D'Oliveira Terrantez 1978
Region: Madeira
Producer: Pereira D'Oliveira Vinhos Lda.
Why we chose this wine
1978: the year Louise Brown, the world's first IVF baby, was born. A Madeira from this vintage is a living piece of history — a wine that has been ageing for generations, owing its character to decades of patient cask maturation.
| Volume | 75.0 cl. |
| Grape Variety | Terrantez |
| Drinking window | now-∞ |
| Serveren bij | Served between 13-14°C, a fascinating pairing for aged cheese or almond biscuits — best enjoyed on its own to appreciate its complexity. |
| Alc. | 20.0% |
| Vinification | Fortified wine (cessation of the fermentation process by adding alcohol). |
| Ripening | Long aging in old barrels (Canteiro) in an oxidative environment (barrels are never refilled). |
What the critics say
JancisRobinson.com
20/ 20
Tasted 28-11-2023
Drink: any time
Drink: any time
Tasted from a mini sample bottle.
There's something Islay single-malt whisky about this wine – the most whisky-like wine I've ever come across. It's peat and smoke and cedar oak. It's the tang of wild, salty sea and rocks and maritime bracken clinging to the edges. It's seaweed and iodine and the bitter twist of hours-brewed black tea in an old black kettle on an old black stove. And yet there is gold gleaming from every nook and cranny. Oranges, peaches, Cape gooseberries. It is so stunning, so breathtaking, that it transcends questions of perfection. It just is.
— Tamlyn Currin, JancisRobinson.com
Robert Parker Wine Advocate
91/ 100
Published 15-10-2020
“This sample of the 1978 Terrantez Reserva was showing nicely, offering up notes of warm spices, dried apricot, figs and raw cocoa. Medium to full-bodied, intense and nicely concentrated, it has racy structuring acids, nicely integrated sweetness and a bittersweet, somewhat phenolic finish. Characterful but somewhat rustic, it blossoms with aeration.”
— William Kelley, Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The producer
Pereira D'Oliveira Vinhos Lda.
In the hands of the same family since 1850, now in its fifth generation. D'Oliveira keeps 1.5 million litres of old Madeira in cask, with vintages reaching deep into the 19th century: classic Madeira, made the way it used to be.