Thanks for joining us on another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Today, we are going to talk about one of my favorite styles of wine, dessert wines. And to guide us through this compilation of different wines, we have joining us here today, Alicia. Hey Roger, good to be here. Alicia from Wine. Chris. Hey Rog. I've always been famously interested in beer and spirits, but wine is a little overwhelming for me. Whenever I try to learn about something, I really pour myself into it. I start buying ludicrous number of books. So I just sort of refuse to fully embrace wine. Chris has given me crap about this over the years. I do enjoy trying different wines, but the one kind of subsect of wine that I've let myself delve into a little bit are fortified wine. So if you've listened to Barrel to Bottle in the past, I never shut up about Madeira. I love Madeira, really enjoy Sherry, Ports, but I'm excited today because we're actually going to try some other dessert wines. Some that like Sauternes that I haven't had many chances to try and some other really interesting ones like Tokai, which Chris told me the story behind that, and I think our listeners are going to find that pretty interesting because it's pretty Yeah, indeed. A lot of the production methods for sweet wines are kind of weird, and that's really what we're going to delve into today is how do you start with a vineyard and end up with luscious wine fortified or not? There are many methods, but they all have the same goal, which is sweet residual sugar. The secret to avoiding austerity in wine in this pairing is to make sure your wine is, in my opinion, just a shade sweeter than your dessert. You got to keep up with whatever sugars in the dessert. If there's more sugar in the dessert, your wine is definitely going to come off as austere and have some of that fruit stripped away, and it will not necessarily be pleasant. But there are great traditional bearings, and you don't have to stick with sweet. There are plenty of savory things that you can do with them. Hopefully, with each of these wines that we go through today, which we're going to go through five, you will leave with some food recommendations and a better understanding about how they're produced. I think we are a little bit more familiar with Fortify than we are with other methods, so we're going to hopefully introduce you to those today. But we're going to start out in a comfort zone for a lot of people, which is Sauternes, an Appalachian for sweet wine production in Bordeaux. As we taste this, we want to talk about noble rot, and specifically the fungus of Botrytis scenario, and its involvement in the production of the sweet wine. I need to loop in the king of fungi here, Mr. Chris Beer, to give us the nerdy take on Botrytis. Would you say this is perhaps the best Venn diagram of your interest, talking about noble rot? It may be. It may very well be, yes. Wine, science, fungus, it seems like it's the perfect topic for you to enlighten us on. I do have a science degree, so it may explain some of my geekiness here. I'm very interested in biology and I love to eat fungus. But here we're talking about not something necessarily edible, but something that is transformative when it comes to wine. Botrytis as it's commonly known, and I would add it has some really great names in various languages. In France, where it's done in several places, like Sauternes that we're going to see here. You'll also see it in Alsace and SGN bottlings, and you'll see it in the Loire Valley with Chenin Blanc. All amazing expressions of grapes affected by Botrytis. But in France, they call it Pure Ture Noble, which I like. But my favorite is the German phrase for it, which is Edelfowl, which is so cool. It literally means noble rot in both cases, but Edelfowl just sounds great. This can be the bane of most wine makers' existence, because it can take the form of gray rot, which is not desirable at all. It'll ruin your crop, and this will happen when there's too much moisture. But to get the proper noble rot, you have to have an environment that is humid, but not too much so, which is why a lot of these areas are on rivers, or have some source of cool water that produces some fog or some mist. It's a really interesting process, obviously discovered by accident, I'm sure, because the first person to make a wine out of rot-affected grapes was probably pretty brave, because it looks horrendous, you know. Imagine... it really does. Imagine literally rotten grapes with the fuzzy fungus on them. But the process by which the wines become luscious and sweet is through the action of this botrytis, and it works best on thin-skinned grapes. And if you are in the proper environment like Sauternes or Barsac, you'll get this growth, and it does several things. It desiccates the grape, therefore concentrating all of the dry matter in the grape, so sugar, acid, and all the other flavor components are getting much more concentrated, because you're losing the water. And it also imparts a flavor of its own. So this has