Title Page

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Dedication

For Rick Tagg

With thanks and love for twelve years of educating me about the business of grape growing and winemaking, for answering my many questions with good-hearted patience and humor, and for plying me with fine Virginia wine.

Map

Family Tree

Epigraphs

What’s past is prologue.

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, The Tempest

Today relatively little Madeira is drunk in the U.S. Americans seem to want light, quick-drinking wines, and Madeira, which is heavy and must be sipped and savored at leisure, is like daytime baseball: a wonderful institution, made for the spirit of another age. Really fine Madeiras are today the Edsels of the wine world: a handful of fanatics hoard them and talk about them, but most people have never tasted one, let alone bought one.

—JOHN HAILMAN, Thomas Jefferson on Wine

One

Vintage Madeira is the color of old blood.

A nearly indestructible wine, it improves almost magically with fire and heat. Once upon a time the value of a barrel of Madeira was determined by the number of voyages it made secured in the holds of cargo ships that crisscrossed the oceans. Thomas Jefferson famously used to send his Madeira back to sea—to African ports or the distant Indies—if he decided there were not enough destination stamps on the barrels he’d ordered.

No other wine in the world requires at least half a century to fully mature or can live for two centuries and remain so potent and wonderfully drinkable. To taste Madeira—really old Madeira—is to taste history.

“I have a proposition for you, Lucie.” Prescott Avery’s pleasant baritone, breath hot with alcohol, was low in my ear even though no one else was around. Somehow he had managed to whisk me away from party crowds, rooms filled with laughter and chatter, the clink of china and glasses, and the beguiling beat of a samba.

“I thought we could discuss it over a glass of one of my old Malmseys,” he added.

Malmsey is the best Madeira in the world. Sweet, made from the malvasia grape, it comes from Madeira itself, a mountainous Portuguese island off the coast of North Africa with a reputation as a place of eternal spring.