SF | Incredibly deep, toffee-apple color, only the faintest degradation at the rim. What can this be? The nose is assertive, uncompromising: smoke, tar, volatility, alpha-male impetuosity. What can it be, he asks again? The palate, for the first time today, takes us into the college library, the silent contemplation of a cold, ascetic denouement, for which one clearly has to wait, this wine aged a mere 53 years. For how long? Hard to say, but no time soon; everything is there, held in rigorous, almost petrified counterpoint; it would almost be churlish to gainsay a potential to develop, to improve, to fulfill a clearly flagged potential. 93
AJ | Very dark in both depth of color and hue, for some reason, almost like a postulant Malmsey Madeira. A light ebony; no green glints, but they can't be far away. Aromatically it is very casky and old-wood-sodden, but there's more than that, too; a kind of wealth of modulated and aged fruit aromas beneath. A deep, dense, fruit cake/Dundee cake, powering through the staves. Exciting. Hugely concentrated on the palate, powerful and almost rasping; it must have spent much longer in wood than most of its peers from the 1970s. We are getting toward the kind of extractive force that makes old wines blending elements rather than single sips, so austere are the single sips. But here it carries sugar, and sugar reconciles us to its extractive force. This is a wonderfully exciting Colheita, and I recommend it to all. Perhaps there are others that are still better in compositional terms, but none speaks time like this. 2024–35. 94
RM | Deep mahogany-red hue, with a thin olive-green rim; distinctly lifted, high-toned vinagrinho concentration on the nose, a bit too much for me to find enjoyable. Intensely rich, intensely sweet, and just verging on cloying, with a pronounced balsamic character mid-palate and on to the finish. Now unbalanced, in my opinion. A wine to respect rather than one to drink. 88