Colheitas Pereira D’Oliveiras Boal Medium Sweet (bottled 2013, 12yo) 2001

A delightful nose combines dark honey with herbal/vegetal, red date, hazelnut, smoke and wood-aged aromas. There's a range of forest smells (wood, damp foliage, sweet, fresh clean air ...), faded plum and a maritime pungency (very much a Boal character) of iodine engendering an umami rich-savouriness. The palate is incredibly subtle and unforced, a wine of natural delicacy where great aged character gives a medium-sweet mid-palate with considerable power. Deliciously sweet jar fruits with lovely tart fruit-skin pucker release softly and gently into a round but nimble finish ... wood-alcohol developmental characters break and radiate to all points, releasing and fading into a delicate swoosh of saline-acid freshness, directional, beautifully balanced.