1982 D’Oliveira, BoalMadeira
1982 D’Oliveira, BoalMadeira These vintage or frasqueira wines are the top wines from Madeira. The ripening potential is almost unlimited.This madeira of the highest quality must have been at least 20 years in the barrel plus two years in the bottle before the sale can take place. This wine used to be called vintage madeira. A frasqueira must consist entirely of one of the top varieties that are mentioned on the label, together with the harvest and bottling year. Frasqueira’s always come from one good harvest year. They have undergone a mild temperature treatment and have been stored in wooden barrels for a long time. After bottling, the quality of frasqueira no longer changes. Because of their uniqueness, these Madeira wines are listed
Augusto Cunha
Some decades before, the Camachos had taken over an important 19th century producer, Julio Augusto Cunha & Sons, founded in 1820 and well-known in the 19th century for its fine vintage wines.
In his 1877 book on Madeira, Henry Vizetelly wrote about Cunha: “Senhor Cunha, who ships principally to England, Germany, and Russia, has a series of particularly fine Verdelhos, ranging from 1857 to 1873; some dry delicate Sercials, more than a quarter of a century old; a rich pungent Bual, already in its thirtieth year … with a Malmsey something like five-and-twenty years of age, luscious and refined, and beautifully rounded.”
D’Oliveira purchased another producer for the first time in the 1980s with the acquisition of Vasco Luis Pereira, another wine exporter that occupied a building adjoining Cunha in the center of Funchal. Vasco Luis Pereira had founded his small company in the 1920s, but his son had no interest in continuing in the business when his father died in the early 1980s.
And then in the early 2000s, Agostinho’s sons, Aníbal and Luis, bought the remains of Adegas Torreão, an important partidista located near the historic Hinton Torreão sugar works in Funchal.
The man behind Adegas Torreão was Vasco Loja, who had built Torreão into one of the island’s most powerful wine companies, supplying large amounts of wine to the island’s remaining shippers. But after his death, his children chose not to continue his work. D’Oliveira purchased the company’s Art Deco lodge along with the remaining wine in barrel, including such treasures as a 1971 Terrantez, a 1928 Sercial and Torreão’s famous 1927 Bastardo.
D’Oliveira’s most recent acquisition came in 2013, when it purchased Arturo de Barros e Sousa, a small and very traditional producer, next door to D’Oliveira’s lodge on the rua dos Ferreiros. As with the purchase of Torreão, Barros e Sousa still had stocks of Madeira in barrel, which D’Oliveira will, with time, bottle and release.
Related products
95 Jeb Dunnuck | 93 James Suckling | 95 Robert Parker's