to be done very carefully. Your grapes can't split. They really have to remain intact and have this mold growing on them. And then you surprisingly take these grapes and press them. And the result is just a tiny amount of glorious, incredibly sweet juice. But because of the concentration process, you also have a commensurate amount of acid. So the best ones have to be in balance. And a good noble rottwein will never be cloying. It will be refreshing and bright and exciting to drink, but it will have loads of luscious, sweet fruit. When they're done well, I always tend to find, almost always for me, saffron pops out. And sometimes even like a weird note of something like spicy like coriander or even celery seed, which I know that sounds maybe unappealing, but it's a really nice complexity against the richness of the fruit. And also like a gingery spice can pop up too. Yeah, I completely agree. Sometimes I also get kind of a rye bread component with petritus. When you say rye bread, I think you might be thinking of the caraway component maybe, which is in tune with what he was saying about that spice character that I- I think you're right on, Roger. I don't think it's so much rye per se, but a caraway seed, yeah. Occasionally you get like a minty note out of them. That definitely happens, but it's not like dead on kind of winter green note you get out of rye, but I do think caraway pops up. Yeah. They have a really special position there where the cold Siron River meets the warm Garon River. To Chris's earlier point, just want to underscore how important site is for botrytis and it cannot be made everywhere. Those damp, humid, kind of misty mornings, followed by warm, sunny, dry afternoons is essential, and there are only so many places in the world that can have that climate and that effect. So yeah, this is Sauternes. Sauternes is responsible for about half of sweet wine production in Bordeaux, and you can pay a lot of money for Sauternes, most definitely. But there are also some really good values, and we also sell a lot of half bottles, which is what we're having here. Chateau Guiraud Sauternes from 2015. This is at $27.99. And this is Premier Cru, Class A. So this area was classified at the same time as the rest of the left bank. It was, in fact, classified at the same time as the Reds, and there are two tiers rather than five. So you get the Premier Cru and the Deuxième Cru. This is Premier Cru, and then there's one very special designation for Chateau de Quim, which is Premier Cru Superior. So I would just add a little culinary note here, because almost universally in the States, people think of Sauternes as a dessert wine, but it's much more frequently consumed in France as an aperitif before dinner or with an early course in dinner, like something very rich like foie gras. It's not necessarily relegated to dessert status. You see much more commonly in Europe people drinking things with some sweetness, with maybe some bitterness, which sometimes on the finish of a Sauternes, you get a little hint of bitter going on. And so starting off with Sauternes is not abnormal, actually. And Chris, what's the breakdown here? So in Sauternes, we're looking at Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadal. What's the blend on this wine? So yeah, you're right. You got to have relatively thin skinned grapes. So these are well suited. And Semillon is by far the dominant grape variety in this area. Muscadal is really a bit player that adds a floral lift to the wines. But usually you're talking about a few percentage, maybe five. And then Sauvignon Blanc is the other player, but it's the minor key to the major of Semillon. And in this case, we're interestingly looking at a chateau with very, very deep roots in Sauternes. It's centuries old, but it was historically been the estate that grows the most Sauvignon Blanc of any estate. So in the past, they had up to 50% Sauvignon Blanc in this. Not to dwell on the past, but these wines can be so long lived that you can find examples from other eras that are drinking beautifully, so this is a category where you might want to think about the longer arc of history. However, in the modern iteration, we're down to a 65% Semillon and 35% Sauvignon Blanc blend, but that is significantly high in the Sauvignon Blanc compared to most places. Is that why I'm picking up some of the tropical character in this? I mean, let's talk about what this wine tastes like because it's unbelievably complex. Yeah, tropical notes are pretty common, you can veer in into mango and things like that, but very commonly also you're looking at stone fruits like peach nectarine, apricot, things like that, coupled with very honeyed notes, another botrytis effect It's super lifted on the nose and it somehow on the palate brings this kind of marmalade, but then alongside all these gorgeous dried fruit qualities too. So really refreshing style and the acid helps the wine a lot. Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, the key to any wine like this is this balance of acid and residual sugar. This wine would be terrible if you had lower acidity, it would just be blah, it would be cloying sweet fruit without any counterpoint. But here it remains light and refreshing even in the context of significant residual sugar and relatively high alcohol. I mean, normally these are clocking in at 14, 14 and a half. I don't know, what does the bottle say? 13 and a half on this one. Pretty moderate. Something that I think our listeners are missing out on too is how beautiful this wine is. I mean, it's golden, shimmering golden in color. It's unreal. Liquid gold, no doubt about it. One of the all-time classic pairings in the world of wine and cheese is Sauternes and Roquefort. So Roquefort's ancient cheese style, the epicenter of blue cheese. It's made with sheep's milk. In fact, the mold, again, we're going to talk about some mold here. It's in almost any blue cheese's name for Roquefort. Penicillium roquefortii. Yeah. This is one of these counterpoint pairings where you've got salty and pungent against luscious and sweet. I love that you mentioned that, Chris, because we harp on so much the, make sure your wine is a little bit sweeter than your food, and that congruent pairing, but sweetness and saltiness are made for each other, and the pairing that you've just had These wines may be pigeonholed in some people's minds as a certain style, but they're really much more versatile than you would think initially. So yeah, salt and pungency against these wines is incredible. I think you can even put this with Asian cuisines, where there's sweetness in the dish or spicy pepper influence or pungent flavors. And of course, the real classic is foie gras, rich, creamy, slightly sweet, fattened goose or duck liver, which is often served with a fruity sauce or even a terrine will be made with a Sauternes jelly on top. So it's already built right into your foie gras, terrine, absolutely classic. Let's head eastward to Hungary, and I'm really excited about this wine. I think, Roger, I think you are as well, right? Yeah. The story behind these, I walked up to Chris one day at Willowbrook. I was like, what's a weird wine that I should know about? You know the kind of stuff that I'm interested in. He just randomly launched into this. Yes. So we're going to have Royal Tokai's Five Petunias Azu from the 2013 Vintage. This is poured in a 500 ml bottle. And the first mention of Azu sweet wines came in 1571 and were really enjoyed across the royal courts of Europe. Then unfortunately, kind of saw its demise under communism. But I think Chris, you have a colorful backstory for us that at least brought Roger into the Tokai camp. Yeah, absolutely. This is a really interesting style of wine. And like you say, it's one of the earliest styles that was kind of codified for geographical area along with things that, very ancient things like Chianti goes way back, where people really kind of laid out where things should be grown. And it's all based on the soil and the microclimate here. So this is the famous Hungarian sweet wine. And it's made in a really, really weird way. You start out thinking it's going to be just like Sauternes. And honestly, if we're getting the sequence correct, Sauternes is more like knockoff of Tokai than the other way around. But... Yeah, suck on that, Frans. But so they've been doing these Botrytis-infected wines for centuries. And there's kind of a historical hierarchy to the styles. And instead of pressing the grapes that are Botrytis-affected, most of the wines are made by bringing in the Botrytis-affected grapes and making what they call a dough out of them. So they stomp them into like a thick paste. And it's the skin and the Botrytis and all and the tiny amount of juice that's left. And then a neutral base wine is added to it. So it's kind of this infusion process. And they would historically measure how sweet your wine was going to be, according to a putan or a putani. So you'll still see on the label sometimes a reference to five or six putonios. And that would be how many bushels full or putans full of Botrytis grapes go into the base wine. Very scientific. Yeah. Well, it's become much more scientific now. So they don't measure in putans anymore. They measure according to sugar content. Let's talk about how this smells and tastes because the smell of this is, I don't know if I've ever smelled anything like this in my life. Yeah. Despite sharing a similar color to the Sauternes, I think the nose is very, very different as is the flavor profile. But I just want to back up a little bit. We're talking ferment here. It's the grape variety. They also use Harshe Lévolu in Azu. Just again, to clarify, we're not drinking Essentia now even though we spoke about it, but we are just drinking a five petronius Azu. The other thing to note, which I think comes through a little bit in the wine, is that this area in Northeast Hungary is home to hundreds of extinct volcanoes. We get a lot of volcanic soils, which I feel that there's just a dose of minerality in the wine that was not present at all in the