From The Island Of Madeira

Recently my wife was in a writing project - well, she’s still in it - that caused her to ask me about Madeira wines. I told her all I knew, that Madeira was the most prestigious wine for 18th and 19th century Americans, including most of our early presidents, especially Thomas Jefferson. A little research was required.

I hope you are not thinking, "Oh, those poor colonists! No Napa Cabernet to drink? Just something from an island off the coast of Africa?" Those poor colonists were drinking some of the best wine you’ll ever taste.

Rare Wine Co sells a great line of Madeira wines. They worked with Vinhos Barbeito on the Historic Madeira Series to produce a line of Madeira wines, each named after the various seaports into which Madeira was shipped back in the day. The company says that Vinhos Barbeito has "one of the great libraries of 19th century Madeiras," so how can you go wrong?

New York Malmsey "celebrates the rich, luscious Malmseys that affluent New Yorkers prized from the colonial period until after civil war," says the label. On the label, by the way, is a neat drawing of Booth’s Theatre, built in 1868 by Edwin Booth, the era’s most celebrated actor in New York. It might make a nice gift for an aspiring thespian on your gift list.

Malmsey is made from Malvasia grapes, mainly. It's a sweet dessert wine, fortified, and started out in Greece. On the Portuguese island of Madeira, however, a wine was made for export to faraway places. To keep it from spoiling, it was fortified with neutral grape spirits. On the sea voyage, the wine was subjected to high temperatures and a lot of movement, which turned it into something else altogether, something a lot better than it started out as. The producers on Madeira didn't realize this until an unsold shipment was returned. The wheels started turning, and a new style of wine was born.

Of course, shipping the wine around the world to achieve the desired result was expensive, so they developed a way to simulate the oceanic aging process by raising the temperature where the barrels were stored and moving them around a lot. Voila. Homemade Madeira.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Madeira was the United States most prestigious wine, shipped to connoisseurs in major seaports from New Orleans to Boston. The Historic Madeira Series is the creation of The Rare Wine Co., America's leading merchant of rare, old Madeiras, working with Vinhos Barbeito, which possesses one of the great libraries of legendary 19th century Madeiras. Each wine in the series represents a style of Madeira popular in an early American city. New York Malmsey celebrates the rich, luscious Malmseys that affluent New Yorkers prized, from the colonial period until after the Civil War.

This New York Malmsey is made from 85% Malvasia grapes from the Arco de São Jorge Vineyard and 15% Tinta Negra from the Estreito de Câmara de Lobos Vineyard. According to the winemaker's technical sheet, the grapes were pressed in a pneumatic press and fermentation was stopped at the desired degree of sweetness by adding vinic alcohol. This wine was aged in French oak casks in the traditional "Canteiro" method, in which the barrels are stored on the roof to expose them to the sun. It hits 19% abv and retails for $50.

My first note on the Rare Wine Company New York Malmsey was, “Oh, the nose!” That is still what I think every time I have some. The amber color looks a lot like whiskey, and the nose is all raisins, burnt caramel and brown sugar. Those appear on the palate, too, but in a very dry form - not what the nose seems to promise. The mouth is full and the finish is very long.


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Wine For The Holidays - Madeira

The holidays are approaching faster than we care to think about, and one bottle I like to have around for the holidays is a nice Madeira.  Get one before Thanksgiving and pop it open with the pecan pie.  The Blandy's Malmsey I'm writing about has been open since last year's holidays, so don't worry if you don't finish the bottle quickly.

The history of Madeira wine is terrifically interesting.  Made in the Madeira Islands - an autonomous region of Portugal, 400 miles off coast of northern Africa - the wine was stocked on ships that used the main island as a port of call.  It was fortified, to help preserve it on the long ocean voyage.

By chance, a cask of the wine was left on board a ship on its return to Madeira.  It was then discovered that the wine underwent a change during the long trip.  Exposure to heat and the motion of the ship resulted in partial oxidation of the wine.

A system of aging was devised that imitated those effects.  The estufagem aging process utilized in the town of Funchal sees the wine placed in casks on the top floor of the facility, where it is warmest.  Through the years, the casks are brought to lower floors until it finally reaches the ground level.

