06 Apr Slides.- Madeira People
About 250 miles adrift off the coast of Morocco is a volcanic fragment of the eastern Atlantic known as Madeira. It is simply the largest island in a larger archipelago. The “second” island, Porto Santo, hides 71 km northeast of Funchal, and is so remote that Christopher Columbus once lived there.
The island is the tip of a gigantic mountain that protrudes from the bottom of the ocean and sinks into it reaching a depth of 2000 meters at a short distance from the coast. The capital is Funchal. A beautiful city with many shops and restaurants and all kinds of places of interest.
It is a must to try the local wine, quite different from the famous Madeira found in our wineshops.
“Madeira is a wine like no other. It is fine wine in extremis. Heat and air, both the sworn enemies of most wines and wine makers, conspire to turn madeira into one of the most enthralling of the world’s wines as well as the most resilient. Wines from the nineteenth and even the eighteenth centuries still retain an ethereal, youthful gloss, even after spending what is, in wine terms, an aeon in cask and bottle.
Having gone through this extreme and often extensive ageing process, madeira is virtually indestructible. Once the cork is removed, the wine comes to no harm, even if the bottle is left on ullage for months, even for years on end. If ever there was a wine to take away with you to a desert island, this is it.”
― Richard Mayson, on Madeira wine
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