Terrantez Medium Dry Frasqueira
⏳ Drinking Window
2024 - 2100
🍽️ Food & Wine Pairings
French onion soup, roasted nuts and cured meats, aged hard cheeses
✨ Technical Specifications
Terrantez is one of Madeira's most legendary and enigmatic grape varieties, once nearly extinct due to its low yields and susceptibility to disease. Local folklore warns, 'The grapes of Terrantez, do not eat them nor give them away, for wine God made them,' highlighting its esteemed status. Pereira D'Oliveira's Medium Dry Frasqueira releases represent the pinnacle of this variety's expression. Aged slowly in seasoned oak casks under the traditional canteiro system in Funchal, these vintage wines develop a mesmerizing complexity. Terrantez is celebrated for its unique sensory profile: a rich, medium-dry entry of dried citrus, spice, and burnt sugar, which dramatically transitions into a long, dry, and famously bitter-medicinal finish reminiscent of walnut skins and dark tea.
🍾 About the Producer
Pereira D'Oliveira (widely known simply as D'Oliveira) is one of Madeira's most historic and revered independent shippers, established in 1850 by João Pereira D'Oliveira. Anchored in central Funchal within cellars dating back to 1619, the house is directed by the fifth and sixth generations of the D'Oliveira family, with managing director Luís D'Oliveira and head winemaker Filipe D'Oliveira preserving ancestral practices. While historically cultivating vineyards in São Martinho, the house now sources grapes from over one hundred long-contracted growers farming rugged, steep volcanic terraces across the subtropical Atlantic island. D'Oliveira's vinous signature is defined by exceptional power, bracing natural acidity, and unmatched oxidative concentration achieved through classical canteiro aging in ancient oak vats. The lodge holds one of the planet's most formidable libraries of vintage Madeira, bottling centuries-old Frasqueiras on demand, led by monumental vintage bottlings of Sercial, Verdelho, Boal, Malvazia Cândida, and extraordinarily rare aged expressions of Terrantez, Moscatel, and single-harvest Tinta Negra.
🍇 Grapes
Terrantez
🍷 ABV
19-20%