The Blandys of Madeira
1811-2011

Best known as the leading producers of Madeira wine, the Blandy firm is very much more than that, and the story of its growth and development over 200 years is a remarkable one.
Founded on a remote Portugese island in the Atlantic in the last years of the Napoleonic War the company has never ceased to trade in the unique wine for which Madeira is so famous, but not many companies, after 200 years, are still owned and run by the same family, and the portfolio of businesses owned, developed and run by the family over the years includes many of the central concerns of the period - from coal and shipping to newspapers and hotels.
Marcus Binney tells the remarkable story of this survival and growth with verve and insight. It is not a colonial adventure, for Madeira has always been Portugese (and with a fluctuating and often challenging political environment). And it has not been without its problems and mistakes. But in the end it is a remarkable account of how a remarkable family adapted their business and their expectations of it, to survive and flourish into the 21st century, and along the way to construct and conserve some impressive buildings and, especially, to develop and maintain an iconic and world famous product in one of the world's great wines.

Foreword

Introduction: The Man with the Big Cigar

1. A Poor Young Man in Search for a Fortune
2. Rich Harvest, Bitter Legacy
3. Crisis Turned to Grand Advantage
4. War, Retrenchment and Hard Times
5. Riots and Revolution
6. A Sense of the Old Order
7. Changing the Face of Reid's
8. Youth in Charge Again
9. Boom Times, Big Decisions
10. New Investments and New Ways
11. Palheiro Moves into the Twenty-first Century
12. Champions of Madeira Wine

The Adventure Continues
Notes on Sources
Further Reading
Acknowledgements
Index

The early 1800s – like the first decade of this century – were tumultuous times. Napoleonic tyranny was sweeping the Continent and, at one point, 90,000 French soldiers were poised at Boulogne ready to mount an invasion across the Channel. Republican ferment was unsettling the drawing rooms and palaces of Europe. In Britain agricultural mechanisation and the enforced enclosures of fields were driving poor farmers off the land and into the growing cities, where the Industrial Revolution was creating huge and often miserable urban populations. Villages were being deserted, food was often scarce and prices high, and legal costs could weigh heavily on hard-pressed farmers. For many it was not Merry England.
In Dorset a previously prosperous farming family was struggling. Charles Blandy, who was born at Lambourn in Berkshire in 1755, and had married Elizabeth Davis in 1782, had acquired in 1794 the lease of a farm at Piddletrenthide. The terms of the lease were harsh – they included the requirement that he should supply the landlord with regular loads of coal – and Charles and Elizabeth had six boys and three girls to feed. After the death of their father in 1803, the family were placed in highly straitened circumstances. That may have propelled John, the eldest son, to set sail in 1808 aged twenty-four and seek his fortune in the island of Madeira, to be joined later by his brothers Thomas, Robert and George.
Let us pass quickly over the rigours of the sea voyage that the young Dorset countryman had to endure; the gales in the Channel, the pitching and rolling deck across the Bay of Biscay, the slops and the cramped sleeping quarters shared with strangers. His destination was the island where, in the late fifteenth century, Christopher Columbus had met his wife, Filipa de Moniz, daughter of the first governor. They were married in Lisbon in 1478.