A few weeks back, I was smitten with the latest addition to my home liquor collection: the Forty Creek Port Wood Reserve, and believe me, my feelings still haven’t changed – if you have access to a bottle, grab it before it’s gone.
While softening a bold, spicy spirit with a wine isn’t a new practice by any means – sherrys and ports have been the norm for quite some time now – lately it seems that more and more distilleries have been eager to introduce fortified wines to their whiskys. One of the latest introductions to this category is The Balvenie 17yr Old Madeira Cask, and the good folks from the Balvenie were kind enough to drop some off for me recently.
Before I get to the spirit itself, I wanted to introduce you to Madeira, and why the use of a Madeira wine was such a great fit for The Balvenie’s latest addition.
Madeira is a Portugese fortified wine made in the beautiful Madeira islands, with roots that go back hundreds of years. The production process used in the creation of Madeira wine is what makes it so unique. Here’s why.
Through the course of the 15th to 17th centuries, Madeira was often used as a port of call for ships traveling to the New World and East Indies. By the middle of the 16th century, Madeira’s wine industry was thriving, and farmers were able to supply ships with the wine needed to last the long trip across the ocean.
Unfortunately, the long trips exposed the wine to constant agitation and intense heat in the ships holds, which in turn would end up spoiling the majority of the product before it was consumed. To remedy this, farmers began to add small amounts of brandy to the wine, increasing the longevity of the product, and making it more resilient to the adverse conditions where it was stored on the ships.
Heating and Aging (Estafugem) of Madeira Wine
After that long voyage, the resulting product was often preferred over the original wine. Vinho da roda (wines that have made a round trip) as it was now called was quickly becoming popular, but the cost of producing it was quite high, so winemakers on the island began experimenting to find ways they could simulate the conditions faced at sea. What resulted were three styles of heating and aging, with the approach determined by the quality and cost of the finished wine.
Cuba de Calor, the most common of these approaches, is used for the production of lower cost Madeira. The wine is aged in stainless steel or concrete tanks which are surrounded by piping or heating coils which allow hot water to circulate around the tank and heat it. The wine’s temperature climbs to as high as 130°F (55°C) for a minimum of 90 days.
Armazem de Calor, the second approach, is only used by the Madeira Wine Institute. For this, the wine is stored in wooden casks, and placed in a room outfitted with steam-producing pipes, essentially creating a large sauna that heats the room and wine. This process introduces the heat more gradually to the wine, and imparts the flavours slower, over the course of 6 to 12 months.
Canteiro (pictured below), means “attic”, and is the third approach. Not entirely dissimilar from the heating and aging process many whiskeys go through in hot rickhouses, by storing the barrels in the highest parts of the warehouse, the Madeira is exposed to extremes of temperature. The Madeira wines aged by the Canteiro approach are often quite expensive, and are aged to upwards of 100 years in hot rooms heated naturally from the sun.
Winemaking and Varietals
There are four major types of Madeira wine, each named according to the varietal used. These include Malvasia (or Malmsey), Boal (or Bual), Verdelho, and Sercial. Others varietals exist, but due to the island’s climate conditions, fungal grape diseases are fairly common, and because of this, other varietals have become scarce.
The initial steps to creating a Madeira wine start like most others: grapes are picked, crushed, fermented, and then aged in a stainless steel or oak cask. Depending on the type of Madeira, however, some steps very slightly.
* Boal and Malvasia, sweeter forms of Madeira, are often fermented with their skins, in order to extract phenols (which carry acids and tannin) which help to balance the sweetness of the wine. The drier wines, such as the Verdelho and Sercial varietals, are fermented separate of their skins.
* Depending on the level of sweetness desired, fermentation of the wine is halted at some point by the addition of neutral grape spirits. The wine is then subject to Estafugem, the aging and heating process described above, unique to Madeira wines.
The result of the Estafugem is the trademark, heavy-caramelized flavour of Madeira, not dissimilar from many whiskeys. How did it play out in the creation of The Balvenie’s 17yr Old Madeira Cask? Stay Tuned.
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[...] begun to be mentioned, and even then, half the class was devoted to wine-based spirits like Port, Madeira, and Sherry. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little disappointed in [...]