Some writers and researchers believe that it had been originally cultivated in the Rhineland, and indeed some subspecies of the cultivar persist in the northern European area.

This cultivar is the whitest and softest of the Madeira Wines. It yields the driest of the wines produced on the island, ranging from a full golden to a very pale colour, and requires a substantial period of aging to be best appreciated. They grow at the highest of the cultivated altitudes, on soil with volcanic rock and ripen at the end of the grape harvest period - about the last two weeks of September.