you a chance to tip. Needless to say, I did, and bought two bottles, 1990 Malvazia (my partner’s birth year) and 1988 Terrantez. For those interested in comparing the relentlessly rising prices, here’s a photo of the current version of the price sheet Otto posted earlier.
A few other parting thoughts. Our best meal on the island was at Desarma, which was substantially better in our view than the other Michelin-starred restaurant we visited, William. Both are incredibly expensive, but the dishes were simply more memorable and enjoyable at Desarma. Both wine lists are heavily focused on Portuguese wines (Desarma’s is exclusively Portuguese other than Champagne, William’s is a bit broader than that), but the markups were less egregious at Desarma as well. The only strange moment was serving a glass of 1994 Barbeito Verdelho from a Coravin, a choice I can’t understand at all since Madeiras are virtually indestructible and need air to show their best. Lunch at Jaket on Rua de Santa Maria was also enjoyable, though I thought the small plates were better than the mains. Maybe we ordered incorrectly, but dinner at Casal de Penha (which appears in the Michelin guide) was very underwhelming.
As far as activities go, we really enjoyed hiking along the Levadas and above the clouds on Pico de Arieero, and had a fabulous cruise seeing several species of dolphins. We also took a drive out to Porto Moniz and visited the natural pools there, which was also a good way to see some more of the island, especially the northern side where a lot of the vineyards are. Hopefully some of these thoughts are useful for people planning a trip to Madeira–we had a wonderful time and I’d warmly recommend a visit.
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Thanks for posting that price list, @mattgw …
A few years back (well, at this point, maybe even 10 years ago), D’Oliveiras purchased the stock of their next door neighbor, Artur Barros. I visited Barros several times over the years, and one of their issues with the wine that their Dad had made was they didn’t have appropriate paperwork to document the actual grape composition for the EU when Portugal joined. So they took to just labeling their wines as Doce or Meio Doce in lieu of trying to identify grape. I wonder if the '29’s you show on that price list listed as Tinta Negra are based on those Barros wines? According to CT, I still have one bottle left of a Barros Meio Doce.
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So, here goes: if my memory serves me right (and I am confident it does), the 1929 does NOT come from ABSL since the Barros Bros didn’t transfer very old wines when selling their company back in 2013 (reason was, there were no very old casks left and all the very old wines with vintage were in bottles already, and it simply was not part of the deal).
Until 2015 it was not allowed to put “Tinta Negra” on the bottle, so it was just “Old Wine”, but since TN is now a noble grape also, the labelling changed and it is now allowed to sell as TN, and due to this fact it has also been decided to sell accordingly since prices achievable for noble varieties are naturally better than for just “Old Wine”.
Also, the 1929 does not come from the Adegas de Torreao, it is a wine from the initial Oliveira family stock.
Attachted the 2015 list not yet showing TN.
D’Oliveiras kept the ABSL stocks separate from the D’Oliveiras stocks. As of a couple years ago, Luis Oliveiras hasn’t decided yet what to do with the ABSL wines. We hope they end up selling them under the ABLS label.
Thanks for the additional info, @Eric_Ifune and @A_Platt. I didn’t realize that Barros didn’t sell all the existing stock in the sale transaction. Did they keep the store open after the sale and continue to sell this through retail?
While I liked to visit both Barbeito and D’Oliveiras (and the Madeira Wine Company as well) when I was on island, I have to admit that I really enjoyed stopping in to the Barros place. That inner courtyard where they had one vine each of the Madeira grapes was always cool, and one of my most treasured bottles that I still have (more from the rarity as opposed to the quality perspective) is a bottle of their Bastardo.
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Hi Eric!
Which I highly doubt; also see the example with Torreao (where the 1927 Bastardo derives from).
It is ABSL not “ABLS”, but you know this and it was a typo.
Maybe in some explanation you could (not “will”) in the future find the ABSL origin, but for sure not on the bottle’s front, but I honestly even doubt this.
And as for the stocks of bottled wines from the 1980ies until 2010s I don’t think those will ever be sold as ABSL, and if remembering correctly, there were not myriads of those bottles left, anyways. The casks that were at ABSL didn’t hold century old wines neither, and my feeling is that D’Oliveira will use those wines as needed (blending, tasting, maybe bottling them under their name).
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Yes, that’s what we think. It’s just that everyone was so taken by the Olim brothers that we’d like more of a memento. I’ve only a few bottles.