Madeira wine

Madeira is a fortified wine made on the Portuguese island of Madeira, in the North Atlantic Ocean, just under 400 kilometres (250 mi) north of the Canary Islands, Spain and 520 kilometres (320 mi) west of Morocco. Madeira is produced in a variety of styles ranging from dry wines, which can be consumed on their own, as an apéritif, to sweet wines usually consumed with dessert. Lower-priced Madeira is also used for cooking; when intended for cooking and not drinking, it is often flavoured with salt and pepper.

The islands of Madeira have a long winemaking history, dating back to the Age of Exploration (approximately from the end of the 15th century), when Madeira was a standard port of call for ships heading to the New World or East Indies. To prevent the wine from spoiling, the local vintners began adding neutral grape spirits. On the long sea voyages, the wine would be exposed to excessive heat and movement, which benefited its flavour. This was discovered when an unsold shipment of wine was returned to the islands after a round trip.

Today, Madeira is noted for its winemaking process that involves oxidizing the wine through heat and ageing. The younger blends (three and five years old) are produced with the aid of artificial application of heat to accelerate the aging process; the older blends, colheitas and frasqueiras, are produced by the canteiro method. Because of the way these wines are aged, they are long-lived in the bottle, and those produced by the canteiro method will survive for decades and even centuries, even after being opened.