Justino's Madeira

Justino's is one of the oldest producers of Madeira still working, in existence since 1870 when it traded as Justino Henriques. It is owned today by the French group La Martiniquaise, which built a modern winery at Cancela, Santa Cruz, with the deliberate aim of combining traditional vinification with current technology. Fruit is drawn from across the island, with the best sites and growers held for the aged bottlings.

Madeira is the most durable wine in the world, and the reason is a process that would ruin anything else. The wine is deliberately heated and oxidised, historically in the holds of ships crossing the tropics, now in the estufa or by long ageing in cask under the roof of the lodge, where the island heat does the work slowly. What emerges is a wine effectively immune to further oxidation: an opened bottle keeps for months, and a century-old cask sample can still be fresh.

The island's four noble grapes run from dry to sweet in a fixed order, Sercial, Verdelho, Bual and Malmsey, with Terrantez a rare fifth. Justino's bottle across the range and hold genuinely old stock, including single-vintage colheitas and frasqueiras of considerable age, which is what separates a serious Madeira house from a producer of cooking wine.