We woke in time to see the sun rise today and to watch yet another cruise ship sail into the bay. While I’m mentioning the sea, the Atlantic Ocean, we’re surprised by the calmness of it here. On only one day have we seen even the hint of whitecaps on the waves, otherwise it has been flat as the proverbial millpond. We are told that on the north side of the island the seas are much rougher and it’s good for surfing. We shall see for ourselves tomorrow when we go on the trip to the west and north.
Anyway, back to today. Since we’re both STILL feeling not quite 100% (possibly because we did quite a lot yesterday), we had a lazy morning, then caught the coach into town to visit the Adegas de Sao Francisco, also known as the old Blandy’s Wine Lodge. We took the regular tour rather than the vintage one – it was quarter the price, and we didn’t think we were quite up to tasting 6 different Madeira wines, some of which retail at over 200 euros a bottle. Some of their oldest wines are in excess of 100 years old; we didn’t dare ask how much they are!! The tour was very good and the tasting even better! We had a 5 year old dry Madeira and a 5 year old medium sweet, followed by a 3 year old sweet one. None of these were the traditionally matured wines, but are artificially aged in heated vats. The REAL stuff is aged for 10 years+ in American Oak barrels. True vintage Madeira is a single year, a single named grape variety and traditionally aged for at least 20 years before bottling.
There are 4 main sweetnesses – dry, medium dry, medium sweet and sweet. All the best Madeira wines are made from different varieties of white grapes. The sweet grape juice is started in fermentation then alcohol is added to kill the yeast and fortify the wine. The longer the grape juice is fermented before being stopped, the more sugar is converted to alcohol, therefore the drier the finished product. Tom was amazed to find that, for the sweetest wine – the Malmsey – fermentation is stopped after only 24 hours! The remaining grape juice caramelises with time giving the traditional colour. The more grape sugar remaining, the darker the wine, and the sweeter the taste.
Tom liked the dry Madeira, made from the Sercial grapes, which turn out to be the local name for the Riesling variety from which his favourite German wines are made, whereas I preferred the sweetest one – no surprise there!
4 million litres of grape juice are produced a year on Madeira and Blandy’s use 1 million litres to produce their fortified dessert wines, which ranks alongside the finest Sherry and Port. The rest is used by other vintners to produce much lesser known madeiran fortified wines, as well as the ordinary table wines. Blandy’s have 700,000 litres maturing in the buildings where we did our tour
and 4 million litres maturing at their warehouse and bottling plant, elsewhere on the island. All the Madeira exported has now to be bottled on the island, according to EU regulations. This does have the advantage of preventing anyone adding inferior wine to the product and passing it off as the genuine article.
Their museum has lots of the old equipment used in the wine making process, including some of the goatskins that were used to transport the grape juice from the various vineyards.
These were carried by men over the mountains from the north and west of the island where most of the grapes are grown, and often arrived no longer full, as the contents “evaporated” during the journey! Surprisingly, once the goatskins were handed over, evaporation ceased!
After the visit, we killed time until the courtesy coach returned here. We were in time to see the cruise ship leave for her next port of call, which we knew this time was Malaga because while we were doing the Blandy’s tour, we met an American lady from the ship, the Norwegian Jade. We also learnt that the MSC Fantasia we’d seen the day before is the largest cruise ship ever to dock in Funchal. It can take 4,100 passengers – the mind boggles!
We chose yet another of the local restaurants for dinner, and had an early night – having set the alarm for 6.45am for our day trip tomorrow.
Anyway, back to today. Since we’re both STILL feeling not quite 100% (possibly because we did quite a lot yesterday), we had a lazy morning, then caught the coach into town to visit the Adegas de Sao Francisco, also known as the old Blandy’s Wine Lodge. We took the regular tour rather than the vintage one – it was quarter the price, and we didn’t think we were quite up to tasting 6 different Madeira wines, some of which retail at over 200 euros a bottle. Some of their oldest wines are in excess of 100 years old; we didn’t dare ask how much they are!! The tour was very good and the tasting even better! We had a 5 year old dry Madeira and a 5 year old medium sweet, followed by a 3 year old sweet one. None of these were the traditionally matured wines, but are artificially aged in heated vats. The REAL stuff is aged for 10 years+ in American Oak barrels. True vintage Madeira is a single year, a single named grape variety and traditionally aged for at least 20 years before bottling.
There are 4 main sweetnesses – dry, medium dry, medium sweet and sweet. All the best Madeira wines are made from different varieties of white grapes. The sweet grape juice is started in fermentation then alcohol is added to kill the yeast and fortify the wine. The longer the grape juice is fermented before being stopped, the more sugar is converted to alcohol, therefore the drier the finished product. Tom was amazed to find that, for the sweetest wine – the Malmsey – fermentation is stopped after only 24 hours! The remaining grape juice caramelises with time giving the traditional colour. The more grape sugar remaining, the darker the wine, and the sweeter the taste.
Tom liked the dry Madeira, made from the Sercial grapes, which turn out to be the local name for the Riesling variety from which his favourite German wines are made, whereas I preferred the sweetest one – no surprise there!
4 million litres of grape juice are produced a year on Madeira and Blandy’s use 1 million litres to produce their fortified dessert wines, which ranks alongside the finest Sherry and Port. The rest is used by other vintners to produce much lesser known madeiran fortified wines, as well as the ordinary table wines. Blandy’s have 700,000 litres maturing in the buildings where we did our tour
and 4 million litres maturing at their warehouse and bottling plant, elsewhere on the island. All the Madeira exported has now to be bottled on the island, according to EU regulations. This does have the advantage of preventing anyone adding inferior wine to the product and passing it off as the genuine article.Their museum has lots of the old equipment used in the wine making process, including some of the goatskins that were used to transport the grape juice from the various vineyards.
These were carried by men over the mountains from the north and west of the island where most of the grapes are grown, and often arrived no longer full, as the contents “evaporated” during the journey! Surprisingly, once the goatskins were handed over, evaporation ceased!After the visit, we killed time until the courtesy coach returned here. We were in time to see the cruise ship leave for her next port of call, which we knew this time was Malaga because while we were doing the Blandy’s tour, we met an American lady from the ship, the Norwegian Jade. We also learnt that the MSC Fantasia we’d seen the day before is the largest cruise ship ever to dock in Funchal. It can take 4,100 passengers – the mind boggles!
We chose yet another of the local restaurants for dinner, and had an early night – having set the alarm for 6.45am for our day trip tomorrow.
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