Book Review: Expanded 2nd Edition of Noël Cossart’s Madeira: The Island Vineyard

I just received a copy yesterday of the expanded second edition of one of my all-time favorite wine books, Noël Cossart’s Madeira: The Island Vineyard. This second edition contains new material by Emanuel Berk, including a lengthy new introduction and several new, informative appendices.

The arrival of this book was one of three wonderful RJonWine.com happenings yesterday. The first was Martin Redmond’s publishing of his interview with me on his Enofylz blog. You can read the shortened version of the interview on the blog here, or the complete version with additional Qs & As here. Martin asked me some very thoughtful questions, and trying to answer them made me think a lot about my wine philosophy and such practical topics as how I taught myself to taste a lot of wines in a single sitting. The second cool thing was that the RJonWine Twitter account passed the 2,000 follower milestone yesterday. But now back to the beautifully produced new volume on Madeira that kept me up reading late last night.

Emanuel, or “Mannie” Berk, as vintage Madeira fans and customers of Rare Wine Co. know him, is America’s foremost expert on Madeira. He took a big gamble on a purchase of several hundred cases of old Madeira from Cossart, Gordon and Blandy’s former UK agent in 1988, which led to his founding of Rare Wine Co. in 1989. Rare Wine Co. has become a great importer of many wonderful wines, including old Barolos and Barbarescos, and current releases from such great producers as Domaine Huët, René Rostaing, Jacques Selosse, Giacomo Conterno, Giuseppe Mascarello and Dominio de Pingus. American fans of vintage Madeira, however, are most indebted to Rare Wine Co. as the single major reliable source in this country of old Madeiras, including many that are exclusive to RWC. Not only is RWC America’s largest importer of fine Madeira, it is also the largest stockholder of old and rare Madeiras outside of the island. In the course of his travels and pursuit of rare Madeiras, Mannie has acquired a wealth of information about and experience with old Madeiras. He also has spent time with Noël Cossart’s family, gained access to Noël Cossart’s correspondence, and acquired the rights to publish a new edition of the book from Noël’s widow and Christie’s.

Ever since Mannie told me about his project of updating this book at a Madeira dinner in San Francisco several years ago, I’ve been eagerly anticipating its publication. The original book was issued only in one small printing by Christie’s. When I first became fervently interested in vintage Madeiras in 2003, I hunted around until I finally found a copy of the book on eBay. There’s a picture of the original edition below. With the greatly increased interest in vintage Madeira in recent years–thanks in no small part to Mannie’s tireless efforts–the cost of this hard to find volume in the antiquarian book market recently reached $500. The time had clearly come for a new edition of this authoritative volume on one of the world’s most fascinating wines.

Noël Cossart’s original book

While Mannie has been respectful of the original, and republished the core of the book with no alterations (except for using larger type, which makes it much more readable), he has added a number of very useful features. Foremost among these is a new Appendix III itemizing the sale of hundreds of vintage Madeiras and their auction prices from 1971 to 2000, listed by vintage year. This appendix alone makes the new book an invaluable resource for collectors of vintage Madeira. There’s also an appendix summarizing the most important Madeira auctions. I appreciate Mannie’s nine page foreword, giving his knowledgeable perspective on the history of the Madeira wine trade. I hadn’t realized before reading it that Verdelho was by far the most widely planted of the traditional Madeira varieties prior to phylloxera, making up two-thirds of the vineyards. He also dramatically compares the amount of remaining vineyard land on the island, only 300 to 420 hectares, to that of Bordeaux, where 420 hectares amounts to two-tenths of one percent of Bordeaux vineyard plantings–less, even, than the holdings of the Rothschilds in the Medoc. Mannie also penned a 24-page biography of Noël Cossart which gives a detailed picture of the dramatic changes in the structure of Madeira production and distribution over the past century.

new appendix containing auction prices

Additional new appendices include correspondence between Cossart and author John Delaforce of Port producer Delaforce Sons & Co.; food writer Elizabeth David’s letters to Cossart regarding the “Napoleon Madeira”; and correspondence with L.A. based wine writer Roy Brady following the publication of Cossart’s book in 1984. The latter appendix was particularly exciting for me, as I first became aware of the delights of vintage Madeira thanks to Roy’s buddies in L.A. whom he infected with Madeira enthusiasm at the weekly Saturday wine lunches he co-founded with Martin Weiner, and that I attended starting in 2002 and have written about here. The fabulous old Madeiras I tasted often at those lunches, especially from Sid Greenberg’s stash, had been collected because Roy got excited about finding authentic vintage Madeiras (which he’d previously thought were vanished relics one could only read about in the old tasting books of George Saintsbury) in the mid-1950s. His intense study and collecting of these wines thereafter led him to become America’s foremost expert on Madeira in his time, and to such conclusions as “Madeira is the last great wine in the world.”

The core of the book, Cossart’s great effort to summarize what he learned from growing up in the Madeira trade, and tasting vast quantities of vintage Madeira, includes authoritative chapters on winemaking in Madeira, the types of Madeira, soleras, how to store and serve Madeira, and Madeira food pairings. All in all, I can’t recommend this book highly enough to everyone already infected with the vintage Madeira bug, or to those simply curious about it, and about wine history in general. The book is available on Rare Wine Co.’s website for $32 plus shipping at this link.

Mannie Berk with Terry Theise in San Francisco earlier this year