Madeira Island Favorites

Favorite thing: One cannot talk about Madeira without mentioning its wine.
Madeira has, despite the subtropical influence, mediterranean climate. Why? It rains mostly in the winter, it has usually cool winds and sea streams coming from high latitudes (north). It's located by the southern boundary of the mediterranean climate area of South Europe-North Africa. Further south begin the deserts with its high pressures and the trade winds.

What has this to do with wine making? Grapes need mediterranean climate to grow. They need a season of hot and dry weather so as to not having their fragile peels hit by infections.
The season of hot/dry weather of Madeira is short but it's long enough to have grapes, despite the risk of plagues.

In the XVI century, when the inicial sugar boom bursted, agriculture shifted to wine making. Casts were imported, namelly the malmsey cast (or malvasia) from Greece.
Madeira wine started to be used as a sailors drink in their Atlantic voyages. A similar story with Port wine and other sorts of fortified wines: the boats swaying damaged the wine they carried, so brandy started to be added to preserve the stuff, transforming it into a liquorous sweet and strong wine. At the beginning sugar rum was added, nowadays it's mostly wine brandy as with Port's case.
A peculiar aspect of Madeira is the "estufagem" process. Before the addition of brandy, the wine is warmed so as to create the effect of being under warm equatorial temperatures. This process was accidentally discovered when carrying wine in boats through the tropics. The taste of the wine improved after being under the hot temperatures of the tropics.
It also lasted longer. It's said that the the older is the red wine, the better it is. A bottle of Madeira wine can age for more than 100 years, making it one of the most durable wines.

The trade done with the British in Madeira envolved mostly wine. The Brits started to produce it in Madeira and to sell to their overseas colonies, so much so that all the wine sold in the 17th/18th centuries British colonies in North America was Madeira. It's said that George Washington and the American independentists toasted the foundation of the USA with glasses of Madeira.

Madeira wine is nowadays a much less known and exclusive wine. Port wine done in the north of Portugal based its process on Madeira. It became much more famous around the world than Madeira.
The reasons? A series of plagues in the XIX century almost wiped out the whole wine production in Madeira island. It was then questioned whether the humidity of Madeira island could make wine production sustainable because of the frequent plagues.
Also, the rugged terrain of the island is a con to the use of modern machinery. This despite the high fertility of the soil. Production has to remain hand-made, causing Madeira wine to be an expensive, exclusive and little produced wine.

I am trying to find Madeira wine on sale in Lisbon. It's difficult to get it in Lisbon. Only one supermarket under the bullfight arena in Campo Pequeno, Lisbon sells Blandy's, one of the most famous Madeira brands.
Why is this? I am in the same country after all!

Favorite thing: Madeira has an important flower industry. There are plenty of beautiful flowers throughout the island.
Some of them are indigenous. Many though were brought from regions with a similar climate around the world, such as the birds of paradise (strelitzias) and proteas from South Africa.

I bough home the flowers in the pic.

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Favorite thing: Madeira Island has no shortage of water in its interior. The amount of rainfall is high, although it falls mostly on the northern and western side.

There are plenty of cascades and little streams all over the island.

Favorite thing: The Western plateau dencends abruptly to the sea on both sides of the island.

Fondest memory: Take the road from Paul do Mar up to the plateau. You'll climb up the massif in an road with lots of "S" turns. After a while you'll see the south coast deep down as if you're on a plane.

Favorite thing: Agriculture in Madeira combines tropical plantations (sugar, bananas, mangos) with mediterranean ones (grapes, figs).

The sunnier and warm Southern coast gets the water brought by the levadas, enabling subtropical agriculture to grow.
The island begun it's XV century colonisation with a sugar boom. Sugar had been back then a luxurious good only affordable by monarchs and very rich people. The Portuguese and the Madeirans in particular got rich by planting and selling sugar to European markets in Flanders.
XVI century overproduction of sugar in the newlyfound Portuguese colony of Brazil, as well as in the Spanish Caribbean lead then the sugar prices to fall so low that it stopped being profitable.
Madeiran agriculture shifted to vines. Nowadays Madeira produces mostly bananas as tropical crop.

The banana tree in the pic is from the botanical garden in Funchal.
The bananas in my hand are trully Madeiran bananas but not from the tree. I had previously bought them in the supermarket (LOL). They are ripe yellow while the ones at the tree are unripe.

Favorite thing: The Eastern side of Madeira is the most visited part of the island as well as where most of Madeirans live. They do not live in the center though. The center is too high and rugged. It's made up of beautiful rocky peaks, with almost no vegetation. The clouds coming from north pass bellow this area through the valleys or are blocked by the mountains.

The highest peak of Madeira, Pico Ruivo, has no access road. The only peak with access road is Pico do Arieiro, the 3rd highest peak. From there, one can do a 4 hour trekking to Pico Ruivo.

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Favorite thing: It's at the Southern slopes that most of Madeirans live. The population density, mostly in the area between Caniçal and Ribeira Brava, is very high.

A great deal of the slopes here, if they are not occupied with houses, have banana plantations, specially around Câmara de Lobos.

Favorite thing: The Levadas is the irrigation system that started to be built since the very beggining of the colonisation so as to carry water from north to south. Levada roughly translates into "carried", or water carrier.

It's an extensive system. As the water canals have footpaths aside, they started to be used by tourists for hiking through the mountains.
As many of you know, it's a very peculiar thing to do in Madeira.