Blandy's Wine Lodge

This refers to the tour of the winery with following wine tasting. Tickets go for 18 resp. 20 Euro per person. Nice tour of the location including insights into the production of Madeira wine, which actually is a "fortified wine" - more on that on the tour. Afterwards there was a tasting with 3 different wines. And we met some nice mates form Liverpool and stayed for another hour or two - nice place 😀

An amazing experience. Do the vintage tour they take you to the different rooms where they age Madeira. Sofia was very informational and super available. We also had a glass of 1920. Pure magic. If you are on Funchal don t miss this.

The basic tour was great and takes about 45 minutes with a tasting at the end. The three wines in the tasting were quite good. The tour was informative and the guide answered any questions we had.

We took the Vintage Premium tour and really enjoyed the experience. Our tour was in English and the guide was really knowledgeable. Really interesting to learn more about the production process and variants of Maderia wine. We tasted different types of Maderia wine made from different grape varieties (Sercial, Verdelho, Boal and Malvasia). The 1994 Boal was very nice 😁

Anyone who reads my reviews knows we are wine lovers, but we knew nothing about Madeira’s namesake wine. And — being sweet — we were not sure we would like it. But we signed up for the Vintage Tour on an afternoon when rain threatened, and the tour changed that. You can await your tour in leather comfy chairs in the far end of the wood-beamed gift shop, or outside near the wall of flowers. We chose both. While we were waiting outside, we checked out the winery’s restaurant, which looked like a good future dinner spot. Stepping back into history, our great tour guide then led us through the myriad charming old buildings on the property, where we learned all about Madeira and saw many very big old oak barrels with wine aging as long as 75 years. There’s also an interesting museum and we saw a library of old bottles reaching back to the early 1800s (alas, they don’t offer library cards). Because Madeira only ages in casks, not in bottles, the wine in the library’s old bottles should taste the same as the day it was bottled (see, we learned a lot), but we’ll never know about those bottles. But the tour includes a tasting, in a clubby, wood-paneled room with lockers of more old bottles, along with some magnums and larger. By tasting four ten-year Madeiras made from four different grapes, along with a 1988 vintage, we also learned that Madeira is not as sweet as Port and not as harsh as Sherry. Last cocktail party fact: the island’s economy runs on three engines: Madeira wine, tourism, and — wait for it — bananas. To support the economy and to have a nice apéritif or after-dinner drink back home, you can buy bottles here at a discount, then pick them up after security at the airport, so you can carry the bottles on the plane. But after those bottles are but pleasant memories, the challenge will be to find good stuff like this in the U.S. But we like a good challenge. YouTube’s Chef’s Apprentice

This is a well established family company producing Madeira wine for more than 200 years and 7 generations of the family. Established in 1811 , Blandy has been ageing madeira by the traditional Canteiro method. The vintage wine tasting cellar is like a library where Madeira wine of different vintages are kept . There are simple tastings where one can go from dry to medium dry to sweet and the classic 10 Yr old and 15 yr old vintages . If you are new to Madeira taste the various iterations of different grapes for the 10 Yr old vintages. If you have tasted madeira before i thoroughly recommend to start with the 15 Yr old and above .

Sweet place! The guide was funny, and gave us an interesting experience and lesson about how Madeira wine works. Nice option to buy it there and pick it up in the duty free, although it doesn't work on very early flights. The tasting was also nice.

Stopped here to do some Madeira wine tasting, had a flight of 3 years and a flight of 10 years. Such a big difference in flavours between the two years. A mix of favourites between the 4 of us, with the sweet being overall the more preferable. Would visit and do the tour next time!

What an incredible experience. We came here an hour and a half before they closed which was plenty of time to walk around to the different tasting rooms and try some wine. The staff here are so incredibly knowledgeable and patient. They were happy to explain the wine to us and offer us options for how we could take this wine home with us, letting us know the price difference between picking it up here vs. Duty Free, plus packing options for us to keep it safe if we wanted to purchase it there and put it in our checked luggage. The ambiance here feels very historic but approachable, you can tell these guys have been in the business for quite some time. We opted to try two different tastings, one of the same wine in different years and another that was more of a variety of wines. We ended up going home with two different bottles to bring back to the states with us. If you're in Madeira and love wine, this place is a must visit.

The tour was okay, I think our guide just ran out of energy by the time she got to us. I recommend the tour so they you learn how wine is made on the island which is completely different than anywhere else I've been thus far. I.E., some of their wines they heat, along with adding alcohol, the wine is not kept cool, but rather stored warm, purposely using the sun to heat various barrels - in the end the final product is very different than say a California or even a Spanish wine. Service was okay, they seem short staffed & do they best they can with the staff they have. The winery has an easygoing atmosphere to it.

Being in Madeira, I needed to familiarize myself with their famous wine. Apparently it's so delicious that the founding fathers toasted the DOI with it. Blandy's is (or at least was, not sure) family owned. They do not pressure you into taking a tour, which is good because as I said, I've toured many distilleries, breweries, etc. Sometimes you just want to drink it! They do have a tasting room that offers you a choice of 3, 5, or 10 years. They're all reasonably priced. We chose the 5. I believe it was a one ounce pour of each. They were all very pleasant, but I preferred the semi-dry and dry.

A visit to Blandy's Wine Lodge is essential for anyone travelling to Madeira for the first time. There are many Madeira wine makers on the island but Blandy's is one of the oldest at most prolific. I came here as the first stop on an all-day wine tour I was participating in. We started off getting to see some hictoric artifacts and were given a history lesson in regional wine making. We also learned about the techniques used to make Madeira wine and the grape varieties that go into Blandy's products. It was a really cool experience getting to see the giant vats that they use to store the wine. Very different from many of the vineyards I have visited elsewhere. The tour concluded with samples of 3 different Madeira wines. This was my first time trying it so it was nice having someone to walk me through the different types. I ended up picking up a couple things at their store before I left. They have sell a sampler pack with 4 different miniature bottles that is great for gifts if you're looking for something to bring home. Overall, my visit to Blandy's was definitely one of the highlights of my trip.

when in Madeira, it would be crazy to not enjoy some Madeira wine. our cruise offered tours of wine lodges, but they seemed awfully overpriced. so we did some research and Old Blandy's kept coming up. with a name like that, you may question the authenticity - but the history buff in me recalls the Anglo-Portuguese alliance as being one of the oldest in existence, so we decided to investigate. as it turns out, yes, there is a British connection - a lengthy family legacy dating back to the early 19th century and continuing to this day. the tour is a blast. we learned a lot from Karina, our guide, who enthusiastically explained the manufacturing process, the company history, the building's history, and more. the process for making Madeira wine is different, and learning about it was the perfect union of my interests in engineering and alcohol. seeing the old manual wine-making equipment brought back memories for me, as my grandfather used to make wine in his basement in Brooklyn with similar tools and manual machinery (most of which he brought over from Italy). I had emailed them to confirm and they reserved two spots for us. the price (I think it was around 7 Euro per person) can't be beat, especially since you get two free samples at the end and a discount if you buy directly there. it's also easy to reach as soon as you get into town from the cruise terminal. the tour is in English and starts at 11 on Saturdays; it ends around 12:30 since they wait for everyone to get there, and handing out samples takes some time.

Interesting and informative tour, good wine tasting, stuffy rooms. I enjoyed learning and tasting, but found 45 minutes long in the stuffy rooms. Would still recommend a visit and tasting, though.