Ask Decanter

Each month our experts answer your burning wine questions. Email your questions to editor@decanter.com

STORING MADEIRA

How should you store Madeira: on its side, as is the convention for nonfortified wines, or upright? Also, should a cork ever be replaced on a very old bottle of Madeira? Sean Cox, by email

Richard Mayson, DWWA Regional Chair for Port & Madeira, replies:

Madeira is one of the easiest wines to store. Having been exposed to heat and oxygen during the winemaking process, Madeira is nowhere near as demanding as other wines. There is no need to lay down a bottle of Madeira in a cool cellar. With the exception of colheita and frasqueira (vintage) Madeira, most wines are bottled with stopper corks and should be left standing upright. Vintage Madeiras are often bottled with short driven corks, which provide a fairly poor barrier between the wine and the outside world. Any wine being stored for any length of time should be stored upright and recorked from time to time. Blandy’s, for example, has a policy of checking on its vintage stock every 20 years and recorking if necessary. A representative of IVBAM (the Instituto do Vinho, Bordado e Artesanato da Madeira) must be present when any bottles are recorked by a shipper on the island to ensure authenticity. The wines will be resealed with an IVBAM selo de origem seal. There is no such assurance when a bottle has been recorked by a private collector and consequently no way of ensuring provenance. A conscientious collector will label the bottle with the date when it was recorked.

POLICING PROSECCO

How can Australian producers label their wines ‘Prosecco’ when the name is an Italian DOC and protected by Italian and European law? Luca Bocca, by email Tina Gellie, Decanter’s regional editor

for Australia, replies: When is Prosecco not Prosecco? When it’s Glera! In 2009, when government officials in Veneto, Italy, realised how popular their fizz was becoming, they set out to protect it. But because you can only protect a geographic indication or GI (like Champagne) not grapes (like Pinot Noir or Chardonnay), they changed the name of the Prosecco grape to its Friulian synonym of Glera and announced that the name ‘Prosecco’ was for the DOC. Unfortunately, no other international winemaking bodies were consulted. And, back in 1997 – 10 years before these changes – cuttings of the grape had found their way to Australia in the pockets of the Dal Zotto family of Valdobbiadene, who planted the first vines in Victoria’s King Valley in 1999. Today there are 120ha of Prosecco planted across 11 Australian regions, producing about 20 million bottles, according to Wine Australia. The country’s Prosecco exports are worth A$60 million (£32.5m) annually and are predicted to rise to A$500m over the next decade. In 2013, the EU tried to register Prosecco as a GI in Australia but the Winemakers’ Federation of Australia (now called Australian Grape & Wine) successfully argued that Prosecco had been known as a grape variety long before 2009 when the EU began recognising it as a GI. The issue flared up again in 2018 when Australia and the EU started negotiating a free trade agreement. As part of the deal, Italy wanted exclusive rights to the Prosecco name. In 2020 the Australian government gave Melbourne’s Monash University funding to look into the legal basis of using GIs in trade agreements. Researchers at Monash believe that enforcing a GI for Prosecco would contravene World Trade Organisation rules. So the battle continues. And unless there is a resolution in favour of Italy, Australian producers can continue to make and sell Prosecco.