Blandy's Sercial 1989

Tasted from a 50-cl mini sample. Sercial grapes from Calheta. Aged in the canteiro system, in 650-litre casks at room temperature until bottling. TA 10.77 g/l, VA 1.1 g/l, RS 55 g/l, pH 3.34. 204 half bottles, 1,137 75-cl bottles, 48 magnums, 15 jeroboams, 3 melchiors (18 litres). Harvest winemakers António Serôdio and João Pedro Ramalho, bottling winemaker Francisco Albuquerque. One of Blandy's 2024 releases. Starting to turn rose mahogany in colour, this bone-dry-tasting wine is a slam-and-judder of storm. It's ginger root and rain-soaked peat and storm-slashed rocks and salt on bleeding lips. It's rust and tamarind and the roar of a restless black sea crashing, curling, foaming around jagged rocks. When you taste this wine, you taste it in your chest, in your breath, in your lungs. It's exact. Uncompromising. Like a Sylvia Plath poem in a glass.

“The vintage Madeira 1989 Sercial was produced with grapes from trellised vines in Jardim da Serra and Seixal from handpicked grapes over the course of several weeks, mostly on volcanic soils. It matured in used 650-liter oak barrels at room temperature until bottling. This was the first wine that fermented with temperature control and very high extraction, lots of extract. It's very powerful, with a hard edge and lots of acidity. It has the notes of low tide and iodine, seaweed, very salty, reminiscent of some Palo Cortado. This is a wine to sip slowly and age forever... This is not a wine for everyone, but I love it. There are 1,137 bottles and some larger and smaller formats. It was bottled in April 2024.”