Have some Madeira, M' dear

"Have some Madeira, M' dear!", it brings back that wonderful Flanders and Swann song about a seduction which starts...

"She was young, she was pure, she was new, she was nice.
She was fair, she was sweet seventeen. 
He was old, he was vile, and no stranger to vice.
He was base, he was bad, he was mean."

Recognise someone? For the result see http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiMADERA.html. or http://www.ovff.org/pegasus/songs/madeira.html. And if you are not familiar with their work, I can assure you that they were pillars of the establishment some 50 or so years ago. But I digress....

John Raby has been to Madeira and this is what he found:

Madeira has a number of small rum distilleries which take local sugar cane and crush, ferment and distil the cane liquid to make rum. One of these which is open to visitors is at Calheta on the south west coast. The Engenhos de Calheta is a working museum with a mix of steam and electric power crushing, heating and transporting the crushed cane and liquids.

The raw cane enters and a pair of crushers (1 steam, 1 modified to electric) do the initial crushing.

The engine on the left has been converted to electric with a motor attached. This appears on the base of the milling equipment (agents I suspect).

This one on the right is steam. Below, a second crusher is steam:

However, parts may be missing from this... Below, a third and final crusher...

An engine from A W Death of Leicester (again (agents I suspect).

The original boiler is still in place:

But this has been superceded by two modern boilers from the same maker:

There is a preserved duplex pump here too:

The factory was not working at the time of our visit (mid-Jan 2007) but guessing at the sugar season, it may work a short season every spring. This factory is in several guide books and may be the most authentic of the original plants. However, there are at least 3 more to be explored. You can freely wander around but the free rum samples mentioned in the guide books were not on offer although there was a pay bar.

Searching the web I found more pictures on http://www.madeiraarchipelago.com from which the following are reproduced under their terms of use. For more pictures please see http://www.madeiraarchipelago.com/photo/thumbnails.php?album=199.

This is the mill John visited:

The same album contains high resolution images of another mill in action: (It may or may not be "Companhia Engenhos do Norte" in Porto da Cruz whose building is shown, in any case this must be worthy of investigation). The only lettering I think I can read on the original high-resolution picture appears to say "Scotland".