Andrew Jefford: Small sample of this staining, brownorange essence in the glass. Still a liquid— but only just. Aromas? You’d need to be sequestered with the wine for an hour or more to do them all justice. In fact, they aren’t all enticing: earth, tarnished brass (and the Brasso you use to clean it), rust, figs, chocolate, vanilla pods, old staves, charcoal, ash (and rain on ash, too), camphor, wood preserver... I could go on, but it would get boring after a while. Suffice it to say that this is a magnificent aromatic composite and that I enjoy the slightly repellent notes as much as the more obviously attractive ones. It’s obviously immensely old and the kind of thing one would normally only consider using as a blending component. On the palate, it is thick, austere, bitter— almost like the juice that former pipe smokers might remember seeping on to the tongue halfway through a bowl of Three Nuns or Gold Block. The difference, of course, is that this is also immensely sweet, and that infinitely complex sweetness lifts and carries the bitterness, just as the bitterness itself redeems and energizes the sweetness. An essence, in sum, charged with aromatic force. How do you mark it? You have to give it 19+, but I regard it as almost hors concours, since nothing else can compete with concentration of this order. (Nonetheless, it is an aesthetic success, too: more beautiful, for me, for example, than Tokaji Eszencia, which tends to taste like a sweet bodily fluid.) Hats off, and please do whatever is necessary to ensure that our children and grandchildren get to taste this in their day..19.5

Richard Mayson: Dark black mahogany; this is so rich, it coats the side of the glass. High-toned in the extreme, this sings at the top of its voice from the glass. It keeps coming back with more. Surely this is the ultimate blending— rather than drinking—wine, from the nose alone? Amazing richness and intensity. I don’t think I have ever tasted anything quite like this: black treacle and much more, the very essence of something... For admiring rather than drinking, so how to mark...? It leaves me with “a sense of wonder,” so there can be only one mark19 Jancis Robinson: Just 100ml available. A sort of glassstaining ration. Very, very old indeed. I suppose it is one of those old Seppeltsfield wines. Gunpowder plus syrup plus treacle plus smoky aroma. Very interesting certainly, and because of the sugar, easier to drink than, say, a very old dry Oloroso... But more of curiosity than a massive pleasure. Bitter caramel reduction on the finish. Not that sweet overall. Drink 1950–90 17.5