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Blandy’s 10 Year Old Bual Madeira is a “meio doce” or medium-rich style of Madeira wine. It can be served with dessert like sweeter Malmsey styles but the medium-rich style also works well with more savoury dishes and cheeses.
For 200 years, Blandy’s Madeira has been synonymous with quality Madeira wine. The Blandy family has played a leading role in the development of Madeira wine throughout its long history and members of the family continue to live on Madeira, maintaining a tradition that goes back to 1811. In 1989, in order to further expand the global market, the Blandys approached another Anglo-Portuguese family, the Symingtons Family (owners of Port Houses Dow, Warre, Graham and Cockburn amongst others) and offered them a partnership in the newly named Madeira Wine Company (MWC).
This partnership continues today and, in 2011, the Blandys and the Symingtons signed an agreement giving the Blandy family control of the MWC. The Symington remain minority shareholders. Today, Michael and Chris Blandy, 6th and 7th generation members, continue to work in the company, maintaining a tradition which spans over 200 years.
Blandy’s 10 Year Old Bual Madeira is made from 100% Bual (sometimes spelled Boal) grapes sourced from nearly 30 Bual growers, predominantly from the south coast of the island between Ribeira Brava and Calheta. Bual is a vigorous variety and fairly easy growing.
In 2024, Blandy’s revamped its 10-year-old Madeira range. The range consists of the four principal grape varieties of Madeira. These are Sercial, Verdelho, Bual, and Malvasia (Malmsey). Each variety demonstrates a classic style of Madeira wine: dry, medium dry, medium sweet and sweet, respectively and this information is now much more apparent on the new labels.
The wines are presented in colourless, transparent 75cl bottles, a first in Madeira. The new bottlings have also been reformulated after many years of research into how each variety evolves in the company’s 12 different ageing rooms across two locations: Blandy’s Wine Lodge in Funchal and the Winery in Caniçal.
From Blandy’s:
Bright crystalline golden-brown colour with golden reflections. It presents a characteristic bouquet, complex, with great aromatic intensity, revealing a
bouquet of dried fruits, such as figs and plums, with notes of almonds and wood, subtly completed by caramelised and vanilla notes. Notes of cinnamon
and sweet spices. The attack is medium sweet, with great balance, sugars, and acids, soft, and smooth with notes of fruit cake, liqueur, and candied fruit. Pleasant and persistent, very smooth aftertaste of honey and ginger biscuits.
After fermentation, and the subsequent fortification the Bual wines for Blandys 10 Year Old Bual are aged for an average of 10 years in seasoned American oak casks in the traditional “Canteiro” system, whereby the casks of this wine are gradually transferred from the top floors of the lodge, where it is naturally warmer, to the middle floors and eventually to the ground floor where it is cooler. During this totally natural ageing, the wine underwent regular racking before finally being bottled.
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