THE TRADITION AND THE ALCHEMY
A wine cellar - this one courtesy of Vinhos Barbeitos
The Wine Cellars at Barbeitos. Careful conditions are required for the wines to mature for 20 years or more.
Unlike many other wines produced today Madeira wine is more than just pressing the grapes, filling the barrel and bunging the barrel. Indeed, only once the fermentation process is complete - that is, the transformation of the fruit sugar to wine, that the real work begins. It is at this point in time that the hard learned precision and skilled artisanship of well trained wine makers try to recreate the conditions of that experienced by the wine all those centuries ago on the legendary trips to the orient.

It is sheer wizardry and enchantment that alchemises the wine from the rude and previously fresh ordinary wine to the caramelized state that it results in. The result being the responsibility of the highly technical heating process.

 

 
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Bjelkaroy & Barbosa, Lda 1997/8 - Design Limbo