D'Oliveira Terrantez 1978

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.

“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.”