Every Sunday, with an educational edge, I explore specific appellations or sub-regions, taking you along for the ride. If it’s old news, then brush up on some fading facts; if it’s uncharted territory, why not learn something new? If you know something I haven’t mentioned, then feel free to comment and share your experiences. Check out past Sunday posts here.

A screen shot from the 1931 tour of the Island that you should watch here.

Does anyone drink Madeira anymore? It seems to be the least fashionable wine on the planet, yet thanks to a rich history and unique production methods, it always manages to be a weighty subject matter in WSET and ISG courses. I’ve never heard whisperings of a Madeira tasting – an event that I, and many others I’m sure, would attend. Is that because of the scarcity of the wine in our market, or maybe the big price tags of the quality stuff? I’m at the point in the WSET Diploma where I’ll again need to understand the workings of all things Madeira – a wine I’ve tried maybe twice. We used to sell the Henriques & Henriques 10 year Bual by the glass at Salt, which was delicious and interesting, but at $15 a pour, it definitely wasn’t the most accessible dessert wine. And besides, we had Sherry to sell!

Madeira is the produce of the ancient volcanic island 750 km of the coast of Portugal. It was the drink the Founding Fathers used to toast the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It’s the only wine that is intentionally baked to replicate conditions aboard the early sea voyages across the equator to India. It sounds pretty interesting already doesn’t it?

Image from the Globe and Mail.

Here are a few things that everyone should know about Madeira…

-The subtropical island is hot, humid and sees plenty of rain. The high peaks help to moderate the heat. The vines grow in tiny plots on terraces (poios) which are usually impossible to even consider mechanizing harvests or vineyard work. The vines are trained on trellises (latada), keeping the grapes above the ground, and preventing the fungal diseases you’d expect in a high-rainfall subtropical climate. There are nearly 4000 independent growers on the island.

-Tinta Negra Mole is the most planted grape, it’s high yielding and makes almost all of the mass market bottle of Madeira. If you’ve bought a cheap bottle of cooking Madeira, it was almost certainly made from Tinta Negra Mole. The four noble varietals used for quality wine are Sercial, Verdelho, Bual (Boal) and Malvasia (Malmsey). While grapes, the names were also used to label bottles based on the wine’s sugar levels whether or not it was even made from those stated grapes. Sercial 8-25 grams of sugar per liter, Verdelho 25-40 g/l, Bual 40-60 g/l, and Malvasia 60+ g/l. Since Portugal joined the European Union in 1986, they had to play along with the Union’s wine laws, the most relevant being that the grape varietal you state must make up 85% of the blend. Now if you see one of the four varietals on the bottle it will still usually fall stylistically into this escalating sweetness scale.

Image of the steep terraces from Flickr via Chris&Steve

-Wine may just be the second most famous export from the island, immediately following football star Cristiano Ronaldo.

-Madeira is fortified by adding a neutral grape spirit. It follows both the ‘Port method’ of adding alcohol during fermentation to kill the yeast and bring things to a halt for the sweeter versions and the ‘Sherry method’ where alcohol is added to a dry wine after the fermentation is done.

-The most unique process in Madeira production is the intentional heating of the wine. Besides emulating the old style, it also makes the wine inherently stable and often impossible to damage with heat or oxygen. The process of estufagem is carried out in hot houses called estufas and through one of three methods. Cuba de Calor is the cheapest and includes a giant concrete tank with a hot water pipe coiling inside. This heats the wine up to 40-50 degrees celsius for a minimum of 3 months. Armazem de Calor is a more gentle process, where the wine is stored in 600L casks placed inside a heated room (often by hot water pipes) and is aged for 6-12 months at 30-40 C. Canteiro is the most revered method where the 600L casks of wine are completely naturally heated by resting in a hot attic of a building or directly in the sun for 20-100 years. Aging a wine for 100 years in a barrel is insane dedication.

-Along with the various age designating styles, there is one called Rainwater. This style was apparently created when casks that were sitting on the beach awaiting shipment to the USA, were diluted by a heavy rainfall. Mmm… watered down wine! Rainwater is still made in small quantities, yet obviously not using techniques that would be considered criminal today.

Will it be Madeira’s heyday again one day soon?