Terrantez, Blandy’s Madeira 1987

The colour of cello rosewood and a wine that has the heart-breast-bone vibration of a cello played in a vast, dark, empty concert hall. The sound of this wine fills your body – deep, resonant. A red-gold maple-sweet timbre so fluid and fluent that you feel as if your throat might be melting into the stream, laminar over sweet, dark, rain-soaked stones. I could tell you that it tastes of kumquats cooked in honey and steeped in sweetly salted brine. I could tell you that it tastes of orange peel and hibiscus petals steeped in Darjeeling tea. This is true. But what matters more is that when you taste this wine, your eyes will involuntarily prickle with tears and you will feel as if someone kissed that spot at the top of your spine, sending a volt of tingling life through every nerve in your body.