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A Brief History of Wine at Blandy’s: Exploring Madeira (Part 2/2)
Posted by Grape Adventures | Posted on 03-31-2014
| Posted inIf Madeira wine seems to exist out of time, so too does it complicate our conventional thinking about space. The history of the wine is the history of travel, colonial expansion, and the dream of the Edenic return.
Madeira is first a product of the vast spaces in between the vineyard and the table; it is a product of the open sea. Indeed, the peculiar qualities of the wine were so elusive that it was long assumed that the ocean voyage itself created the maderized effect. Owing to this belief, barrels were sent on long voyages to the New World in preparation for their appearance in British drawing rooms; these were the so-called “vinho da roda” (round trip wines).
Eventually, more budget minded producers developed technologies to imitate the ocean voyage — mechanical contraptions used to loll the wine back and forth. We now know that the darkening, oxidative effects of maderization occur through exposure to air and heat, and the process, called the canteiro system, all happens on the island.
But even this edenic island seems set adrift, no place at all, floating like a ship between the Old and New Worlds.
Of course, Madeira’s origins are now clear enough, and the story of the wine begins with vines rooted in the islands’ complex and dramatic terroir, which plunges from cool mountain heights to more consistently warm plateaus along the sea. The soil on the island, rich in minerals like iron and phosphorous, gives the wine its characteristic acidity. It also gives rise to another of the island’s major draws as a tourist destination: abundant, exotic, and diverse flora and fauna.
Perhaps no one place is as important to Madeira wine as Blandy’s Wine Lodge in Funchal. When I arrived at the timeless lodge and stepped into a library of history’s best bottles of the wine, I knew I had found the heart, the main nerve. Read the rest of this entry »