Quady Starboard Vintage Port (375ml half-bottle) 2006
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Enthusiast
Wine - Decanter
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Winemaker Notes
Winemaker Michael Blaylock’s tasting notes are as follows: smells of cherry vanilla cola, spirits, leather, dried plums, green thistle, and anise. The taste is smooth and velvety, but with brandy and grip, cardoon, and lingering tannins, exotic notes of Fuyu persimmon; an aftertaste of Pink Lady apple.
Quady selects only the best wines from the best years to be bottle aged and handled as "vintage port." Intense fruit and spice, and sufficient grape tannin are characteristics that allow for bottle aging. The current offering, 2006, is an excellent example of Sierra foothill terroir.
2006 Starboard Vintage is made from Portuguese varieties Tinta Cao, Tinta Roriz, Tinta Amarela, Tinta Barroca and Touriga Nacional grown mostly in Amador County and also in Madera County.
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Wine Enthusiast
Power and grace combine in this great fortified wine. Already 10 years old, it will age gracefully through at least 2030 if kept in a cool cellar. The aromas combine ripe, vivid cherry and blackberry with caramel accents. Flavors are very ripe but tangy at the same time, echoing plum jam and toffee on the finish.
Cellar Selection -
Decanter
Sumptuously robust, dense, mature and complex with notes of chocolate, macerated cherries, sweet caramel and a wonderful freshness. The savoury richness leads into a divinely spicy, lingering finish.
In a small San Joaquin valley town, Madera (CA), Andrew Quady discovered an unused patch of rare Orange Muscat grape, known in Italy as Moscato Fior d’Arancio. These grapes became the first Essensia Orange Muscat Dessert Wine in 1980.
Essensia’s creation marked the birth of Quady Winery's Muscat expertise - where the rich flavors of rare Muscat varieties are celebrated and intensified rather than blended and softened. Since then, Andrew Quady has produced other well-known wines including Elysium, Electra Mosc
ato, Starboard Vintage and Batch 88, as well as the first premium American vermouth of its kind – Vya Vermouth.
The varieties used by Quady Winery are rare, delicious expressions of the fruit filled San Joaquin Valley. The winemaking style is rich, full bodied, perfectly balanced, and unparalleled in any other Muscat you can find. For many, Quady Winery has become known as the experts of sweet wine.
Port is a sweet, fortified wine with numerous styles: Ruby, Tawny, Vintage, Late Bottled Vintage (LBV), White, Colheita, and a few unusual others. It is blended from from the most important red grapes of the Douro Valley, based primarily on Touriga Nacional with over 80 other varieties approved for use. Most Ports are best served slightly chilled at around 55-65°F.
As the lower part of the greater Sierra Foothills appellation, Amador is roughly a plateau whose vineyards grow at 1,200 to 2,000 feet in elevation. It is 100 miles east of both San Francisco and Napa Valley. Most of its wineries are in the oak-studded rolling hillsides of Shenandoah Valley or east in Fiddletown, where elevations are slightly higher.
The Sierra Foothills growing area was among the largest wine producers in the state during the gold rush of the late 1800s. The local wine industry enjoyed great success until just after the turn of the century when fortune-seekers moved elsewhere and its population diminished. With Prohibition, winemaking was totally abandoned, along with its vineyards. But some of these, especially Zinfandel, still remain and are the treasure chest of the Sierra Foothills as we know them.
Most Amador vines are planted in volcanic soils derived primarily from sandy clay loam and decomposed granite. Summer days are hot but nighttime temperatures typically drop 30 degrees and the humidity is low, making this an ideal environment for grape growing. Because there is adequate rain throughout the year and even snow in the winter, dry farming is possible.