Jean-Hubert Verdaguer sells off most of his crop to the local cooperative so that he can follow a family tradition (once wide-spread in Roussillon) of devoting his attention to oxidized, “rancio”-styled wines, aged for many years in an assortment of old barrels, and in his case entirely from Maccabeu vines. Wines back to 1950 are currently on offer and imported (so if you are looking to match a birth year, this is a place to remember) but the wine that offered the best ratio of sweet fruit to rancio as well as of price to quality was Verdaguer’s 1990 Rivesaltes Ambre, bottled in 2002 and recently put on the market. Smelling sweetly of chocolate-drenched, nutmeg-dusted toasted hazelnuts, this comes to the palate with an improbable counterpoint of creamy texture with bright, fresh plum fruit, finishing with rich chocolate, nuts, candied plum, and penetrating “rancid” pungency, very sweet but never cloying.A Connie and Patrick Allen Selection, United Estates Wine Imports, Worthington, OH; tel. (614) 543-1427