Madeira Sweet Wines

Have you ever tasted Madeira sweet wines?

Maybe I did a long time ago when I took a quick sip of my Mother's cooking wine. At that time I did not like it. Was I wrong about this one? Read on...

The Salt Lake Tribune has an excellent and informative article all about Madeira wine. I didn't know much about it but after reading how it figured into the history of the USA, a sort of tax protest against the English and now, some excellent new Madeiras which are usually made in Portugal.

The article also had something else of interest about Madeira wine that I did not know beforehand. As most wine lovers know, when wine is exposed to air for too long, even overnight, it can have a negative effect on the taste. Madeira is quite different. Part of the wine making process for it includes intentionally exposing it to air, which would spoil most other wines. In Madeira's case, it enhances the flavor and does not spoil when exposed to more air after you open your bottle at home. That is unique in the wine world as far as I know.


This is enough good information for me to experiment for myself about Madeira wine at home. A quick check of wine shops online show that many bottles are available for as low as $12 USD and the best as high as $35 USD. For the most part they are described as semi-sweet or sweet white wines. As a fan of dessert wines for many years, I can't say I've really given it enough of a try to write wine reviews about it, that will change now.

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Based on the above article I tried Full Rich Madeira wine because I could not bring myself to try the Paul Masson Madeira lurking at my grocery store.

The semi-sweet Uniao Vinicola Madeira cost only $10.99 on sale at my BevMo and it was worth every penny and much more. One of the things I was interested was the ability of the wine to taste good after opening for several days.

As it turned out, my wine bottle was about half empty the night it was opened after dinner. Everyone was surprised that Madeira wine actually tasted good, kind of sweet too. At 19% alcohol we ended the evening with enough to drink after two small glasses each.

A few nights later I poured some of the leftover wine into my after dinner cordial glass expecting the taste to have fallen. That did not happen. Instead the wine seemed pretty much the same to me, that is...it was still good!

Madeira wine has a pleasant distinct taste. I thought it was worth mentioning here that my experience with that wine was better than expected on the first night and up to a week later when the bottle was finished. It was "good to the last drop."

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