Sauternes. I think the fruit condition is very dried and less of that marmalade brightness that we had before. But what do you guys think? I think it's really pretty, but totally different. What I think is most pronounced here that your mouth just salivates so much because it's that combination of sweet and sour. We talk about this a lot with the hard ciders that people tend to gravitate to, are ones that, yes, have sweetness. Everybody dogs on some hard ciders for being too sweet. Well, some of the best-tied ciders are plenty sweet. It's just that they have the acidity to back that sweetness up. That's how I would describe this wine. It just, you clearly know there's acidity there, but there's also a good amount of sweetness. But it just, you take a sip and you immediately want to take another one. It's just unbelievable. Yeah, really great. You know, it just puts a fine point on why people who are in the beverage industry or really love spirits or beer or wine are constantly harping on balance because the magic of this wine is that exact balance. It's really well put together. It makes so much sense. It's refreshing, but luscious, and it does exactly that. It brings you back almost immediately for another sip. And how much is this one? $52.99. It's pretty incredible. I mean, I literally have never tasted anything like this ever. So right on, Roger. I'm glad you're enjoying it. This is truly incredible. I'm not just throwing around hyperbole here. This is absolutely an incredible wine. Yeah. I would point out just for the technical geeks out there that, as Alicia mentioned, Fourmint is the main grape variety here. So you can imagine this as the Sémillon corollary in the blend in Sauternes. And then Harsh Lévolu is the more like in proportion to Sauvignon Blanc in Sauternes. And there are several other little bit players you can have in there, including a little Muscat for Floral Lift plays the same role as Muscadet in Sauternes. Where are we going next? All right, so we're going to change production methods here and leave the tritus and noble rot. Sorry, Chris. But we are gonna stay in this camp of concentrating sugars, but we're gonna do it this time by freezing grapes on the vine. So we are headed to our northerly neighbors of Canada, specifically in the Ontario province and the VQA of the Niagara Peninsula. We're gonna have Cave Springs Riesling Ice Wine. Ice Wine is a trademark of the Canadian VQA. So they do have that, but of course, we see Ice Wine known as Ice Vine in Germany as well. But they have to leave these kind of healthy grapes on the vine late into autumn, but really well into winter for most places. And most commonly, they're picking these in January for the highest quality. So there are only a few places in the world that can do this. And those freezing temperatures turn the grape pulp into ice. And by law, they need to pick them once it's reached 18 degrees Fahrenheit, which I believe is about like negative eight Celsius. But so very cold. So they used to do these by hand, but realized that most people don't want to do that. So machine harvesting is on the rise. And Riesling, which we're having today, is kind of used for the highest quality. Vidal, a hybrid variety, is also used for ice vine, sometimes even Cabernet Franc. But because you think about the hardiness that the grape kind of needs to have to endure that freezing and thawing kind of process. But all of this again concentrates the sugars and the flavors and the acids. And they're going to ferment this in stainless steel. We didn't mention with the Tokai that minimum 18 months of oak is required on that. Whereas here with Riesling, given that it's this wonderfully aromatic variety, which I think really differentiates it on the nose to the other wines we've had, they're trying to preserve that. So it's in stainless and all of those sugars, as Chris mentioned, you kind of devouring a full Thanksgiving feast, you won't be able to finish and the sugars do not finish fermentation and can naturally stop around 9 to 11 percent of alcohol. So this wine is at 11.5 and generally relieving about 200 to 250 grams per liter of residual sugar. So does this see any oak aging at all or no? No. That's interesting because there's something on the nose here that is almost like a nuttiness or in a way, it kind of reminded me of oak, but not really. But yeah, maybe that it tastes like a candied fruit to me. There's like a candied orange peel. There's a big peachy character, but peach preserves not just like fresh peach. Yeah, I think you're dead on with that kind of preserve fruit, apricot or peach preserves. I also get candied lime zest in here. Yeah, Riesling is definitely the pinnacle of ice wine production, going back to Germany all the way to the 1700s. But Canada is just dominates now because on the Niagara Peninsula, you can do this year after year. You don't have to worry about it. You're always going to get a hard freeze and you have the moderating effect of the lake. They're right on the lake there. This seems like a good one to pair with