Got plans for the Obama inauguration? A view-a-thon at work, perhaps? A neighbourhood party with wistful expat Americans? A nightcap in front of the plasma to catch the news and inaugural-ball action?
Political allegiances aside, you must concede that next Tuesday will see the most dramatic leadership change in U.S. history.
It deserves a toast. But with what?
The answer seems obvious to me.
Not kitschy fringe wine from Illinois or Hawaii, the president-elect's home states. Not Baracktinis such as the "cosm-o-bama" shamelessly flogged to my inbox by a vodka company.
Not even Kendall-Jackson chardonnay, famously named in a People magazine profile about the soon-to-be first couple.
I'm going with Madeira, the luscious, tangy, recession-priced fortified wine of Portugal, not the United States. Specifically, it comes from a remote little volcanic archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic, a place I like to think of as Portugal's Hawaii.
Portuguese in origin, perhaps, but if there is a wine with political resonance and revolutionary symbolism in the United States, it is Madeira.
The go-to tipple of the founding fathers, it was used to toast George Washington's inauguration and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration's author, hoarded the stuff. The U.S. warship Constitution was christened with Madeira, not Champagne. John Hancock, the patriot famous for an exuberantly large signature on the Declaration, was a Madeira importer.
Just as noteworthy, the wine directly helped sow the seeds of political change. Ever heard of the Boston Madeira Party?
Years before the more famous tea tax protest of 1773 in Boston harbour, Madeira became its own cause célèbre in the same bay. The British motherland had imposed a tax on the popular beverage, partly in an effort to drive Americans to more expensive port. Mr. Hancock, a wealthy merchant, was arrested on charges of smuggling, and his sloop Liberty was seized in Boston waters. The crackdown prompted a riot against the customs house, effecting Mr. Hancock's release and setting the trigger for the subsequent tea party.
With teetotal president George W. about to sip his last government-subsidized mug of orange pekoe, it's time for a strong glass of Madeira and a sigh of relief, I say.
How did the wine come to be so vital to the fledgling republic? Politics. A trade war between England and France led to a British blockade on goods from Europe to the English colonies. The wine of Madeira, a pit stop on the Atlantic sailing route to Africa, Asia and the New World, was exempted. For a while, it was the only non-contraband wine in the United States, the so-called Drink of Patriots. By 1800, a quarter of Madeira's production ended up in New England.
The archipelago's remote location 650 kilometres off the African coast also has much to do with the wine's invention. Grape nerds like to insist that soil, vineyard orientation and weather - a combination the French call terroir - give each wine its particular essence. With Madeira, the sea until recently has been more critical than land.
In the 1600s, wine from Madeira was so insipid it had to be fortified with brandy to make it palatable and stable on long sea voyages. Sailors doing business with India gradually came to realize the stuff tasted better on the return trip. That's because the cargo had spent the voyage essentially "cooking" and oxidizing as it pitched and rolled in barrels below deck.
The wine had become bruised, its sugar slightly caramelized, producing a burnt, toffee-like flavour. As the liquid expanded and contracted, the leached oak imparted a luscious texture and vanilla-spice quality. And the fatal flaw of regular wine - oxidation from too much exposure to air - became a virtue in Madeira, imparting a tangy quality akin to sherry.
