Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/148134
WHAT WE'RE DRINKING Madeira: The First "American" Wine . . . AND HOW ONE MAN IN TEXAS IS REVIVING ITS POPULARITY by Anthony Head / photos by Kirk Weddle L ast month, as the country celebrated its independence, there were plenty of American-made lagers and certainly more than a few American wines and spirits consumed to mark the occasion. Chances are much smaller, I suspect, that there were not that many glasses of madeira (much less American-made madeira) hoisted to the firework-spangled skies on July 4th—despite it being, perhaps, the truest patriotic beverage of them all. Produced for centuries on the tiny Portuguese island of Madeira, the fortified wine of the same name is seductively aromatic, deeply flavored and a very long ager because of the heated oak-barrel aging it undergoes. As fate would have it, though, madeira became indelibly linked to the founding of this country when, in the mid-1600s, King Charles II of England—to please his new wife, Catherine of Braganza from Portugal— granted the island of Madeira the right to sell its wine directly to the Colonies without paying British taxes. Because it was cheaper, madeira took hold in the New World and was consumed with nearly the same verve and passion as rum. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and many other original patriots became serious madeira enthusiasts, and at the very moment the Colonies broke away from the British Empire in 1776, our Founding Fathers toasted their Declaration of Independence with madeira. Right up until Prohibition, in fact, madeira remained exceptionally popular in America. Afterward, however, it simply failed to make a comeback. Sadly, the last few American generations have mostly known madeira to be nothing more than affordable cooking wine. After falling in love with the wonderfully complex madeiras on a trip to Portugal, Raymond Haak returned to Texas and discovered that he could recreate some of the fragrances and deep, rich flavors of the wines he tasted on Madeira. Is America Suffering Madeira Amnesia? "Probably more than 90 percent of American wine drinkers do not know madeira's story as it pertains to America," says Raymond Haak of Haak Vineyards and Winery in Santa Fe, Texas. "America is still suffering from amnesia and does not remember madeira and America's love affair with it." But that's starting to change, Haak acknowledges, slowly At THE TASTING PANEL'S blind tasting is Brian Phillips of Eddie V's Restaurants Inc., Austin. 112 / the tasting panel / august 2013 TP0813_104-132.indd 112 7/24/13 9:40 PM