Profetas e Villoes Vinho da Corda 2023

Listrao dos Prophets Vinho da Corda is a white wine made from the Listrao variety (our Palomino Fino) by Antonio Maçanita and Nuno Faria at their winery in Porto Santo in Madeira, Portugal. It is a wine with history. Vinho da Corda is one of the traditional ways of making a Madeira. When alcohols were not available for fortification, the Madeirienses used the press wine from the more mature plots to obtain strong and alcoholic wines. That is Vinho da Corda, a wine from a plot with great maturity and therefore a high degree, more than 14%, produced oxidatively.

We all know about Madeira's fortified wines, and the oldest in Porto Santo say that it was there where the grapes with more maturity and grade were grown to make the largest Madeiras. On this Island of Porto Santo today there are barely 14 hectares of old vines cultivated by a handful of crazy people and prophets, which is what the people of Porto Santo are called in the archipelago.

It is something worth seeing how the vineyards protect themselves from the wind with small walls, or by driving the grapes well below. This is the case of the farm from which Listrao dos Prophets comes from, a vineyard over 80 years old planted on calcareous and sandy loam soils that are harvested in August, manually and fermented in used Burgundian barrels, without the participation of sulfur. A natural Madeiran wine, therefore, with an almost coppery golden colour, a very intense nose, with salt and caramel. Perhaps between a Madeira and a Jerez, it shows iron, iodine, it is intense. Great body, super concentration, a lot of persistence.