Who It's For: dessert wine collectors and anyone who has ever tasted a serious old Madeira and needed to understand what they just drank.
Madeira is one of the most extraordinary wines in the world, and one of the most underappreciated. Made on a volcanic island in the Atlantic, deliberately heated and oxidized during aging, it becomes essentially indestructible. A bottle opened decades after release is still fresh. A century-old Madeira is not a novelty. It is the point.
This class works through the grapes and age designations that define the category. We taste across the ladder so the impact of time becomes tangible, and we cover how the four noble grapes shape the wines at every level. Along the way we walk through why Madeira ages the way it does, what the numbers on the label actually mean, and how to build a small Madeira collection of your own without needing an auction budget.
Educators: Chelsea Young & Jordan Alexandria