1929 Massandra Pink Muscat Livadia

The huge nose of peppermint, sausage, maple syrup, and allspice blasts upward from the glass. This amber-colored, viscous, full-bodied, amazingly fresh wine is the most elegant and finesse-styled of all these Massandra Collection wines. Although it is a sweet dessert wine, the overall impression is off-dry given the acidity level. This is another stunning dessert wine, and, I am sure, authentic example from the 1929 vintage. Additionally, I suspect it will last another 2-3 decades. I was told that just over a case of this 1929 is available. The tacky bluish/green antique bottle is hardly inspirational, but it does appear to be consistent with glass from the pre-World War II period. This wine, which possessed a tremendous amount of sediment, was kept upright a month before decanting. As a postscript, I had no hesitation concerning the authenticity (based on their taste and the type of glass bottles) of these wines. Could the reason why the Allies (Roosevelt, Churchill, et. al.) capitulated to Stalin, essentially conceding one-half of Europe to him at the 1943 Yalta Conference, have been because they had drunk too much of these wines while holding the conference at the Tsar's former summer palace at Livadia? This wine is part of the Massandra collection. Founded by Tsar Nicholas II in 1894, the Massandra Winery, on the outskirts of Yalta, on the Crimean Peninsula, supplied the royal family with fine wines while they were vacationing at their summer palace at Livadia. The Massandra wines are imported by Wine Markets International, Woodbury, NY; tel. (516) 364-1850; fax (516) 364-1197