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Madeira's tightrope of tradition and transformation

Madeira Wine Company - library wines to 1808 and older

How can madeira decisively move into the twenty-first century?

Two things puzzled me on our visit to Madeira in December 2020. The first was the wine glasses. Everywhere we went, from tastings at the top producers to high-end restaurants to little wine bars, madeira was served in small copita-like glasses, similar to the ISO tasting glasses used by the likes of the WSET. It seems anathema, and so very outdated, to serve such a gloriously complex wine in these stunted, sturdy little glasses with thick rims and short stems. They really, quite frankly, cramp the wine. No one, it...