As with Port and Sherry, its original production came about as something of an accident.
During the late fifteenth century, European merchant ships would sail around the Cape of Good Hope, laden with treasures and riches from the vast expanse of Africa and the East. Furs, jewels, gold, silk and spices were in great demand in the royal courts of Spain, Portugal, France and England, and the seas were, for the first time in history, teeming with vast vessels intent on exploiting the riches of far-off lands, and establishing the roots of what would become the great empires of the age.
It was during one of these long and perilous voyages that the first Madeira wines were inadvertently created, as one such ship, stocked full of wine made from the fine grapes grown on the island of Madeira, was tossed and thrown about on the waves. The movement of the ship had a powerful effect on the wine barrels and their contents; the wine was transformed by the activity, condensed, vaporized, aerated and aged, and heated slowly and steadily by the equatorial sunshine beating down upon the decks. Upon arrival at port, the sailors were instructed to dispose of the wine, which was surely spoiled by the rough journey, but as the story goes, the sailors (who were never ones to waste a drink) starting drinking that which they were told to throw away, and developed a taste for this ‘ruined’ wine. They discovered that the wine was far from destroyed, but was in fact delightful; full of new flavors and fascinating aspects that hadn’t been tasted before.
