Category: Wine

Imagine yourself loaded into a watertight cask and rolled down into the deepest hold of an 18th century sailing ship. You are buffeted about in a sea-voyage of many months. The warmth is oppressive, even in the belly of the ship, and the humidity is worse. From time to time, you hear the scrabbling of ship rats—black rats, the sort that carry the bubonic plague, but in your barrel they can’t get at you.

Sounds foul, doesn’t it? But this rough treatment is how Madeira wine was first made. And the process (well, maybe not the rats) is still simulated in the estufas of that beautiful island, 400 miles from the nearest mainland, out in the broad Atlantic. It’s no wonder that all four sorts of Madeira, from the driest (Sercial) to the sweetest (Malmsey), are a fine nutty brown color. Madeira in its raw state is a white wine, but by the time it’s ready to drink it’s been cooked—“maderized”—in fact and it’s this cooking that produces its distinctive flavor. There are four varieties of Madeira, named for the four grapes involved: there’s the unctuous sweetness of Malmsey, the less sugary savor of Bual, or the more austere Verdelho and Sercial.

Verdelho is often known in America as Rainwater, although it would have to be rainwater off a pretty rusty tin roof to match the color. Rainwater is wonderful when you drink it with a plain cracker (try the English biscuit known as the Bath Oliver) or perhaps a piece of Madeira cake on a cool spring afternoon. Rainwater also makes a pleasant substitute for sherry as a drink before dinner, since it doesn’t disturb the stomach the way a dry sherry can.
Malmsey is good after dinner. If you go to Mount Vernon in Virginia, by all means admire George Washington’s wooden false teeth. Then go downstairs to see his dining room, which is set up for an 18th century after-dinner dessert. This would consist not of cake or pie, but of fruit, nuts, and sweet wines. You can imagine the Father of the Nation talking treason against the British and sipping Malmsey from the small glasses set on the table. Good Malmsey is not just sickly-sweet, it sets a Haydn symphony of sweet and sour playing in your brain.

The Romans knew about maderizing wine. But we have 18th century America and England to thank for the nectar we enjoy today. The island of Madeira was a convenient mid-Atlantic harbor in colonial times. (Readers of Patrick O’Brien’s novels about Nelson’s Navy will know Madeira simply as “the Island.”) His Majesty’s Government in England would not permit trade between the American colonies and other European nations, and the 18th century was punctuated by frequent wars between France and England. The absence of French wines made early Americans thirsty.

One could argue that Madeira was not Europe but Africa. Besides, it belonged to Portugal and the alliance between England and Portugal is the oldest diplomatic alliance in the world, dating back to the Middle Ages. So when they found that the unappealing white wines of the island, which had previously been used as ballast in the bottoms of ships, could be made palatable by long sea voyages, vine-growers and merchants hastened to supply the Colonials’ favorite lubricant.

You can sip your way into all this history for as little as $15 a bottle, and you don’t have to drink it all at once when you’ve opened it. After all that abuse in its manufacture, Madeira has the patience to wait for you to enjoy it.

By Oliver Nicholson

Things seem to be getting serious. She’s convinced her parents to ask you to dinner and you’re scared stiff. It’s not that the grub will be bad. Her mother has a great reputation as a cook. But how will you ever convince them you’re good enough for their little girl?

First impressions count, and only a clod would show up empty-handed. So, what will it be? Chocolates? Too impersonal. Flowers? Ditto, unless you grew them yourself. Hot dish? Hardly, when she’s such a good cook. Wine? Her father is one of those meek little men who mows the lawn and does the dishes in rubber gloves. He undoubtedly knows the perfect wines to go with the perfect cook’s perfect grub. He probably has the wine all mapped out: a nifty little Mersault for the truite meuniere, Aloxe-Corton for the Beef Wellington.

Wait, though, what about wine for after dinner? A fine idea. You go to the wine shop and look down the shelves. Port? Too complicated. Besides, the really good ones need to be kept for years, filtered into decanters and left to settle, hardly the sort of thing you can hand over after you’ve hung up your coat with “I thought you might like to try this.” Madeira? Where is Madeira? And then there are all those yellowish wines, said to be sweet. Might do for drinking with the Perfect Pudding or with fruit and nuts afterwards.

OK, which? My advice is to go for the one called Beaumes de Venise. Why? For a start, it tastes good. Not just good but interesting. Odd things happen to the roof of your mouth when you drink it slowly. For another thing, it comes from an interesting place; it may get her father talking about their holiday in the south of France, which will cheer him up, whatever it may do to you. Best of all, it’s not expensive. A half-bottle, which is all you’ll need, costs around $12. Can’t be bad.

All the Beaumes de Venise in the world comes from one pretty village in southern France. Provence was the first area of Gaul to be annexed by the Roman Empire, more than a century before Christ. The small Muscat grapes from which the wine is made grow on sandy terraces laid out along the hot hillsides northeast of Avignon. These grapes probably came to Provence even before the Romans. Ancient writers tell how the people of Iron Age Gaul were so keen on wine imported from the Greek and Roman world that they would sell their own daughters into slavery simply to get their hands on a bottle of it– though of course it might be tactless to relate this at dinner with your future in-laws. Anyway, when the good people of Gaul began to grow grapes for themselves it was likely the Muscat grape they planted.

The Greeks have a saying that you should enjoy your wine with all five senses. I’m not sure how touch or hearing come into it, but Beaumes de Venise held up to the light, even on a grey March evening in Minnesota, has a pleasing smell and a pale gold glint. The tastes are delicate, reminiscent of several sorts of fruit. Maybe that’s why I’ve seen it commended for use in recipes for fruit salad with mangoes, strawberries, and pineapple. But frankly, that’s a waste. The flavors of its own fruit are too complicated to mask with such strong alien tastes.

If you like Beuames de Venise, you’ll be in godly company: The Popes enjoyed it when they lived at Avignon in the 14th century. I’m not sure if this fact will make you seem more virtuous in her parents’ eyes, but it certainly can’t hurt your reputation–nor that of this excellent wine.

Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.