desserts. I could see this going. It has the sweetness like you were saying before. If you need something to be as sweet as your dessert, this seems like the easiest when doing that. I think you could definitely do a custard-based dessert like creme brulee or something. But I would lean toward fruity stuff like tart to tan, or peach cobbler or pie. But yeah, you just got to moderate your sweetness in the dessert. But this one has plenty of sugar oomph. Yeah. Any dessert with peaches or apricots, I think would be divine with it. But yeah, you guys are right. It definitely has a more candied quality than we had in the previous two wines. And we sell this in a 375 milliliter bottle at $59.99. They really are values compared to some of the German stuff that's out there. I mean, you could pay literally $300-$400 for a top class 375 of German Riesling done in the ice wine style. And they are fabulous, but. I was thinking pineapple upside down cake. Yeah. Right on, Roger. My grandmother was famous for making apricot upside down cake. So just like pineapple upside down cake, but with apricots. And both my sister and I have taken that tradition up and you're right. This would be killer with that. Apricot upside down cake. I want some of that right now. And I will just add quickly before we before we move on. It's just that the yields for for these ice wines are about 10 percent of a still wine yield in the vineyard. They also run the risk of grapes becoming infected by some disease, by some pest. Birds. Or an animal, yes, eating these grapes as they sit on the vine. Every day that passes is a risk for this winery in terms of leaving fruit on that they may or may not see a return on. So that is kind of an explanation. That's funny. I'm glad you brought that up because I was going to ask that question. I literally censored myself like you're going to sound stupid being like, why don't the animals eat these? They're like, yeah, they leave them on forever. I'm like, how do they last? Honestly, wine grapes are hard for animals to resist and you can't blame them. Because if you even taste like Cabernet off the vine, they're so lusciously sweet, like beyond what you'd expect from a grocery store grape, which is part of what makes them suitable for wine. But how an animal would not want to eat that, I can't imagine. We're going to cross the Atlantic again, but we're not going to go all the way to mainland Europe. We're going to stop off in Roger's favorite place, maybe Heaven on Earth. I don't know. Is that true, Roger? I would love to go to Madeira. Yeah. We're going to head over to Madeira. Are the most underappreciated wine in our store, I think. No doubt. Especially for their potential to appeal to a very wide audience, not just wine drinkers. Yes. Not to mention the way it works in with your interest in history and seafaring history in particular. I think this is- Oh, yeah. Big time. This is all about you. Roger, this is your specialty. You want to share with us the age of maybe when Madeira was most popular, can we say, several centuries ago, and this style that was produced by accident a little bit, that we now have come to love. Yeah. Chris is spot on. I've always been interested in maritime history, and that's a very interesting connection to the production of Madeira, was the accidental magic that came about when they were shipping barrels of wine to distant ports, and they would sometimes be taking a rather long seafaring voyage from Madeira, which is essentially near Portugal, island off of Portugal, all the way down to the Caribbean. And when you're crossing the equator like that, the hold of a ship is going to get extremely hot. You know, regardless of the outside temperature, it's just going to be hotter down there anyway. That combined with the fact that the ship is constantly rocking and listing, you've got this like non-stop undulation of the liquid within the barrel. So the wine was undergoing kind of this torture in a way, something that you would never want to put most wines through. There's a hyper oxidation, a cooking essentially of this wine. When they ended up trying a wine that had been submitted to this harsh environment, it kind of changed the wine and produced something completely wonderful and different. The oxidative flavors are so, there's such a depth to them that you actually hear the term Medirification as a descriptor in other products. Sometimes you'll pick it up in long-age spirits, brandies, and especially in some vintage beers. This became one of the most revered and treasured wines in colonial America. I've always said before that I have a little tradition on the 4th of July. I always make sure to open a bottle of Medira, the Declaration of Independence. The signing was toasted over glasses of Medira. It was really something that was beloved by the founding fathers and early Americans. It was particularly popular on the Eastern Coast. In a lot of port cities, you can imagine obviously they'd be receiving these wines. It really took off and the one wine we're going to be tasting