Canteiro
Minimum 2 years
A legal guarantee of cask ageing with no estufagem.
The rule that decodes the shelf
The variety is a sweetness statement
Ordinance 39/2015, Article 4.3 binds each classic variety to a permitted sweetness. This is law, not a tasting convention — so the variety name on the front is telling you how sweet the wine is, whether or not the word appears anywhere.
| Variety | Legally permitted sweetness | Sweetness on the label |
|---|---|---|
| Sercial | Dry or extra dry only | May be omitted |
| Verdelho | Medium dry only | May be omitted |
| Boal / Bual | Medium sweet only | May be omitted |
| Malvasia / Malmsey | Sweet only | May be omitted |
| Terrantez | Medium dry or medium sweet | Must be stated |
| Tinta Negra | Any level | Must be stated |
Terrantez is the one that catches people. It may legally be either medium dry or medium sweet, so the name settles nothing — and it is therefore not exempt from stating its sweetness. If you are holding a Terrantez, read the label properly.
How it was made
You identify the method by what is missing
Madeira is either aged slowly in cask, or heated in tanks. The difference matters more than almost anything else on the bottle, and there is no way to look it up directly.
“Estufagem”, the heated-tank method, is never a permitted label term and is never declared. So the method is identified by absence: these words guarantee cask ageing, and a bottle carrying none of them is telling you something by staying silent.
Colheita
Minimum 5 years
Vintage-dated, from a single year, with continuous cask ageing.
Frasqueira / Garrafeira
Minimum 20 years
Must be canteiro, and must have spent at least twenty years in continuous cask ageing.
Solera
No minimum stated
Must be canteiro. A fractional-blending system rather than a single year.
So: an inexpensive bottle with no age statement and none of those words is almost certainly estufagem-made. That is not a criticism — it is what most cooking Madeira is, and it is priced accordingly. It is simply not what the cask-aged bottle beside it is.
What the number means
Age statements, and the one that does not exist
There is no legal “3 year old” category, despite producers marketing “3 anos” ranges — that is trade shorthand. A label with no age indication at all means a legal minimum of 3 years.
The permitted age statements are 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, and 50, and over 50.
And the number is not arithmetic. The ordinance does not define age numerically at all; IVBAM’s tasting panel judges whether the wine matches the style of that age.
A number we will not give you
Why there are no grams per litre here
The law defines sweetness in degrees Baumé, not g/L. IVBAM does publish an indicative g/L table — but it is explicitly marked “valores meramente indicativos”, and it contradicts itself: Meio Seco is given as 57–80 against Seco at 49–65, so the ranges overlap the wrong way round. Quoting those figures as authoritative would mean repeating numbers their own publisher disclaims.
The story the regulator gets wrong
Nobody knows what was drunk in 1776
IVBAM’s own portal states as fact that American independence was toasted with Madeira in 1776. There is no record of what the signers drank. It is repeated everywhere, including by the body that regulates the wine.
The documented history is better anyway. Crown trade privileges in the 1660 let Madeira ship directly to the American colonies under the Navigation Acts, while other European wine could not — which is why the wine became genuinely embedded there.
And on June 10, 1768, John Hancock’s sloop *Liberty*, carrying Madeira, was seized in Boston. The riots that followed fed into the events preceding the Boston Massacre.
Sources
Where to check this yourself
ivbam.madeira.gov.pt
vinhomadeira.com
joram.madeira.gov.pt
If you want to taste before buying
Wine lodge tours and tastings in Funchal
Reading a label only gets you so far. The lodges pour across the sweetness range in one sitting, which is the fastest way to find out which variety you actually like.