Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020 - 68

Top 100 Wineries

O LD WO R LD

Broadbent

Ramos Pinto

PORTUGAL | MADEIRA
Broadbent's new single-cask bottlings embody the powerful,
oceanic and unique wines of this mid-Atlantic island.

PORTUGAL | DOURO
Port in an elegant Portuguese style, from vine to barrel to bottle.

JUAN TEIXEIRA

BARTHOLOMEW BROADBENT ESTABLISHED THIS
Madeira house with his father, the celebrated
British wine writer and auctioneer Michael
Broadbent, MW, in 1996. They scoured the
island for old wines, buying barrels of Madeira
dating as far back as 1933. For the new wines,
Broadbent established long-term contracts with
about half of the 2,000 grapegrowers on the
island, and hired Juan Teixeira to make them.
The 1997 and '98 wines we tasted are some of
Teixeira's ﬁrst vintages with the house. A range
of single-cask bottlings, they offer enthusiasts a
glimpse into the complexity of classic Madeira.
All the wines are aged in canteiro, the barrels
held in the rafters of warehouses, where the heat
slowly concentrates the wines. Over the course
of years, the wines are moved down to successively lower ﬂoors. A much slower method than
the more common estufagem, in which the wines
are heated in tanks, the canteiro method brings
unique characteristics to every cask, even when
they contain the same variety from the same
vintage (Broadbent's ﬁrst release includes four
different 1997 malvasias). And with their unique
combination of power, brightness and ageabilty,
they make it easy to understand why Madeira
was a mainstay in the early days of the United
States. -C.W.

1998 Madeira Single Cask N117 Boal ($113, 95
points) Fresh and saline, this wine smells like the
Atlantic. Salted lemon and blonde caramel give it
some weight, and a complexity that lasts in a crystalline splendor. The ﬂavors resolve into a pleasant,
faint impression, alight with the memory of its intensity, almost like the twinge of a good cigar in the nose
the morning after.

FOUNDED:

1996
OWNER:

Bartholomew
Broadbent

1997 Madeira Single Cask M233 Malvasia ($113,
95 points) Dark, candied stone-fruit ﬂavors permeate this wine, with notes of cherry pits and stems,
roasted bitter almonds and ﬂower petals. Sweeter
notes of crème brûlée ﬂecked by a green olive salinity
emerge with air.

WINEMAKER:

Juan Teixeira
ACRES OWNED:

None
ANNUAL
PRODUCTION:

5,000 cases
IMPORTER:

Broadbent
Selections,
Richmond, VA
68

ANA ROSAS

FOUNDED:

1880
OWNER:

Champagne Louis
Roederer
WINEMAKERS:

Ana Rosas
(Porto); João Luis
Baptista
(table wines)
VITICULTURIST:

Carlos Peixoto

WINE & SPIRITS

BUYING GUIDE 2021

2017 Porto Quinta de Ervamoira ($110, 94
points) Ana Rosas favors energy rather than sheer
power in Vintage Port. Her 2017, from a vineyard surrounded by the arid wilderness of the Douro Superior,
is rich in tannins, rounded and chocolatey, yielding
high-toned notes of ginger and pear skin over racy,
ﬂoral plum ﬂavors. It feels dynamic, tight, juicy and
clean, suited to aging for two decades or more.

ACRES OWNED:

544
ANNUAL

1997 Madeira Single Cask M204 Malvasia ($113,
95 points) Juan Teixeira made this malvasia in the
same manner as M233 (above), fermenting the wine
in stainless-steel tanks before fortifying it and aging
it in 650-liter American oak casks in the warehouse's
rafters. Tasted side by side, this wine is spicier than
the M233, with effusive notes of tobacco, peppercorn
and Indian lime pickle. There's a molasses undertone lending richness, but somehow the texture feels
crystalline.

TO SAY THAT RAMOS PINTO IS a Portuguese house
may sound glaringly obvious. But, in the context of the Port wine trade, it is, in fact, signiﬁcant. When Adriano and Antonio Ramos Pinto
founded their ﬁrm in 1880, they entered a business dominated by British shippers in Vila Nova
de Gaia, sustained by the grapes that Portuguese families grew in the vast Douro canyon
upriver. The brothers' descendants successfully
integrated the businesses of growing grapes and
making wines, growing close to 90 percent of the
fruit for their Port production. They also set out
to explore their quintas in ancient and modern
styles of table wine. This year, it was the work of
Ana Rosas, master blender of Ramos Pinto's Port
wines, that earned the ﬁrm its Top 100 award. A
great-great niece of Adriano Ramos Pinto, Rosas
worked closely with her cousin João Nicolau de
Almeida, managing director, until his retirement in 2016. The elegant 2017 Porto from the
Quinta de Ervamoira she fashioned could be
seen as a tribute to Nicolau de Almeida, who
began his career planting this remote site in the
Douro Superior while leading a research project to select the most promising varieties from
the Douro's ancient and diverse mixed planting.
The results would lead to further experiments at
Ervamoira, as well as at Bons Ares, a high-altitude site providing freshness to Ramos Pinto's
table wines, and Bom Retiro, prime land on the
south bank of the river in the Cima Corgo district. Since Roederer acquired Ramos Pinto in
1990, it is now officially French, though still run
by descendants of the founders, with a distinctly
Portuguese elegance to the wines. -J.G.

PRODUCTION:

76,850 cases
(Porto); 68,150
cases (table wine)
ESTATE GROWN:

N/A
IMPORTER:

Maisons Marques
& Domaines USA,
Oakland, CA

Porto 30 Years Tawny ($115, 93 points) Fully
mature, its barrel-aged character brought into harmony by a touch of freshness, this is luscious and fat,
with the dark bitterness of tobacco and espresso to
balance its richness.
Porto 20 Years Tawny Quinta do Bom Retiro
($70, 91 points) Sourced from Bom Retiro, owned
by Ramos Pinto since 1919, this wine has an earthy
honey scent that suggests its supple textures while
its orange-marmalade ﬂavors hold a brightness that
leaves a lasting impression.

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020

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