Unforgettable

A sunny morning with quiet seas on the north coast. It doesn’t always happen, but for some reason I thought that it had dressed appropriately to let me on its secret.

On the bend on the old road to Seixal I just glimpsed the house and the bougainvilleas pouring from the pergola, the high wall and the man that started this story that can be told with the scents of flowers and tastes of fruits. Grapes of course. The grapes he planted on the Terras do Avô (Grandfather’s lands), up the natural steps that climb the almost vertical slopes.

Duarte Caldeira welcomes me on the very same spot where he welcomes hundreds of tourists every month. The flowers’ engineer, as many people in Madeira know him, is proud of the work he performed, and I let family story involve me taking me to this venture that mobilized his wife and their three siblings in this odyssey that is to be tasted over the next generations.

The wine is the nectar he has been preparing for various years, and that he now recommends should be drunk with grandmother’s recipes, their next commercial endeavour. A lunch previously booked for the garden leaning onto the north sea, with all the gastronomic know how of the owner’s grandmother. The rehearsal in a previous initiative left the certainty that quality was way better than quantity, and today he proves this with the praises of the knowledgeable ones, and a frequent reference on the best Portuguese wine charts.

Seixal has soils that are different from all others in Madeira. There are rich in organic matter, and they have the best water in Madeira, flowing from the laurisilva forest. The winds blowing from northeast, from the sea towards land, bring in humidity that condenses on the leaves of trees that are world heritage, and the resulting water falls onto the ground, and this makes it unique. Early on, the relation between the two might not be important, but the connection between the two ends up by appearing in the wine.

The agrarian engineer has two daughters, one that followed his very own academic options, and another which is a guide. The son, that followed his footsteps in politics, is also an enthusiast of the family business that has gone through generations, and is slowly percolating onto the patriarch’s grandchildren.

But let’s get to the wine. To the 13 hectares spread through 31 plots of land that incorporate the label that winks at us from the supermarkets’ cupboards.

The wines, made at the São Vicente cellars, are unique, because the engineer was determined to do something different. The types available in Madeira were the same for all producers, and just do more of the same was something that didn’t appeal to him. He invited a specialist to be his consultant, and he relies on the advice of the cellar’s own specialist, and today he has a major point in his favour: he takes advantage of the best of every caste and he adds nothing to it, promoting the best of what the soils furnish. The lands acidity, it’ s depth and many stones, pass on the taste of minerals that we feel at each sip. The idea pleased the engineer. He finds nothing to compare to his wines from other regions. He is proud to choose his own grapes. He is always the last to enter the cellar, he lets his grapes ripen further, and this frequently happens in the end of September, when all the others have already finished their wines.

There’s a science for everything. Or an engineering. He produces no wines for competitions, because he doesn’t agree with the way things are done. Producers prepare special bottles for these competitions, while the evaluation should be done with bottles bought by the jurors in publicly accessible wine shops.

He knows his wine is good, and that in it – besides the flowers that made him known professionally – he found a way of life.

Terras do Avô and the wine he produces are at the core of his life. They are at the core of his family’s life, and these have shown they’ll be there for generations to come. They are already part of Seixal and the neighbouring villages, and already went across the oceans, to Europe and even the US. He sells a lot to the many tourists that pass there on organized tours and on pre-booked lunches that can also be enjoyed by locals.

Since he set up the first greenhouses in Madeira, in 1970, Duarte Caldeira has occasionally tried new cultures. Whenever the market requires it, and depending on how well the products adapt to it. And this is how the passion for new proposals was born.

The wine and the sparkling wine that are to come next will be part of the future winters and summers in the north of the island, in the house where he receives those that want to taste home made delicacies, those “grandmotherly recipes”, wetted by Terras do Avô. Something not to be missed…

The urge to get to know Madeira and start their honeymoon was such that a pair of newlyweds boarded in Lisbon in full regalia. On entering the aircraft with a economy class ticket, staff on board decided to upgrade them to business – after all wedding dresses do require a lot of space…

That’s how they arrived, hand in hand, at Funchal airport. If you see them around, don’t forget to congratulate them.