today is named their different expressions after port cities to reflect the popularity that they received in those. But in the American South in general, they've still kept a reverence for Medira. It's become very obscure and not too many people appreciate it these days, but there's still literally some Medira societies and clubs that exist down in places like the Carolinas and in Georgia. So it has an extremely niche but avid following of the people who enjoy it. You're going to look at four main categories that exist on today's marketplace, and they take their names from the type of noble grape that is used to produce the wine. They run the gamut if you're a fan of sherry, they're not unlike some of the categories of sherry. So you have everything from dry with a good amount of acidity, to very sweet on the other end. If you've ever had Madeira, chances are you've probably had one that was on the sweeter side, whether it was actually made with noble grapes, where it would be named as such. You'd probably be looking at a Malmsey, but there's also chances you had a Madeira that was just named for the level of sweetness. So like a rich Madeira that was made with something like a Tinta Negra grape, that wasn't one of the harder to grow noble varieties. But we've often said before when we've talked about Madeira that the drier varieties are underrepresented and undervalued, even within a category that's underappreciated and undervalued. So we're going to taste a Boual today, which is one tier below the sweetest. So it still has some sweetness to it. If you try a Boual, I think it's a great place to start because you know that you can go up and get even sweeter but you also can take two steps down and drier if you're going to look at something below that. So again, just such a fun category of wine. Sadly, not a lot of expressions. One of your most reliable options right now is the Rare Wine Company, and that's what we're going to be tasting now. Yeah. So we're going to have their Boston Boual as Roger mentioned. They do all four noble varieties and they've named them after those early American cities, Boston, Charleston, Savannah, and New York. That's right. So yeah, we're having Boual, and this is made in what they call the Contero method, and they mature this wine in these large pipes, about 600 liters, and they store them in the warm lofts of their various houses, and it's heated by the sun naturally. They also leave a little head space in there for oxygen, and we really see that oxidative quality play itself out in the wine, in terms of these nutty flavors and dried fruit qualities. But it gets warm up there, about 75 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and as Roger mentioned, they're kind of imitating what the wine used to do on the ships to and from the Caribbean. And what's also awesome about that process is that it kind of makes the wine indestructible. So once opened, though this wine retails at $52.99, once opened, you can keep it for a very long time, years. Put that kind of quirk back in it, and everything that we fear with opened wine has already happened. And they've done it in a way that still has maintained this beautiful elegance and flavor for you, but it's now indestructible. That's such a good point, and I'm glad you brought that up. So the quirks on these would be akin to like if you're opening a spirit, so something that's corked with a top, like a bottle of whiskey or brandy. And since you can treat it as such, you should really factor that in, like you said, into the price point. I've tried to kind of get weary customers before. I had some beer fans that liked really big opulent beers, things like barley wines. Every year, customers are always interested in that Sam Adams utopias release that's only released every couple of years. Very Madeira-like, without a doubt. It's so Madeira-like. So, you know, utopias is almost impossible to get a hold of. We barely get any of it. And I remember saying, you know, if you're curious about that or if you have had it and you enjoy it, you can walk over to the wine department, check out Madeira's, you know, a fraction of the cost. Once you open it, you can treat it like a spirit then. You don't have to consume it all at once, but you're going to like it so much that it's going to go a lot faster than you think. But yeah, that is just a huge kind of unique. Another thing that makes this style so incredible is that, yeah, you don't have to commit to it all at once. Yeah, you're not wrong. I've had bottles of Madeira open literally for years, and they remain beautiful. Just to put a few finer points on some of the things that were said, like a lot of people may have been introduced to matterization accidentally by leaving a bottle of wine in their trunk when it's hot out. It's that combination of heat and oxidation that makes it special. It's not just oxidized like sherry, but the heat is the important component. This one is made real traditionally, but in modern times, for cheaper ones, they use an estufa, or literally what