I went to a lovely dinner last weekend, hosted by my friends Joe Shepard and Jefferson Harkins, with drinks served on the rooftop accompanied by delicious finger foods. Dinner was a salad of roast red and golden beets with goat cheese, succulent pesto-coated haddock, and a key lime tart with mixed berry compote. We enjoyed New Zealand sauvignon blanc and a lightly oaked chardonnay.
If that had been everything, it would have been a memorable dinner, especially that perfect piece of fish. But that wasn’t everything. After dinner came a Madeira, an 1880 Blandy’s Verdelho Madeira Solera to be exact.
Madeira — named for the volcanic island where it is produced — is an extremely rugged wine. Originally produced in this inhospitable place because the island was a layover spot for ships heading to the New World or the East Indies, the wine was fortified, heated and exposed to air to make it sturdy enough to survive the long ocean voyages.
Having been exposed to extreme heat and oxygen, it is very stable. An open bottle can last months (or even years), which makes early decanting advisable. A rule of thumb is to give the Madeira a day in the decanter for each decade it has been in a bottle. Because it is stored in casks, the bottling date is not the same as the vintage.
This article appears in Apr 21-27, 2010.
