Madeira wine: A drink that’s stood the tests of time — and trans-Atlantic ship journeys

On the evening of June 10, 1768, two British customs officials, Comptroller Benjamin Hallowell and Collector Joseph Harrison, boarded the sloop Liberty, docked in Boston Harbor. The Liberty drew suspicion after Thomas Kirk, a customs officer, had flagged the ship for alleged smuggling. When Kirk had inspected the boat in May of that year, he had reported 25 pipes of Madeira wine, all accounted for. 

But come June, Kirk recanted his story. He alleged that the ship’s owner and crew had smuggled close to 100 pipes of Madeira wine offboard without paying proper taxes. He claimed he was forcibly locked in the ship and could hear men above him removing the cargo. 

The owner of the ship was none other than John Hancock, not yet known for his sweeping penmanship on the Declaration of Independence, but instead as a troublemaker for British soldiers and loyalists. 

Hallowell and Harrison seized the ship on June 10, rowing it out to keep it under the watchful cannon of the HMS Romney of the Royal Navy. What awaited them back on shore was a crowd of angry colonists, throwing rocks at the officers, accosting their homes, and ultimately dragging one of the officers’ personal boats to the Boston Common and burning it. 

This event, 21 months prior to the Boston Massacre and half a decade before the Boston Tea Party, is known as the Liberty Affair or Liberty Riot. 

“It is a never-ending series of escalation starting at the Liberty Affair down to open warfare,” said Jonathan Lane, historian and executive director at the Boston-based Revolution 250. “All because of a little tax on wine.” 

Angry crowds like the one present at the Liberty Affair were rising up in this pre-Revolution era. King George III’s writs of assistance, which established general warrants of search and seizure, and British taxes like the Sugar Act, fed anti-crown sentiment. At the core of the Liberty Affair was the colonists’ aversion to British infringement on trade.

And their affinity for Madeira wine. 

Thirty-two barrels of Madeira wine will be served at New Bedford’s 110th Feast of the Blessed Sacrament, the Portuguese and Madeiran festival that runs Thursday, July 30, to Sunday, Aug. 2, at Madeira Field. 

Madeira wine has pre-Revolutionary roots in the U.S.

Before the American colonies gained independence from Britain 250 years ago, the fortified red wine from the Portuguese island of Madeira was being imported for regular drinkers and the most notable of names in the American Revolution. 

In 1759, amongst books, shoes and stockings, George Washington ordered “from the best House in Madeira a Pipe of the best old Wine.” In April 1775, Thomas Jefferson, revered as a connoisseur of wine, wrote in his Memorandum books that in three months and one week, “we have used at Elk hill 2. doz. bottles Madeira.” A prized decanter with the name “Madeira” engraved on it was excavated from Monticello in 1981.  

Madeira wine, spanning from very dry to very sweet and improving with heat, still rallies a crowd of supporters in America, as it did in colonial times.

Brooke Barbier, author of “Cocked and Boozy: An Intoxicating History of the American Revolution,” who earned her Ph.D. in American history from Boston College, said that Madeira was very popular among the upper class in colonial America and was a favorite of Washington, Hancock and Jefferson.

When the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, Barbier said, the people of Boston threw a party on the Common to celebrate. Hancock, a wealthy merchant with “an oversized presence in Boston,” rolled out a cask of Madeira wine for all to enjoy, “offering something they wouldn’t have necessarily tried ever before,” Barbier said. Alcohol was a part of everyday life at the time. It wasn’t something colonists were ashamed of, Barbier explained, or something they tried to hide. 

David Hancock, a descendant of John Hancock and author of “Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste,” says Madeira wasn’t restricted to the upper class. It could be found in taverns and inns, as well as warehouses, which Hancock compared to present day Total Wines.

“Wine is not an aristocratic drink,” Hancock said of pre-Revolution times, but he explained that prices of Madeira began to spike when ports closed during the Revolution — and the price trend did not decrease after the war ended. 

Though it was not an outright status symbol, “[the Founding Fathers] drank it all the time,” Hancock said. “They drank it morning, noon and night.”

With little potable water, Madeira was not only a safe way to satisfy thirst, but some exporters argued that the chemical composition of Madeira was better for consumers than Port wines, Hancock explained. Exporters even claimed Madeira provided health benefits — a bogus claim that helped sellers justify a higher price, Hancock said. 

He also explained that for the Founding Fathers, drinking and providing wine at gatherings symbolized an educated, cosmopolitan lifestyle, mimicking in part the noble class in Europe. On the other hand, the smuggling John Hancock engaged in was seen as “helping the common man” and working to keep prices down.

After the Revolution, a culture of drinking wine started to emerge, Hancock said, cultivating a new high-class culture for Madeira wine.

“The Madeira exporters were far more flexible in developing markets than the Port people were,” Hancock said. “They were adept in understanding their market.” 

Duarte Mendonça, the Madeiran author of “American View on Madeira Wine: Annotated Anthology of 19th Century Texts,” highlighted the extensive presence of Madeira wine in American culture during and after the Revolution, calling it “not only a patriotic act but also a sign of wealth and power.”

Regardless of Madeira wine’s symbolic status, one throughline can be found: its name is all over records from colonial America.

The legacy of Madeira wine continues 

In the 18th century, the heating and aging of Madeira wine was a happy accident. The long journeys of ships across the Atlantic, with barrels of wine growing hot as cargo, enhanced the taste of Madeira, which Barbier said earned it the reputation of “never spoiling.”

Now, Madeira undergoes a heating process known as “estufagem,” a word derived from “estufa,” the Portuguese word for hothouse. The heating of the wine to achieve the age-old taste has been streamlined before the cross-Atlantic journey, said Fred Saraiva, president of Saraiva Enterprises, a New Bedford-based importer, wholesaler and distributor of Portuguese wines, beers and spirits. 

Just as ships’ hot holds were integral to perfecting Madeira wine, the wine reportedly served as an integral part of celebration in early U.S. naval history. The first recorded christening of a Navy ship, a ceremony performed just before its launch, was that of the U.S.S. Constitution in 1797 in Boston. According to the Naval History and Heritage Command, Captain James Sever broke a bottle of Madeira over the side of the ship. 

The Portuguese naval tall ship NRP Sagres, which docked in New Bedford this July 19 to 23, carried Madeira wine for onboard celebration and an assortment of Azorean food products.

Saraiva said variations of Madeira can range in price from $12 to over $30, with vintage collector bottles reaching hundreds of dollars. He said that in New Bedford, he sees Madeira outselling Port wine.

That can partly be credited to the annual Feast of the Blessed Sacrament, hosted by New Bedford’s Club Madeirense S.S. Sacramento.

Each year, the Feast serves Madeira wine pumped straight from the barrel. 

That’s made possible through an exclusive agreement with the Instituto Vinho Bordado Artesanato Madeira, the Madeiran regulatory organization responsible for multiple sectors of commerce. 

This year, Saraiva said, the company imported 32 barrels for the feast — most of which it expects to be emptied by the end of the four-day event.

“It’s as American as apple pie,” Saraiva said of Madeira wine. “And it goes pretty good with it, too.”

Email Anna Albrecht at aalbrecht@newbedfordlight.org.