In the MWG page "The Making of Madeira Wine" is a quote, "Altogether some 2000 hectares are suitable for wine-growing, but only 600 are planted with vines, since the cultivation of bananas is much more rewarding."
I like bananas as much as the next person, but cannot get my proverbial hands around that quote. In British Columbia and Washington, apple orchards are being uprooted in favour of vineyards, quite the opposite...although I find some injustice with this too.
Can anyone share some insights into this unusual situation?
That whole section is most interesting and instructive reading.
I think that many short-sighted land owners are looking at quick short term profits. You could just sell the bananas and not worry about the labor to make wines. I suppose you could sell the grapes as well, but I would think that would still require more labor... and I think I remember reading that bananas in Madeira offer up two harvests every year (thus more profits).
Don't know if it's shortsighted. If you had a plot of farmland, you'd want to maximize your investment. Until the price of Madeira grapes reaches that of other crops, I don't think this will change.
I wonder how current that the number of ha planted to grapes is only 600. Driving around the island, it surely seems more than that. In fact, I know there are well over a thousand growers and for example, Vinhos Justino Henriques buys from nearly 900 of them and this is just one Madeira shipper. I realize the plots that each individual grower is small and that maybe only 1 vineyard on the whole island is more than 10 hectares, but still, 600 does seem miniscule.
As to bananas being more profitable, the largest agricultural crop (I believe) especially for export market, is fresh flowers. Still, it is sad that grapes lag behind and when you see the crazy topography of the island, it is certainly not a surprise that cultivation/labor costs must be crazy, considering the Douro looks easy comparatively!
Roy Hersh wrote:I wonder how current that the number of ha planted to grapes is only 600. Driving around the island, it surely seems more than that. In fact, I know there are well over a thousand growers and for example, Vinhos Justino Henriques buys from nearly 900 of them and this is just one Madeira shipper. I realize the plots that each individual grower is small and that maybe only 1 vineyard on the whole island is more than 10 hectares, but still, 600 does seem miniscule.
The number of 600 ha seems small to me too. But there are no new numbers of area under vines, so as a substitute you can look at the anual production of wine or must. Since 1980 the anual production of wine or must was allways between 30.000 and 40.000 hektoliters, being 38557 hectoliters of must in 2007. Judging from the steady state of must production I would guess that the area of wine-groth would remain pretty much the same too. Today it is not only bananas and flowers that are a threat to the vineyards but tourism itself. Just look at the area west of Funchal, like Sao Martinho. Where once were famous vineyards today there are hotels. And tourism is on a steady rise in Madeira. Better infrastructure (via rapida, longer runway) the demand for safe travel destinations (no terrorists in Madeira) and the ever positive climate pay off. When I spoke with some of the producers at the IVBAM tasting in Berlin, they admitted that even though they were offering higher prices for grapes, the producers are in hard competition with the tourism-bussiness. The one goog thing however is, that even though production output is remaining the same (more or less), the level of quality rises (shifting from 3YO to 5YO and Colheitas)) resulting in higher revenue. This -I hope- will lead to a better economical situation of the Madeira wine producers, tempting them to invest more money for the production of high quality vintage Madeiras.
Peter
*Wine makes poets of us all!* Hamilton in Silas Weir Mitchell's A Madeira Party.
We can certainly hope, but although I agree with the rapid growth in tourism especially the condos and hotels which litter the landscape around the city and in what were remote areas too ... the government needs to step in and put some caps on the growth before it is too late for the ancient industry that shares the name with the island. It would be a shame to see it die off and yet with consolidation, and given there are so few producers left today, there needs to be a wake up call soon.
