Fernando, a taxi driver who accelerates into turns, confides to me, "Young people don't drink the Madeira so much." A vacationing Brit named Midge sniffs, "Oh, it's a cooking wine, isn't it?" And Rui, an excellent barista, says, as he steams the milk for my cappuccino, "We really only drink the Madeira with family on special occasions." As it turned out, my desire to learn about this Portuguese island's eponymous brew required very little effort on my part. It was almost always by accident that I stumbled upon such conversations about Madeira's 500-year-old wine.¿

It is in Funchal, the island's south-coast capital, that my lessons unofficially begin when I sit on a stool at Rui's bar and order a cappuccino. Rui tells me that his 71-year-old grandfather, "with the help of the family," grows grapes in Estreito de C¿mara de Lobos, a fishing village just west of Funchal. The barista remembers stomping grapes when he was little. "They say that the purple color won't come off your feet until the wine boils ¿ an old tale." I finish the last strong, thick sip and promise to return again after my week's romp around his homeland.

I spend my day admiring mosaic sidewalks and peering into stylish shop windows, intending to sup at Caf¿ do Teatro, "a suitable caf¿," I had heard, in which to taste the wine.

It is nearing evening, so I settle in at Teatro and review the wine list: only 2.50 euros a glass. Filippa, my server, suggests Malmsey, and, as I wait for her to return, I watch a man sweeping up pale pink blossoms in the park across the street. She brings me what will be my first of many Madeiras. The wine, served in a small port-like glass, glows amber. I roll it around my mouth, warming up to the flavor: complex, with a heavy sweetness. Tonight I will taste, and tomorrow, I decide, I will learn the alchemy.

The Old Blandy Wine Lodge is in a former monastery also in Funchal. There, from Ana, I truly learn the wine. Inside and out. Madeirans coax grapes from terraced mountainsides, grapes that soak up nutrients from the volcanic soil and bask in the island's mild sun and salt air. They are pressed, and then the wine is heated for an oxidized character and fortified with vinic alcohols.

Madeira was throated by Russian czars, toasted at the United States' signing of the Declaration of Independence and gifted to Napoleon on his way to exile on St. Helena. It is made in the yards of old men with crooked backs in the manner of their grandfathers before them and produced on a grand scale by businessmen with gold rings on each finger. It is lifted in celebration as well as in sorrow. Madeira is the wine of everyman and, at the same time, of no man, for it has become the very fabric of life here, belonging to no man alone.

When I again visit Rui, he brings me my cappuccino. I tell him I've seen the vast Atlantic from the top of Pico do Arieiro, ridden a cable car up over the romantic crumble of Funchal's old town, and I've become familiar with his wine. He tells me then about a festival in C¿mara de Lobos where visitors, too, can stomp grapes amid the vineyards. And I imagine sun-stained travelers with feet still purple returning home with great looks of confusion on their faces because they don't know, as I do, that they must wait until the wine is boiling back on Madeira for their feet to come clean.

Why here?¿ Madeira tastes best on its own lush, mountainous island, which has more than just a touch of European elegance.

Why now? During the Madeira Wine Festival (Sept. 1-3) you can pull grapes from the vine and get swept into a parade to the old wine presses. Hike up your pants, jump into a barrel and feel a most gratifying squish between your toes. http://www.madeiratourism.org