would be referred to as a stove, with, you know, heated rooms, or literally you mentioned pipe in reference to barrels, but literally pipes with heated steam going through them to mimic this. But this is done the old-fashioned way in the hot part of the aging rooms. And so just to wrap up on Madeira, I mean, in progression from dryness to sweetness, also in progression of kind of a more kind of medium bodied to a fuller bodied from a citrus to a raisined caramel chocolate, you go from Cerceal, then Verdejo, then Boual, and then lastly Malmsey. If you're a port fan, maybe start with Malmsey, that's going to be kind of most similar, I suppose. But if you are a sherry fan and especially like a Fino sherry fan, firstly, we should be friends. And secondly, Cerceal is your jam. Yeah, I think if you drink a Monteado, Cerceal is definitely in your wheelhouse. Yeah. Something too that I kind of glossed over on this is that what most people, if you've heard of Madeira that you know it from, is from cooking. So a very important distinction here, there's the really inexpensive Madeiras that are basically cooking wines. That's obviously not what we're talking about here. To be honest, you're probably doing even your food and injustice with those. There's a type of Madeira called rainwater. If you really want something inexpensive to cook with, but that's still worth drinking, you could check out a rainwater Madeira. But otherwise, you're really doing yourself a disservice if you don't try one of these noble grape varieties. Yeah, I would agree. I think you need to, if you want to drink good Madeira, look for the noble varietals on the label. I think the most fascinating thing about the nose on this is its incredible savory umami driven element that reminds me of, strangely enough, mushrooms and other fermented things like soy. It's very informed in the nose by that kind of earthy umami-like smell, but it also has dark fruit. I mean, I know you're a fan of traditional barley wines. I mean, if you like barley wines, you need to try this wine. I mean, everything you're describing is something that you pick up in a lot of the cellared, especially like older barley wines. Yeah, I agree. And you totally get that here. Yeah, when it goes into your mouth, you still have very vibrant acidity to counterbalance all that savory note, and definitely some dark, dried fruit character, carmeliness. Yeah, fig. I get like a lot of fig and date. Yeah, dried fig, not fresh fig, you know. It's definitely that sweet, concentrated fig flavor, like a fig newton. Yes, I completely agree. And we're in this kind of like medium sweet camp, and the acid that you mention is one of the reasons why I love Madeira. And really throughout all four noble varieties, a big difference is just this really elevated acidity that makes it so light on your palate, despite, yes, having that kind of fig and dried fruits and a little bit of kind of a raisin nutty. I mean, slightly caramel, but actually not that much. No, not in this case. It's so savory. Yeah. Very very savory. By the way, we didn't just, you know, mention, this is a fortified wine. So we left Noble Rot. We left ice wine and freezing grapes on the vine to very well-known method of making sweet wine, which is to fortify, to add alcohol to it, to stop fermentation. The alcohol in this is what, like 19 or so? Yeah, 19 and a half. Yeah. So the method for keeping your sugar in these fortified wines is not necessarily any of the things we've talked about, but to add a neutral spirit when your must is fermented only partially, thus killing the yeast and retaining all that residual Yeah. And with this kind of sweeter styles, like a Malmsey, for example, that they're going to ferment on skins, they generally ferment on skins for the boule as well, but you might actually fortify just like four days in, maybe even less, whereas the Yeah, that's right. I would say probably Malmsey are probably, I'm guessing they want to hit it when you've only reached maybe 5 percent alcohol through fermentation, and then bring it up to that 19 percent. Yeah, and that's pretty much what they do at Port. They get it to about 5 to 7 percent ABV, and then they'll go ahead and fortify it to somewhere between 19 to 22. Let's head over about 400 miles or so to mainland Portugal and finish with Port, which also has a history on the seas. Agreed, this has a history of seafaring and trade that is quite interesting, and probably was the wine that influenced Madeira to become a fortified wine, I think. And there are two lags traditionally to its water voyage. Number one, the vineyards are located inland along the Douro River, and they would traditionally be brought down by flat boats to the port, and then shipped from Porto early on mostly to England. And the real reason this happened, of course, was because England and France were constantly warring, and England had an insatiable desire for wine because they couldn't grow their own. When the French connection dried up, they looked for other sources. And it's the same story, you know, how