Madeira wine – wine with a story
Wines have been grown on Madeira since the 15th century. God knows how. On first look, it’s a miracle that anything grows there. The island’s vertiginous mountains, tumbling cliffs and steep, stepped hillsides should be impossible for anyone to get around, let alone plant or build on. How the first explorers looked at it and thought “I know, we’ll build here and plant vineyards,” is beyond me. But they did, and thank goodness – Madeira wine is delicious.
Madeira’s volcanic soil and mild year-round climate produce some delicious food and wine. Everywhere you look, there are banana and sugar cane plantations, some of them on tiny smallholdings, others on a much bigger scale. As a result, it produces some amazing rum and some great liquors flavoured with bananas. Passionfruit is another big export. One of the best dishes we ate was a local fish, Espada (Scabbard) – one of the ugliest fish I’ve ever seen, but completely delicious – cooked with banana and passionfruit.
More than just fortified wine
I didn’t know much about wines from Madeira, other than the eponymous fortified wine. But the tiny island produces some lovely other wines, notably the white Verdelho (not to be confused with the Spanish Verdejo) that is the most widely planted white grape there. It’s mostly known for being used in the fortified Madeira wine, but it’s lovely on its own too – full of tropical fruits and lime, and very easy to drink on a hot day. It goes beautifully with fish and seafood, and we drank a lot of it. My favourite was this unoaked Barbusano 2015.
A happy accident
Most of the grapes grown on Madeira go into making the fortified wine that takes its name from the island. Madeira wine was created by accident, as the best things often are. When the Portuguese colonised the uninhabited islands of Madeira and neighbouring Porto Santo in the 15th century, they quickly planted vines.
By the 1700s, huge quantities of Madeiran wine were being shipped to the new world. Winemakers often added a bit of distilled alcohol made from local sugar cane, to help it keep on these long voyages. The conditions on board were awful. The wine was used as ballast, and the barrels were exposed to punishing heat as they crossed the equator. The constant rolling of the ship, combined with the heat and the added alcohol produced a slightly burnt, sweet wine. This was only discovered when an unsold shipment was returned to the island, and Madeira was born. But sending wine around the world in ships was an expensive way to create in. Over time, winemakers replicated the process by leaving barrels in the sun.
Today, Madeira wine is heated in stainless steel vats (using hot water pipes) for three months or more before being allowed to rest. The result is a delicious and incredibly resilient wine which Madeirans will tell you can last for years (even centuries!) once opened.
It’s really hard to buy non-fortified Madeira wines in the UK, but Portugal Vineyards has one or two: https://www.portugalvineyards.com. One of my favourite Madeiras is the sweet, caramelly Malvasia Madeira from Fortnum and Mason.
