ABOUT MADEIRA - AND A SPECIAL DANISH ANGLE


Today I want to write about the Portuguese island MADEIRA.  It is pronounce Madaira – if you want to say it correctly. It meant originally: Forest.  The size of the island is 801 sq.km, and about 270.000 people live permanently there.  Nowadays 1 million tourists normally come to Madeira every year.  It was first discovered by the Portuguese in 1418. Sailors often call it “The Lighthouse of the Atlantic”.  The capital is called Funchal. It has its name after the plant fennel ( in Portuguese:  funcho ).  The first discoverers saw a lot of that plant around the area, where Funchal is today.
As we all know wine-growing is very important on Madeira.  And it is not surprising that they called it Madeira Wine 😊   It is famous all over the world. It was all well-known in the good old days.  This is what I want to tell a small story about.
While Denmark until 1917 was still the owner of the Danish West Indian Islands ( now the US Virgin Islands ) in the Caribbean a Danish frigate was always present in the islands – to ensure order and to keep others away. It wasn’t always the same ship, so when a frigate sailed back to Denmark it normally stopped at Madeira – to buy supplies and also to buy Madeira wine for the Naval Officers’ Clubs in Copenhagen.  On one of these stays in the mid 1860ies a couple of Danish cadets stole two seedlings of the Madeira wine and brought them back to Denmark.  It took 7 months to sail to Denmark. But they managed to make them grow on the naval base in Copenhagen. 
A few years later a disaster happened to the wine growing in Madeira. A special invasion of lice killed all the wine.  And though the locals afterwards tried out an imported American wine it did not work. It wasn’t the true Madeira wine.
One day a Danish diplomat visited Madeira. He happened to be an old naval officer – and he had been serving on the frigate, where the two cadets had brought the Madeira seedlings to Denmark.  He knew that they were growing and growing in Copenhagen. So, in 1874 he rescued Madeira’s wine growing by sending back some new seedlings.  And that is why the present day Madeira wine in fact is “sort of Danish”  😊


I have heard that similar stories are told in the British and in the Dutch navy.  But they must be wrong. Because could they have done what – of course – was done by the Danes !    As I sometimes say as a proof:   I have myself spoken to the man, who told me about it  😊


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