Madeira wine
Madeira is a fortified wine made on the Portuguese island of Madeira, in the North Atlantic Ocean, just under 400 kilometers north of the Canary Islands, Spain and 520 kilometers west of Morocco. Madeira is produced in a variety of styles ranging from dry wines, which can be consumed on their own, as an apéritif, to sweet wines usually consumed with dessert. Cheaper cooking versions are often flavoured with salt and pepper for use in cooking, but these are not fit for consumption as a beverage.
The islands of Madeira have a long winemaking history, dating back to the Age of Exploration, when Madeira was a standard port of call for ships heading to the New World or East Indies. To prevent the wine from spoiling, the local vintners began adding neutral grape spirits. On the long sea voyages, the wine would be exposed to excessive heat and movement, which benefited its flavour. This was discovered when an unsold shipment of wine was returned to the islands after a round trip.
Today, Madeira is noted for its unique winemaking process that involves oxidizing the wine through heat and ageing. The younger blends are produced with the aid of artificial application of heat to accelerate the aging process; the older blends, colheitas and frasqueiras, are produced by the canteiro method. Because of the way these wines are aged, they are very long-lived in the bottle, and those produced by the canteiro method will survive for decades and even centuries, even after being opened. Wines that have been in barrels for many decades are often removed and stored in demijohns where they may remain unharmed indefinitely.
Some wines produced in small quantities in Crimea, California, and Texas are also referred to as "Madeira" or "Madera"; however, most countries conform to the EU PDO regulations and limit the use of the term Madeira or Madère to wines that come from the Madeira Islands.
History of Madeira
Development and success (15th–18th centuries)
The roots of Madeira's wine industry date back to the Age of Exploration, when Madeira was a regular port of call for ships travelling to the East Indies. By the 16th century, records indicate that a well-established wine industry on the island supplied these ships with wine for the long voyages across the sea. The earliest examples of Madeira were unfortified and tended to spoil before reaching their destination. However, following the example of port, a small amount of distilled alcohol made from cane sugar was added to stabilize the wine by boosting the alcohol content. The Dutch East India Company became a regular customer, picking up large, casks of wine known as "pipes" for their voyages to India.The intense heat in the holds of the ships had a transforming effect on the wine, as discovered by Madeira producers when one shipment was returned to the island after a long trip. The customer was found to prefer the taste of this style of wine, and Madeira labeled as vinho da roda became very popular. Madeira producers found that aging the wine on long sea voyages was very costly, so they began to develop methods on the island to produce the same aged and heated style. They began storing the wines on trestles at the winery or in special rooms known as estufas, where the heat of the island sun would age the wine.
With the increase of commercial treaties with England such as the Marriage Treaty in 1662, important English merchants settled on the island and, ultimately, controlled the increasingly important island wine trade. The English traders settled in the Funchal as of the seventeenth century, consolidating the markets from North America, the West Indies and England itself. Notable brands include Cossart and Gordon founded in 1745 and Blandy's in 1811.
The eighteenth century was the "golden age" for Madeira. The wine's popularity extended from the American colonies and Brazil in the New World to Great Britain, Russia, and Northern Africa. The American colonies, in particular, were enthusiastic customers, consuming as much as 95% of all wine produced on the island each year.
Early American history (17th–18th centuries)
Madeira was a very important wine in the history of the United States of America. No wine-quality grapes were grown among the thirteen colonies, so imports were needed, with a great focus on Madeira. One of the major events on the road to the American Revolution in which Madeira played a key role was the seizure of John Hancock's sloop by Boston customs officials on 9 May 1768. Hancock's boat was seized after he had unloaded a cargo of 25 pipes of Madeira, and a dispute arose over import duties. The seizure of Liberty caused riots to erupt in Boston.Madeira was a favorite of Thomas Jefferson, and it was used to toast the Declaration of Independence. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams are also said to have appreciated the qualities of Madeira. The wine was mentioned in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. On one occasion, Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, of the great quantities of Madeira he consumed while a Massachusetts delegate to the Continental Congress. A bottle of Madeira was used by visiting Captain James Sever to christen in 1797. Chief Justice John Marshall was also known to appreciate Madeira, as were his cohorts on the early U.S. Supreme Court. Madeira and walnuts were often served together as a last course at dinner parties in Washington in the early decades of the 1800s.
Modern era (19th century – present)
The mid-19th century ushered an end to the industry's prosperity. First came the 1851 discovery of powdery mildew, which severely reduced production over the next three years. Just as the industry was recovering through the use of the copper-based Bordeaux mixture fungicide, the phylloxera epidemic that had plagued France and other European wine regions reached the island. By the end of the 19th century, most of the island's vineyards had been uprooted, and many were converted to sugar cane production. The majority of the vineyards that did replant chose to use American vine varieties, such as Vitis labrusca, Vitis riparia and Vitis rupestris or hybrid grape varieties rather than replant with the Vitis vinifera varieties that were previously grown.By the turn of the 20th century, sales started to slowly return to normal, until the industry was rocked again by the Russian Civil War and American Prohibition, which closed off two of Madeira's biggest markets. After the repeal of Prohibition, improved shipping technology meant that ships no longer needed to stop off in Madeira, the island that was directly in the trade winds between Europe and America. The wine became known as The Forgotten Island Wine. The rest of the 20th century saw a downturn for Madeira, both in sales and reputation, as low-quality "cooking wine" became primarily associated with the island—much as it had for Marsala.
