*Madeira*

A couple months ago I bought a couple bottles of Madeira to pour for
sherry monday, which I just remembered today and pulled out today and
thought I'd refresh my memory on.

The history of Madeira is a particularly sad one, with a promising
present. At one point it was considered one of the great wines of the
world, alongside port, bordeaux, champagne and burgundy, but a
combination of war, phylloxera, and changing trade routes almost
completely wiped out the market for good madeira. Thankfully today
that has changed and there are some great madeiras being produced.

To start, Madeira, like port or sherry, is a fortified wine. It's the
island of Madeira, which is a Portuguese island directly west of
Morocco. Because it's location Madeira became  hotspot for sailing
ships to stop off and resupply, which led the Portuguese to plant
grapes. Because of the intense heat in Madeira, and the rigors of any
sea voyage the wine was fortified, much like it's mainland cousin
port, which stops fermentation and protects the wine (as well as
leaving some sugar in the wine). At some point however, a barrel, or
perhaps an entire shipment (the exact story is apocryphal) never made
it to its destination, and instead took several trips over the
equator, exposing it to heat not typical in any wine, which
transformed it to an intensely nutty, slightly sweet, spiced
masterpiece, a far cry from what is expected of heat damaged wine, and
Madeira was born.

At first in order to make Madeira producers would load up ships that
had a return trip planned and waited for the wine to come back cooked
(a process known as Vino de Roda, which I'm choosing to translate as
"Road Soda") This of course is an incredibly expensive way to make
wine, so producers started aging the barrels in hot attics, or in the
direct sunlight for at least. This is called canteiro aging, a
reference to the wooden staves the barrels rest on top of.

Madeira exploded in popularity, especially in America where it held up
over the long voyage overseas and where a local source of wine hadn't
yet taken hold. The lasting popularity was short lived however, with
phylloxera, prohibition, and the russian civil war killing most of the
vines and most of the market for the wines. What emerged after was
shipped mostly to France as cooking wine made from a variety of , with
salt added to further stabilize it. Almost all sherry was made in
temperature control vats with little age (known as Estfugem). At this
point fine madeira was on life support, and in 1979 the island decided
it was time to turn around the reputation, and officially outlawed the
use of newer hybrid varieties, mandating that only the historic
varieties, Negra Mole (the red variety) and Malvasia, Bual, Verdelho,
and Sercial (the most important white varieties) with tiny bits of
Terrantez, Bastardo and Moscatel and currently there's only under 2000
acres devoted to the growing of vines for fine Madeira, but at least
it survived.

So now, on to the wine itself.

The three major things about Madeira to note are age, whether or not
the wine is a single vintage wine or a blend, and the grape variety,
which is also a general indication of the style. Non-vintage quality
Madeira starts out at 3 years in barrel (known by the poetic name
"rainwater") and going up to extra reserve (the opposite of poetry),
which is 15+ years. Vintage madeira must be aged an minimum of 5 years
("Colheita") with the absolute finest being Frasqueira, which starts
at 20 years.

It's important to note here that once the wine is bottled it is
practically indestructible and frozen in place, and your best chance
of trying an incredibly old intact wine is a bottle of madeira. From
Wikipedia: Exposure to extreme temperature and oxygen accounts for
Madeira's stability; an opened bottle will survive unharmed
indefinitely. As long as a cork is put into the top of the bottle to
prevent the effects of evaporation, fruit flies, and dust, a vintage
Madeira, once opened, can last for decades. Properly sealed in
bottles, it is one of the longest-lasting wines; Madeiras have been
known to survive over 200 years in excellent condition. It is not
uncommon to see 150-year-old Madeiras for sale at stores that
specialize in rare wine. Vintages dating back to 1780 are known to
exist. The oldest bottle that has come onto the market is a 1715
Terrantez.

Next up is the grape variety, which for the white grapes denotes the
style. From sweetest to driest, malvasia (also known as "malmsey" an
old derivative word for malvasia) which is an intensely sweet, nutty
dessert wine, Bual, which is more high toned and raisiny, verdelho,
which is high acid and just medium sweet, remiding one of a off dry
riesling, and sercial, which has no sugar (or very little) and is
intensly acidic, more reminiscent of a sherry than it's cousins.

The other important wine grown is the red grape Negra Mole (or tinta
mole), which accounts for the majority of the non-vintage madeira made
(rainwater being the most popular). For the most part it's a medium
sweet, unremarkable madeira, except for a single producer Henriques e
Henriques, who has long taken the grape seriously, and who's five year
wine we carry.  I urge you all to try a splash, like I said it's
practically indestructible, and will lose very little from being open
here.

Well that's a lot of writing about a single wine. Until next week

Cory