I wake up in Funchal, Madeira’s semitropical seaside capital, sweating and wondering if I have time for a morning dip in the Atlantic Ocean. Approximately a half-hour later, after ascending a steep road at what feels like a 45 percent incline, I’m nearly 3,000 feet above sea level, wearing a wool sweater and surrounded by mist, old-growth trees and ferns. It felt like driving from Florida to Oregon in 30 minutes.
Such is the topography of Madeira, an island off the coast of Africa that Portugal claimed in 1419, where there’s hardly a flat patch of land, a feature that has also come to impact its drink culture.
“People in Funchal drink poncha,” says Avelino da Silva of the drink made from locally produced white rum mixed with fruit juice, a refreshing staple in Madeira’s sun-drenched southern coastal towns. “But this is a cold zone.”
I’m talking to Avelino at his restaurant, Faísca. It has an almost “ski lodge” vibe—wood paneling, long wooden tables and benches—and overlooks a small green valley with a squat, square traditional Madeiran home, this one with a tile roof rather than thatch. Purple agapanthus flowers line the road, sheep nibble on grass, and occasionally the sun punches through the mist. I’m here to ask Avelino about the cortado, a drink that was quite possibly invented at this very restaurant.
“A cortado here is a different thing,” Avelino wants to make clear from the start. “What they call a ‘cortado’ in Spain—an espresso with milk—here we call a ‘garoto.’” In these misty parts, Avelino tells me, “cortado” means a combination of toasted barley “coffee,” actual coffee, sweet Madeira wine, sugar and a lemon peel, served hot.
Coffee substitutes became widespread across Europe during World War II. Real coffee was beyond the reach of most Europeans, so people turned to roasting and grinding barley, chicory and even rye. Portuguese people had greater access to real coffee than most Europeans via colonial links to Brazil, Southeast Asia and Africa, but they also took to these ersatz coffees, and today they’re still available in every Portuguese grocery store, typically in instant form.
Avelino explains that Faísca got its start as a bar 80 years ago. Clinging to one of the island’s only north-south routes, it functioned as an obligatory rest stop when the cross-island journey took as long as eight hours. (Now, thanks to Madeira’s 150 tunnels, the trip can be done in less than an hour.)
“Buses would park here from 7 a.m. and people would drink so many cortados!” he tells me. I express an interest in drinking one, and Avelino shifts us to the restaurant’s bar. “Barley coffee, coffee and sugar are mixed and kept hot here,” he says, pointing to a large, electric urn. He fills a tumbler with the dark, steaming liquid, tops off the drink with a glug of sweet Madeira wine, and garnishes it with a lemon peel—that’s it.
It’s smoky, subtly sweet and barely boozy. It’s delicious and warming on this chilly morning. Avelino tells me that the cortado is just one of several hot alcoholic drinks consumed in this mountainous corner of Madeira. He says that some people simply splash a bit of red table wine in their cortado, and that locals like to heat the local cider and serve it with sugar and a lemon peel. He also mentions the quentinha, like a cortado but supplemented with local rum rather than with Madeira wine.
“This one, it’s…” he says, trailing off while making a gesture that indicates strength.
Cortado
A smoky, subtly sweet staple from Madeira’s “cold zone.”
From Faísca, I walk up the windy mountain road to John’s Poncha, another café. These days, Ribeiro Frio (“Cold Brook”) as the area is known, is a jumping-off point for some of Madeira’s most famous hikes, and the road is lined with rental cars. Inside, sportily dressed foreign tourists sip cappuccinos while locals down espressos. I ask for a cortado, and the owner, inevitably having encountered confusion in the past, counters with, “A Madeiran cortado?” I confirm, and ask her to share what she knows about the drink.
“It’s something people drink in cold weather,” explains Fátima Faísca, the bar’s second-generation owner. “Since I was little, I remember that my father always had an urn of hot coffee at his shop.” I ask if that urn held barley coffee and she replies, “[Using only] real coffee completely changes the flavor of the drink—I don’t know why. I remember that in the old days, they always had a mix of barley coffee and real coffee—three to one.” Indeed, I taste my drink and notice that the barley packs a smokiness that also seems to serve as a counter to any overtly boozy aromas.
A few days later, my search for the cortado brings me to Mercado Agrícola do Santo da Serra, a market in the island’s inland, mountainous east. Every weekend, vendors bring mangoes, papayas, taro, bananas, tamarillos, prickly pears, Cape gooseberries, figs, Surinam cherries, strawberry guavas, loquats, passion fruit, stalks of sugarcane and other items that thrive on the semitropical island. It could rival a market in Brazil or Southeast Asia, yet the occasion is as much about socializing as it is about the produce itself. Interspersed with the fruit vendors are several small bars, pouring pitchers of poncha and homemade cider. Order any drink and you’ll receive a dentinho, Madeira’s take on tapas, which can range from a few cubes of deep-fried polenta to a tiny plate of macaroni.
I spot a Thermos behind one bar, and ask if I can get a cortado. “I make it with barley coffee, just like in the old days,” replies the vendor in a strong Madeiran accent.
It’s another cold, chilly morning in the mountains. It’s only 9 a.m., but she’s generous with the Madeira wine. After a couple minutes, I start to feel warm in that boozy way. Around the same time, the sun starts to burn through the cloud cover, and I begin to understand the cortado, a drink with the power to clear the mist in more ways than one.
