Winemaker Notes
The "Rare" designation is used for material dating back over 100 years. As this is not a scientific process it is not possible to put a definitive age on the wine but one taste will tell you it is not from this century.
While these wines are seen as after dinner drinks, try serving them as anaperitif. And a bottle, once opened, will keep for some months without deteriorating, providing it is recorked after each serving.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The NV Rosewood Vineyards Rare Muscadelle has a deep brown color with a hint of green in the rim. The nose has a complex, oxidative, almost oloroso character giving notes of roasted walnuts, dark chocolate, burnt coffee and toffee. The palate is so crisp in acidity that the unbelievable level of sweetness and viscosity is infinitely drinkable. Layer upon layer of spice and nut flavors develop into the very long finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
Molasses hued, Chambers’s oldest, most premium Muscadelle is a multifaceted beauty that unravels slowly, revealing—amid the richness and concentration—a pleasant mustiness, like the smell of a mahogany furnished library in a stately old home. Mocha, baked fig and burnt brown sugar follow. At first sip, the intense sweetness and alcohol are prominent, but they’re rapidly followed by those concentrated mocha and fig flavors. Unctuous but still amazingly fresh, this proves an excellent example of a style that’s deeply engrained in Aussie wine history. Sip fireside on an icy winter’s eve.
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Wine & Spirits
As old as the Rare Muscat (recommended above), this is powerfully concentrated but not as super dense. It keeps juicing up with flavors, layering plum pudding, complex mineral notes, smoke and the scent of old leather. The flavors seem to last for minutes after each sip, the complexity of the scent continually shifting shape even long after the liquid is gone.
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Wine Spectator
Harmonious, with brown sugar, caramel and apricot flavors balanced by a freshness that complements the thick body. Black tea, spice and cocoa notes linger. Drink now.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
Located in the warm and dry northeastern corner of the state of Victoria, bordering the southern side of the Murray River, the Rutherglen region bears a long history of fortified wine production.
Rutherglen's main variety, Muscat blanc à Petits Grains (also known as Brown Muscat or Muscat à Petit Grains Rouge for its often pink- or red-tinged berries) flourishes in the region’s deep, moisture retaining, alluvial, red loam soils. To make the distinguished and aptly named fortified, "Rutherglen," these Muscat grapes are harvested after left to semi-raisin on the vine. Fermentation only reaches a few degrees alcohol before the juice is fortified with grape spirit and aged in a barrel system resembling a cross between a Sherry solera and a Madeira estufagem. Rutherglen wines boast great concentration and fine aromas hinting at orange flowers and spice, and are capable of astounding quality.
The Rutherglen region grows second grape, called Muscadelle (confusingly unrelated Muscat), which also produces a quality fortified wine. Historically Australians called the grape “Tokay” and believed it to have Hungarian ancestry but when the French ampelographer, Paul Truel, identified it as Muscadelle in 1976, the name had to be changed. Today varietal wines made from Muscadelle can be called, “Topaque.”