Henriques and Henriques 3 years old Madeira wines. Tasting notes and food pairing recommendations.

Why Henriques and Henriques?

In our case, it was prosaic, really. Henriques and Henriques, or H&H, is the first winery we visited on Madeira Island. Without much knowledge of how wine tasting works in Madeira, we ended up with a free tasting of the 3 years old blends, aka their most basic wines. For those who do not live on Madeira Island and are not loaded, if you ever taste fortified Madeira, it will likely be one of the 3 years old blends. This is because the availability of quality Madeira wine outside of the Island is scarce, and the price is prohibitive for many.

While all wineries pride themselves on the uniqueness of their products, in our opinion, 3 years old blends produced by the top-tier Madeira wineries share many similarities. Of course, the grape provenance and, ultimately, the skills of the winemakers will confer the distinctive aroma profiles on these wines. But let’s not forget, 3 years old blended wines are entry-level, very inexpensive Madeira. The pure economics consideration suggests that investing a lot of time and skill into having these wines stand out does not make much business sense.

3 years old Madeira wine blends – general traits

All 3 years old blends are aged using the quick or, as we call it, shortcut method, Estufagem. We challenge you to find at least one winemaker on the Island who uses the traditional Canteiro method in the production of the 3 years old blends.

We also challenge you to find any winemaker who produces 3 years old blends from anything other than the Tinta Negra grape. Tinta Negra Mole, or simply Tinta Negra, is considered a workhorse of Madeira winemaking. Today this varietal is the most widely spread one. It is frequently referred to as the “common grape”. Tinta Negra represents 80% to 85% of all the wine produced on the Island. The most basic and least expensive fortified Madeira wines will be made of 100% Tinta Negra.

The Madeira winemaking industry requires all under 10 years old fortified wines to have 19% alcohol content but this requirement is not strictly followed by all industry participants. This is the only variable that varies from winemaker to winemaker and is not diligently adhered to. For example, Madeira Vintners’ 3 years old blended wines come at 17% alcohol content. H.M. Borges 3 years old blends all have 18% alcohol content.

Henriques and Henriques 3 years old blends

Our tasting flight included Henriques and Henriques Dry, Medium-Dry, Rainwater, Medium-Sweet, and Sweet wines.

All of these wines are basic fortified Madeira wine blends. Looking for depth and complexity in any of these may not be the wisest way to spend your time.

We started our tasting with dry wine and finished with sweet, or as they call it in Madeira, Full Rich wine. We strongly recommend this tasting approach if you want to taste Madeira wines of various dryness levels at the same time.

Of all the wines we tasted at Henriques and Henriques, this one was our least favourite. Gold in colour, Rainwater reminded us of a diluted cognac that also has an astringent finish. The wine’s most noticeable and overpowering quality was its 19% alcohol content. So much so that it was hard to concentrate on anything else when tasting this Madeira wine. With an effort, we summarized the “anything else” part as being that of a faint nose of dry apricot and diluted sugar. The palate is mostly citrus and nuts, albeit very faint.

Pairing Madeira wine with food

There is this prevailing go-to mantra that everybody, from winemakers to wine critics, seems to embrace. That mantra gets applied when anybody brings up a question of how to pair Madeira wine with food. It stipulates that Madeira is best served as an aperitif or digestive. If somebody continues to ask how to pair Madeira with food, they are told to just pair their wine with bolo de mel. For those unfamiliar with bolo de mel, the best way to describe this Portuguese dessert is to use an analogy of a fruit cake. As in a dense, molasses-and honey-overloaded fruit cake, minus fruits. If that description did not make you salivate, we don’t blame you.

Finding suitable food pairing matches for Madeira fortified wines is often a challenge. Henriques and Henriques was no exception.

Madeira food pairing, the “don’ts”

Before we profile food pairings that work with these wines, let us first tell you about the ones that don’t.

There’s an urban legend of sorts that we’ve heard repeated a few times on our trip to Madeira Island. It goes like this, dry Madeira pairs really well with sushi. Curios? So were we. We had to try and see how this counter-intuitive pairing works. Our recommendation?

• Unless you like to have your sushi taste like molasses and dry fruit, keep your sushi and Madeira wine apart.

We also recommend against pairing any of these Madeira wines with Tiramisu cake. In the hopes of making this food pairing work, we made our own Tiramisu cake. Knowing that the like with the like is the easiest way to pair food and wine, we overloaded our Tiramisu with Madeira. We had a very healthy dose of Madeira wine added to both the cream and the soaking liquid for the ladyfingers. Unfortunately, that didn’t help. The cake was delicious. The food and wine pairing experience was positively horrid.

Food pairing recommendations for Henriques and Henriques 3 years old Madeira wines

Important to note, if purchased at the winery, all 3 years old, Henriques and Henriques blended wines come at €5 per 500 ml bottle or €8 per 750 ml bottle. At that price point, we had to get them all. And good thing we did. We experimented with various food pairing ideas and practiced cooking with Madeira wine. The result? We are pleased to offer you our recommendations for how to best pair 3 years old Henriques and Henriques Madeira wines:

• If you want to pair 3 years old Dry or Rainwater blends, try a charcuterie board with dry meats such as coppa, prosciutto, speck, and cheeses, like Taleggio, aged Cheddar and semi-cured Manchego cheese.
• Mayonnaise-rich beetroot salad pairs well with 3 years old Medium-Dry H&H Madeira. We will shortly publish a recipe that works exceptionally well under our Recipes section.
• This may sound like sacrilege, but we enjoyed how the meatloaf, which had a nice dash of Madeira wine added to it, pairs with 3 years old Medium-Dry blend.
• Ever heard of the classic of the 20th century, Ensalada Rusa? It pairs exceptionally well with both the Dry and Rainwater 3 years old blended wines.
• When we first tried H&H Medium-Sweet 3 years old Madeira, we immediately thought of blue cheese as a suitable food pairing for this wine. When we got to try this cheese and wine pairing, we were not that impressed. However, honey-flavoured goat cheese, especially the one covered with dry cranberries, works superbly well with this blended wine.

• If you want to pair goat cheese with their 3 years old Sweet Madeira, look for the honey-flavoured goat cheese covered with blueberries. It is guaranteed to be a hit!
• Another smart pairing for both Henriques & Henriques Medium-Sweet and Sweet blends is dark chocolate, especially coffee or orange-flavoured types.
• If you are looking for a dessert to pair with Henriques and Henriques 3 years old Medium-Sweet and Sweet blended wines, we recommend chocolate covered strawberries. It is a bomb-proof pairing that everybody seems to enjoy immensely. Here is our recipe: Fresh, dark chocolate covered strawberries.
• Pecan pie makes another good pairing that you may want to pair with Medium-Sweet 3 years old blend.
• Dark chocolate mousse, especially if combined with fresh raspberries, is out of this world pairing for both Sweet and Medium-Sweet 3 years old blends.
• In the summertime, try paring this Medium-Sweet blend with chocolate truffle and raspberry ice cream.

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Henriques & Henriques Madeira Winery

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