Blandy’s was established in 1811 by John Blandy, and his descendants still own and operate the facility.  Their five-year Malmsey is made from Malvasia grapes and is fortified to a level of 19% abv.  Of the 4 varieties of Madeira, Malmsey is the sweetest, having the most residual sugar.  However, the acidity is so naturally high, there's no cloying sweetness.

This Madeira is extremely dark brown, darker even than whiskey.  Rich aromas of burnt caramel and brown sugar pounce on the olfactory upon sniffing it.  The palate is not overwhelmed by those sweet descriptors, though.  Instead, taut and focused flavors of raisins, coffee and cocoa lead the way, with the caramel making an appearance on the long finish.

Now, where's that pecan pie?


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Blood Of The Vines - Diana Rigg

Pairing‌ ‌wine‌ ‌with‌ ‌movies!‌  ‌See‌ ‌the‌ ‌trailers‌ ‌and‌ ‌hear‌ ‌the‌ ‌fascinating‌ ‌commentary‌ ‌for‌ ‌these‌ ‌movies‌ ‌and‌ ‌many‌ ‌more‌ ‌at‌ ‌Trailers‌ ‌From‌ ‌Hell.‌  ‌This week we are mourning the loss of Diana Rigg, sexy Emma Peel of The Avengers on TV and a part of these three films on the big screen.

1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service was the sixth installment in the James Bond series, and the first without Sean Connery in the role of 007.  George Lazenby vaulted instantly from starring in TV advertisements for chocolates to being "Bond. James Bond."  Life is good that way to some folks.  

Life was good to Diana Rigg, at least the professional side of it.  She played the Bond girl here.  The character was an Italian countess who became, in the film, Bond's wife - however briefly.  Rigg had reportedly said that she always wanted to appear in an "epic film," and OHMSS was that.  Rigg may have had a somewhat charmed acting life, but she suffered some great personal heartbreak along the way.

I am of the age that Diana Rigg as Emma Peel had a great "M. Appeal" - male appeal - for me as a pre-teen boy.  We won't get into embarrassing specifics here, except to say that I was left with a lifelong search for a woman who could do a little judo hip-flip on me while entering a room.

Rigg reportedly had it in her contract for the BBC series Victoria that she would be served a cold bottle of prosecco as each day’s shooting wrapped.  You can go that way if you like - a $10 bottle of Italian bubbles - or you can lean into the Bond lifestyle and order an expensive Champagne.  While you're leaning, extract a few Benjamins from your wallet.  Bond was no slouch when it came to booze.

The Hospital, from 1971, has Rigg playing opposite George C. Scott as the love interest of a New York doctor at the center of his unraveling world.  She serves as a brightness in the good doctor's otherwise dark existence.  That, despite the lack of cute little judo hip-flips in Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning script.

Bogle Vineyards, in the northern California town of Clarksburg, has made news recently by announcing that they are feeding a thousand medical workers, using local restaurants to do so.  That sounds like as good a reason as any to pair their Old Vine Zinfandel with The Hospital.  The Bogle wines are good, affordable and usually fairly easy to find, even at the supermarket.

In Theater of Blood - or Theatre of Blood in the U.K. - Rigg joined forces with Vincent Price in a 1973 horror film with laughs.  That description somehow sounds better than "a comedy with a lot of murders in it."  Price plays an actor who got shafted by the critics - who thought up that crazy idea? - and Rigg plays his daughter.  People think the actor did a deadly dive into the Thames, and so when the critics start dropping like flies, Rigg's character is the prime suspect.

Theater of Blood was Price's favorite movie, he said, because it gave him the opportunity to do some Shakespeare.  Rigg called it her fave, too, saying it contained some of her best work.

One of the luckless critics in the movie is drowned in a barrel of wine, mimicking a murder from Richard III.  The wine was a malmsey, I do believe.  The Rare Wine Company makes a line of Madeira wines which are astoundingly good, if a little pricey.  Their New York Malmsey is as good a choice as any.

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