In 1988, the Symington family of Portugal invested in the Madeira Wine Company that owned many of the Madeira brand names. They asked Bartholomew Broadbent to re-launch Madeira and create a market for it again in America, which he did in 1989, establishing a firm rebirth of Madeira.
Towards the end of the 20th century, some producers started a renewed focus on quality—ripping out the hybrid and American vines and replanting with the "noble grape" varieties of Sercial, Verdelho, Terrantez, Bual and Malvasia. The "workhorse" varieties of Tinta Negra Mole now known officially as just Tinta Negra, and Complexa are still present and in high use, but hybrid grapes were officially banned from wine production in 1979. Today, Madeira's primary markets are in the Benelux countries, France, and Germany; emerging markets are growing in Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Viticulture
Climate and geography
The island of Madeira has an oceanic climate with some tropical influences. With high rainfall and average mean temperature of 66 °F, the threats of fungal grape diseases and botrytis rot are constant viticultural hazards. To combat these threats, Madeira vineyards are often planted on low trellises, known as latada, that raise the canopy of the vine off the ground similar to a style used in the Vinho Verde region of Portugal. The terrain of the mountainous volcanic island is difficult to cultivate, so vineyards are planted on man-made terraces of red and brown basaltic bedrock. These terraces, known as poios, are very similar to the terraces of the Douro that make Port wine production possible. The use of mechanical harvesting and vineyard equipment is near impossible, making wine grape growing a costly endeavor on the island. Many vineyards have in the past been ripped up for commercial tourist developments or replanted with such products as bananas for commercial concerns. Some replanting is taking place on the island; however, the tourist trade is generally seen as a more lucrative business than wine-making. Most of the grapes, grown by around 2100 grape growers are from vines planted on small plots of land from which the grape growers survive by making an income from a variety of different inter-grown crops.Grape varieties
Approximately 85% of Madeira is produced with the red grape, Negra Mole. The four major white grape varieties used for Madeira production are Malvasia, Bual, Verdelho, and Sercial. These varieties also lend their names to Madeira labelling, as discussed below. Occasionally one sees Terrantez, Bastardo and Moscatel varieties, although these are now rare on the island because of oidium and phylloxera. Since 2016, to encourage more growers to plant Terrantez, Madeira's fifth noble grape variety, the government Wine, Embroidery and Handicraft Institute of Madeira has offered growers free viticultural advice and a €1.30 subsidy per kilogram of Terrantez fruit harvested. As of 2016, Terrantez production stood at. After the phylloxera epidemic, many wines were "mislabelled" as containing one of these noble grape varieties, which were reinterpreted as "wine styles" rather than true varietal names. Regulations enacted in 1986 by the European Union introduced the rule that 85% of the grapes in the wine must be of the variety on the label; in 2015, Tinta Negra was elevated to a Recommended varietal and may now also be listed on the label, often alongside a style description such as "Medium-Rich". Thus, wines from before the late 19th century and after the late 20th century conform to this rule, whereas many "varietally labelled" Madeiras from most of the 20th century do not. Modern Madeiras which do not carry a varietal label are generally made from Tinta Negra, a varietal that, along with the less highly regarded Complexa, is the workhorse variety on the island since phylloxera and is found in various concentrations in many blends and vintage wines. Bastardo, Complexa, and Tinta Negra are red grape varieties.Grown exclusively on the neighboring island of Porto Santo, which is also permitted under the appellation law to provide grapes for Madeira wine, are the varieties Listrão and Caracol. Listrão Madeira was formerly made by a few companies such as Blandy's and Artur de Barros e Sousa, the latter being the last old producer to utilize the variety when they closed their doors in 2013, but Madeira Vintners founded in that year subsequently restarted production of, and released in 2020, a 5-year-old Listrão Reserve Madeira. Caracol, an obscure grape believed to be unique to Porto Santo and only used for the local production of dry table wine in the past, was turned into fortified Madeira for the first time by Madeira Vintners, becoming the first new grape in over a century to be used for high-quality single-varietal Madeira wine. The company's stocks are still aging as of 2025 and no wine is on the market yet.
Other varieties planted on the island, though not legally permitted for Madeira production, include Arnsburger, Cabernet Sauvignon, and the American hybrids Cunningham and Jacquet. The latter two grapes, formerly used for Madeira production in the post-phylloxera years, were supposed to have been grubbed up altogether under EU law, although in practice some farmers have kept a few vines to make table wine for their own consumption.