The Russian Czars and Madeira Wine

Of all the wines that graced the Russian imperial table, none was loved more strangely and enduringly than Madeira — a fortified wine from a tiny Atlantic island, carried thousands of miles to the courts of the tsars. For two centuries it was the drink of Russian emperors, a symbol of luxury that ran from Peter the Great all the way to the doomed last Romanovs¹.

The tsars’ favourite wine

Madeira reached Russia as a rare and costly luxury, and it stayed one. From the late seventeenth century onward, the nobility prized this rich, tangy fortified wine above almost all others, serving it at grand dinners and treasuring old bottles as marks of status. In a court dazzled by French Champagne and Bordeaux, Madeira held a special, exotic place all its own¹.

Peter the Great’s expensive taste

The imperial love affair began with Peter the Great, the reforming tsar who dragged Russia toward Europe. So taken was he with Madeira’s quality that he had it shipped all the way from the Portuguese island at enormous cost, importing it through several ports into his empire. Where the tsar led, the aristocracy eagerly followed².

The wine that could not die

Part of Madeira’s appeal was purely practical: it is almost indestructible. Deliberately heated and oxidised as it is made, Madeira thrives on exactly the conditions — long voyages, heat, age — that ruin other wines, and it can last, and even improve, for a century or more. A wine that could survive the endless journey to Russia, and then decades in a cellar, was perfectly suited to an empire far from the vineyards of Europe³.

Madeira thrives on the very heat and travel that destroy other wines — a wine built to reach Russia.— on Madeira’s endurance³

Nicholas II and Rasputin

The passion lasted to the end. The last tsar, Nicholas II, kept his taste for Madeira alongside his Champagne, and the wine wound through the twilight of the Romanov court. In one of history’s darkest wine anecdotes, when the mystic Grigori Rasputin was murdered in 1916, his assassins are said to have plied him with Madeira and cakes laced with poison — a grim cameo for the imperial favourite⁴.

Madeira on the Black Sea

So dear was the style that Russia set out to make its own. In 1894 Nicholas II founded the great Massandra winery on the Black Sea coast of Crimea, where Prince Golitsyn built vast tunnelled cellars — and among its celebrated fortified and dessert wines, Massandra produced its own Madeira-style bottlings for the imperial family. The tsars would drink Russian “Madeira” as well as the real thing⁵.

The end of the imperial table

The Revolution of 1917 swept away the court, its rituals and its cellars full of fine wine. The elaborate dining of the Romanovs — the careful order of dry wines, Madeira and iced Champagne — vanished with the empire that created it. Yet the bottles endured: precious old Madeiras still surface at auction, silent survivors of the vanished world of the Russian tsars⁶.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• Madeira, the wine that survives anything
• When wine nearly derailed the Russian Revolution
• Champagne, the tsars’ other love

References

1. Discovering Madeira — Madeira Wine at the Table of the Russian Czars. www.discoveringmadeira.com ↩
2. Russia Beyond (GW2RU) — What Alcoholic Drinks Did Russian Tsars Prefer? www.gw2ru.com ↩
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Madeira (wine). www.britannica.com ↩
4. Madeira Wine — Favorite Wine of the Russian Czars and Rasputin. madeirawine.ch ↩
5. Massandra Wine — The History of Massandra. massandrawine.org ↩
6. Alexander Palace — The History of Court Dining. alexanderpalace.org ↩

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine
Hugh Johnson
Tells how Madeira travelled the world and won the tables of emperors.

A Short History of Wine
Rod Phillips
Good on fortified wines and the courts that prized them.

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