1850 D'Oliveira Reserve Verdelho Madeira

To give any useful information, knowing who made the Madeira(Cossart, Gordon for example) and what type of Madeira it is(Malmsey, Bual, Sercil, Verdelho, Bastardo, Terrantez,etc) is critical. The few reviews I have seen for 1850 Madeira are quite mixed. I have seen ratings for different wines from 1-star to 4-star on a 5-star system. Also if it says Solera, with a year 1850, this means the wine was started with

It is true that better quality vintage Madeira,even from the 1700s, can often still be very good. However, Michael Broadbent has described finding old cellars of Madeira in the UK that contained wines from the lesser producers, and nearly all of the bottles were so bad as to be undrinkable.

Without specific knowledge of the wine, US $400 could be a very good bargain or about $400 too much!

Sorry, I missed 1850 D'Oliveira Reserve Verdelho Madeira which was not in the body of your message. I have a tasting not for you from a recent book by Michael Broadbent.

A price of around US $400 seems reasonable for this wine, but it could sell for less to perhaps over $600 depending on how badly someone wants it at the auction.

In his title, the OP says that it's a D'Oliveira Reserve Verdelho

The few reviews

and from his comment that it's a "true" 1850, I'd assume that he knows that it's not a Solera.

According to Rare Wine Co, the 1850 D'Oliveira Verdelho got a ***** rating from Broadbent, which would indicate a wine of the finest quality. Also, RWC is charging $550 for theirs, so $400 sounds like a fair price to me.

Mark Lipton

My second post must not have appeared for you before I answered as:

___________________________________________________________ Sorry, I missed 1850 D'Oliveira Reserve Verdelho Madeira which was not in the body of your message. I have a tasting note for you from a recent book by Michael Broadbent.

A price of around US $400 seems reasonable for this wine, but it could sell for less to perhaps over $600 depending on how badly someone wants it at the auction. _______________________________________________________________

So between our 2 sources of information, we agree that the mentioned wine likely is a good buy.