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Tasted 7 July 2011 at TCP as part of the AbV II tasting

Links:

Review of the evening as a whole

San Leonardo 10yr Tawny (bottled 2010)
Barão de Vilar 20 yr Tawny (bottled 2010)
Fonseca 30 yr Tawny (bottled 1982)
1934 Dalva House Reserve (colheita, bottled 1973)
1986 Warre Colheita (bottled 2007)
Buller's Fine Old Malmsey (NV, Aus Rutherglen)
1969 Domaine Mas Mouriane Maury
1994 Dow VP

Planning and Arrangements
Placemats

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Opened @5.30pm, no decant, acquired by WS1 at an Anzac shop for £15ish.

Golden honey colour with intriguing nose, very little acidity but VERY sweet - almost like drinking a floral golden syrup. Lovely as a chilled aperitif - a real crowdpleaser for those with a sweet tooth. Too sweet for DRT, but i liked this a lot and was my pick of the evening.

This smelled like Lyall's Golden Syrup (someone, not me, said so) and was just too sweet for me to enjoy even though it was quite obviously a very good quality wine. Thanks to Wolfgang for allowing us to try it.

Since I brought the wine it must have followed the simple policy I apply for my cellar; I liked it when trying it before buying
Despite it is on the very sweet end it has a velvet touch as long as it does not get too warm the taste and smell is very upfront and concentrated. It is an australian version of the Malmsey Madera which is also the sweetest of the 4 varieties. Was at the time easily availble at Majestic and the ANZAC shop ~15£s where I bought it. Also there are at least two diferent bt shapes for this wine in circulation, the first version which we did not had on the evening looking more like an old dumpy Ferreira port bt. The wine in the old bt shpe is exactly the same to what we tatsed; guess they changed the bt shape over time. Also this is one of the affordable sweet wines the wine critic R. Parker gave it 95 points at the time.