Malmsey

Malmsey is the richest of the classic Madeiras, made from Malvasia, and the name is an English corruption of Malvasia by way of Monemvasia, the Greek port from which the wine was once shipped. It is the style Shakespeare's Duke of Clarence was drowned in, which is the single most repeated fact about it.

It is the sweetest of the four noble Madeiras, finishing around 100 grams of residual sugar or more, and it is made by the same process as the rest: fortified, then heated and oxidised for years in cask under the roof, where the island's warmth slowly transforms it.

What separates Madeira from every other sweet fortified wine is the acidity. Malmsey is genuinely sweet and yet finishes clean and lifted rather than heavy, because the underlying acid is extremely high and the long oxidative ageing adds a dry, tangy, almost salty edge that cuts through the sugar. The effect is unusual: sweetness without weight.

The flavours run to caramel, toffee, dried fig, date, coffee, orange peel and roasted walnut, with a faintly smoky character from the heating. Old bottlings — and Madeira from the nineteenth century is still traded and still alive — take on an extraordinary intensity.

It is the classic wine to serve at the end of a meal with hard cheese, dried fruit or nothing at all, and it has the practical advantage of being effectively immortal once opened.

Note that Malvasia is a sprawling family of unrelated grapes; the one used here is not the same variety as Malvasia Istriana.