Editing Madeira wine (section)

== Styles ==
[[File:Funchal D Oliveiras inside 2016 2.jpg|thumb|Company Pereira D`Oliveiras, Funchal]]

===The noble varieties===
The four major styles of Madeira are synonymous with the names of the four best-known white grapes used to produce the wine. Ranging from the sweetest style to the driest style, the Madeira types are:
* ''Malvasia'' (also known as ''Malvazia'' or ''Malmsey'') has its fermentation halted when its sugars are between 3.5 and 6.5° Baumé (63-117 g/L). This style of wine is characterised by its dark colour, rich texture, and coffee-[[caramel (aroma)|caramel]] flavours. Like other Madeiras made from noble grape varieties, the Malvasia grape used in Malmsey production has naturally high levels of [[acids (wine)|acidity in the wine]], which balances with the high sugar levels so the wines do not taste cloyingly sweet.
* ''Bual'' (also called ''Boal'', or ''Malvasia Candida'') has its fermentation halted when its sugars are between 2.5 and 3.5° Baumé (45-63 g/L). This style of wine is characterized by its dark colour, medium-rich texture, and [[raisin]] flavours.
* ''Verdelho'' has its fermentation halted a little earlier than Sercial, when its sugars are between 1.5 and 2.5° Baumé (27-45 g/L). This style of wine is characterized by smokey notes and high acidity.
* ''Sercial'' is nearly fermented completely dry, with very little residual sugar (0.5 to 1.5° on the [[Baumé scale]], or 9-27 g/L). This style of wine is characterised by high-toned colours, almond flavours, and high [[acidity]].
A fifth noble grape, ''Terrantez'', almost became extinct on the island but has been making a comeback.  Its style ranges in sweetness from that of Verdelho to that of Bual, never being quite as dry as Sercial nor quite as sweet as Malvasia.

=== Other labelling ===
[[File:Blandys Winery - Funchal, Madeira.jpg|thumb|Storage of vintage Madeira wine, Blandys Winery, [[Funchal]]]]
Wines made from at least 85% of the noble varieties of Sercial, Verdelho, Bual, and Malvasia are usually labelled based on the amount of time they were aged:<ref name="Sotheby pg 340-341"/>
* '''Colheita''' or '''Harvest''' – This style includes wines from a single vintage, but aged for a shorter period than true Vintage Madeira. The wine can be labelled with a vintage date but includes the word ''colheita'' on it. Colheita must be a minimum of five years of age before being bottled and may be bottled any time after that. Effectively, most wineries would drop the word Colheita once bottling a wine at over 19 years of age because it is entitled to be referred to as vintage once it is 20 years of age. At that point, the wine can command a higher price than if it were still to be bottled as Colheita. This differs from Colheita Port which is a minimum of seven years of age before bottling.
* Wines labeled '''Fine''' or '''Finest''', or without any indication of age, have been aged for at least three years and are the most common wines used in cooking.
* '''Reserve''' (five years) – This is the minimum amount of aging a wine labelled with one of the noble varieties are permitted to have.
* '''Special Reserve''' (10 years) – At this point, the wines are often aged naturally without any artificial heat source.
* '''Extra Reserve''' (over 15 years) – This style is rare to produce, with many producers extending the aging to 20 years for a vintage or producing a ''colheita''. It is richer in style than a Special Reserve Madeira.
* '''Vintage''' or '''Frasqueira''' – This style must be aged at least 19 years in a cask and one year in bottle, therefore cannot be sold until it is at least 20 years of age. The word ''vintage'' does not appear on bottles of vintage Madeira because, in Portugal, the word "Vintage" is a trademark belonging to the Port traders.


The terms pale, dark, full, and rich can also be included to describe the wine's colour.

Madeira produced from Negra Mole grapes used to be legally restricted to use generic terms on the label to indicate the level of [[sweetness (wine)|sweetness]] as ''seco'' (dry), ''meio seco'' (medium dry), ''meio doce'' (medium sweet) and ''doce'' (sweet). However, in 2015 the Madeira Wine Institute announced that producers may officially recognise Tinta Negra on their front labels and that all "expressions" must state their bottling date.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2015/05/madeira-clarifies-message/ |title=Article in 'The Drinks Business' |date=11 May 2015}}</ref>

Wines listed with ''Solera'' were made in a style similar to [[sherry]], with a fractional blending of wines from different vintages in a [[solera]] system.<ref name="Oxford pg 416-419"/> The Solera method of blending is most widely practiced in the sherry production of Spain. Initially, the rules for Madeira soleras were different, with a maximum of ten percent of the wine in the solera being permitted to be drawn off and replaced each year, and the process repeated a maximum of ten times before the solera had to be completely emptied; as such a significant proportion of wine in any bottle would be from the listed year. However, at some unknown time, laws were loosened to allow soleras to be used indefinitely as they are in Sherry production, resulting in some later and less expensive Solera wines containing microscopic quantities of the listed old vintage.<ref name="Madeira Wine Guide">{{cite web |title=Madeira Wine Guide |url=https://www.fortheloveofport.com/madeira-wine-guide/3/ |website=For the Love of Port |access-date=17 April 2025}}</ref> Another interesting peculiarity of old solera Madeiras is that they were initially developed as a result of trying to extend the stocks of vintages when the vines had stopped being productive due to Phylloxera. Therefore, as there was no younger wine to add to the vintage, it was usually older wines that were added. In recent years, vintage Madeiras have been commanding higher prices than soleras, but, from 1966 (when Michael Broadbent started wine auctions at Christie's), until about the end of the 20th century, solera Madeiras always fetched a premium at auction over the vintage ones.
=== Rainwater ===
A style called "Rainwater" is one of the largest-selling styles of Madeira in the United States, most commonly drunk as an apéritif. Nowadays it is almost always an inexpensive medium-dry style of wine made entirely from Tinta Negra grapes, and aged for around three years including a period in an estufa, but Barbeito continues to produce a more expensive Rainwater in the old pre-phylloxera style by blending Sercial and Verdelho grapes.

Accounts conflict as to how this style was developed and named. The most common one derives from the vineyards on the steep hillsides, where [[irrigation (wine)|irrigation]] was difficult, and the vines were dependent on the local rainwater for survival. Another involves a shipment destined for the [[Thirteen Colonies|American colonies]] that was accidentally diluted by rainwater while it sat on the docks in Savannah, Georgia, or Funchal. Rather than dump the wines, the merchants tried to pass it off as a "new style" of Madeira and were surprised at its popularity among the Americans.<ref name="Sotheby pg 340-341"/> Another story relates that a gentleman in Savannah, Georgia tasted such a Madeira and declared, "This is as fine as Rainwater."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tuten |first1=James |title='Have Some Madeira, M'dear': The Unique History of Madeira Wine and its Consumption in the Atlantic World |journal=Juniata Voices |year=2008 |volume=8 |pages=55–61|url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=60272213&site=eds-live&scope=site |access-date=22 February 2018}}</ref>
=== Other styles ===
"Quinado-Madeira", a tonic wine dosed with quinine consumed to ward off malaria in tropical regions, and "White Madeira", a lighter style of wine heavily chill-filtered to remove coloring and flavor compounds, were both discontinued at some time in the 20th century.<ref name="Madeira Wine Guide" />