Wine: Sweet history with liqueur muscats and fine tawnys

Liqueur muscats and fine tawnys are arguably the best value fine wines on the market. At best, they are wildly complex from extended ageing in ancient barrels and unctuously sweet with mouthcoating flavours that remain minutes after your last sip. Their value lies in the small quantity required. Pour 50ml on a winter solstice, and slowly sip away at 30 years of concentrated sweetness and richly evolved flavours. Happy days!

Sandalford Sandalera Museum Liqueur Muscat, Swan Valley, WA, 500ml $180

This newly released, very limited (just 600 bottles made), liqueur muscat from Sandalford is a blend of two barrels from 1989 and 1996. At an average of over 30 years of age this rare delight shows all the caramelised richness you might expect. Concentrated flavours of fig, raisin, coffee grounds and cocoa with some brazil and hazel nuttiness. What’s most remarkable is the complete integration between the sweet grape ‘must’ and the spirit that, over time, has evolved into a seamless, viscous delight. It’s bright, incredibly pure and pristinely balanced to taste. 96/100

Talijancich 30 Year Old Rare Tawny, Swan Valley, WA, 500ml $85

This extraordinarily complex curio of a wine is produced in a solera system where very old barrels are frequently ‘refreshed’ with younger wines, including fractions from shiraz, grenache and even verdelho grapes. Each addition is based on extensive blending trials. Remarkably, the base barrels originate from 1959 and the average age is well over 30 years. Rare is exactly the right word to use, as the richness of aged flavours that evolve in the glass offer a uniquely complex and ever-changing drinking experience. There’s toffee and molasses, walnuts and raisins. There’s fresh ‘cold-brew’ coffee lift, and a beguiling orange rind, dried citrus lift. Very beautiful, very sweet and very delicious. 96/100

Talijancich Julian James Liqueur Muscat, 1983 Solero, Swan Valley, WA, 350ml $80

With an average age of 20 years, this muscat blend is different from most. It is produced, unusually, from the Muscat Gordo Blanco Variety (brown muscat is much more commonly grown for fortified wines in Australia). The result is a beguiling floral aromatic lift to the sweet raisined flavours. Orange blossom and a touch of rosewater permeate the deeper flavours of oozing raisins and the dense, sweet caramel richness. A luxurious, thickly sweet and warming, after dinner, or winter evening treat. 95/100