The cooper is also found plying his trade in Madeira. The talent of a good cooper is oft dismissed when opening a bottle of wine; there is a direct relationship between the quality of the bouquet and taste of the wine as there is to the type of wood and construction that the cooper employs in the making of his vat or barrel. There is of-course, the practice of the grape pickers and their pressing of the grapes at communal  and privately owned “lagars” (wine presses). Wine for export is, however, pressed from grapes by electric presses for quality control. And then there are the wine merchants or producers themselves. Each wine producer earning a reputation for their wine only after decades and maybe a century or more before they can call themselves fine Madeira Wine makers