2011 Verdelho Colheita

Bottled 2024. Tremendous flavours of mint, white chocolate, honey and caramel, long-preserved apricot fruit – there's an affinity with Sauternes here. The acidity is brilliantly defining. A superior, sophisticated, balanced and complex style. Mesmeric. (RH)

Tasted from a 50-cl mini sample. Verdelho grapes from Porto Moniz and Calheta. Aged in the canteiro system, in 650-litre casks at room temperature until bottling. TA 7.5 g/l, VA 0.48 g/l, RS 80 g/l, pH 3.3. 2,400 75-cl bottles. Harvest and winemaker Francisco Albuquerque. One of Blandy's 2024 releases. Smells like a spice souk, and amber – I love how a wine can smell and taste like a colour. This one is as amber as it gets. It even has that amber glow and iridescent swirl, as if shimmering acidity and the slow curl of a midnight cigar were somehow trapped for all time in every molecule. There's more fruit here than there was on the 2010 – every droplet tastes of ripe, just-picked apricots, of quince, of blood oranges. The spices sift through, soughing softly, as if blown in on a gentle, salty sea breeze. Then that cigar on the finish; just lit, fragrant, hinting of orange peel. You can almost lick it off the warm azure blue of a huge midnight sky. (TC)

The 2011 Verdelho Colheita Single Harvest comes from Porto Moniz and Colheita, with 80g/L residual sugar and 7.5g/L total acidity. Dried honey, marmalade and wood varnish scents define this vibrant nose. There's real penetration here. The palate is rounded in the mouth and more viscous in texture than the Sercial, but the acidity keeps this fresh, and there is real weight on the finish. Excellent. 2,400 bottles released.