Robe — Burnished amber to mahogany, with an olive-green flash at the rim in great age
toasted walnut
caramel
orange peel
smoke
sea salt
Palate
Searing acidity through caramel depth — dry to lusciously sweet by style, always tangy
Ageing
Effectively indefinite; open bottles keep for months or years
Serving
13–16 °C; drier styles cooler, as an aperitif
Madeira is the immortal wine, made so by accident. Fortified to survive the East India run, it was found to improve in the ship's hot hold; merchants began sending pipes to the tropics and back on purpose, and estufagem and canteiro ageing now simulate the voyage on land — deliberate heat, deliberate oxidation, a wine that cannot spoil. Centenarian vintages are opened, not mourned.
History soaked into it early. The American colonies drank Madeira by the pipe, and independence was toasted in it in 1776; the Duke of Clarence, drowned in 1478 in a butt of malmsey, remains its darkest advertisement. Tinta Negra carries the volume today, with Sercial, Verdelho, Bual and Malvasia naming the ladder from driest to sweetest.