do we get this wine in good shape to its end user? And the answer is fortification. Yeah. So up here in the Douro, over 100 grape varieties are actually permitted, but five are really the main focus of the producers. And today we are enjoying Fonseca's 20-year Tawny Port, which I'll just say is kind of my favorite style of port. It's also my favorite age statement. I feel like it's in its sweet spot. And from an absolutely fabulous producer, and they're part of the Fladgate partnership along with Taylor and Croft. And this is on our shelves for $49.99. But here we're talking about black grape varieties. And a key to port is, of course, this really rapid extraction of color and tannin. Because they're fermenting for kind of just a few days. That's where that foot treading that you've probably seen photos of kind of started. Most now use robotic ligars to do this, or other methods like pumping over, which are more modern techniques. But they're doing this at warm temperatures and fermenting. Again, as I said, until about 5 to 7 percent, and then going ahead and adding this aguardiente to arrest fermentation and leave sugar in the wine. Yes. So aguardiente is a neutral grape brandy, just so you understand the terminology. I think port too is one of those wines that a lot of people, just to assume that you're a little bit of a newbie to the category. Some people try a Ruby or like a LBV port, and it's worth mentioning that Atani is going to, the profile is going to be quite different. Yeah, absolutely. So what we're looking at here is the wood age side of the port family as opposed to wines that are aged for a short amount of time in barrel, and then sometimes meant to be aged for a very long time in bottle. These are really totally ready to drink. And I will say, I agree with you, Alicia, 20 is total sweet spot for Atani Port. I would say the 10 year olds, you get much more upfront fruit, a lot of that cherry and plum fruit. And at 20, you really have developed a lot of those, what might be called Rancio flavors, but you're still retaining a lot of fruit character. So you get this blend of caramely, nutty richness with a significant amount of fruit. Now the 30s and 40s, you're definitely tipping the scale into the point, especially at 40, where a lot of that fruit has faded away and the drink is all about caramel nuts. Yeah, and again, these are aged in oak for that oxidative effect, but we're not getting, you know, this is really old, very large barrels. So we're not getting kind of these oak flavors to it. But yeah, it has this lovely kind of toffee caramel nougat, but still this presence of fruit that I think is wonderful. And it's the highest alcohol of the wines that we had today. It's at 20% and fully sweet, generally around 80 to 100 grams per liter. But I think a beautiful example from Franzekka. Just in terms of your holiday kind of pairings, I feel your kind of pie is where I'd go with this, especially for Thanksgiving, as we look at like pumpkin pie and apple pies and the like, I feel that this is going to be a great dessert pairing for Yeah, this is a no-brainer with such a wide variety of desserts and especially around Christmas time too, you work so well with, whether it's something pretty commonplace like cookies or if you're going to go the full nine and do like an English Bring us the figgy pudding. This is a great wonderful pairing with stuff like that. But yeah, any similar flavors like toffee, chocolate, and that's just out of this world. Great with chocolate, as is Madeira. I would say that these are things you have to be careful with because they walk the line. But two things that can work, one again in the English regime, sticky toffee pudding. If you've ever had that, it's very sweet. So you got to be careful about how sweet it is, because again, it might overwhelm the wine. But if you get that just right, and also a super sweet dessert like pecan pie, that nuttiness and caramely flavor really and vanilla really work well with. But you do have to be careful because those tip the scales at very high sugar contents. Yeah, this was a lot of fun. Thanks for this lineup. I thought it was really cool to see how different countries interpret similar traditions and styles. We've said a million times before, fortified wines are woefully underappreciated. They get oversimplified as, oh, they're just sweet. Dessert wines are just sweet. I think one of the things we really tried to drive home here is that the best offer some balance of sweetness and acidity that I think you're going to find truly remarkable. No better time than now around the holidays to try these. They pair so well with the kind of foods that we eat this time of year. So take a look at the selections that Binny's has to offer. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this, please leave us comments, feedback, download our podcast, wherever you download podcasts, tell your friends, tell your mom, tell everybody about Binny's Barrel to Bottle. Until next week, I am Roger. I'm Alicia. And I'm Chris. Keep tasting.