The Borracheiros
“It should be the name of a rock band. If it’s not, I’m going to start it...”
We drove to the village of Porto da Cruz in the northeast of the island. It took us around 20 minutes. For the men who carried goatskins full of wine up & down and around these mountains, the same journey took 12 hours!
LOGISTICS
The Borracheiros were the ‘logistics’ companies of the day, freight forwarders, hauliers and handymen to know if you needed your freshly pressed grapes transferred from the steep, hillside vineyards of the north to the ‘Madeira’ winemakers in the south.
There was none of the slick flyovers and long, deep tunnels that make present-day Madeira relatively easy to traverse. The Via Rapida motorway system only came into being in 2005. Even in the 1990s, the tortuously twisting mountainside roads meant it would take all day to get from Funchal to, for instance, Ponta do Pargo. It used to take an hour and a half to drive from the centre of Funchal to the airport. Now it takes 15 minutes.
NUMBER ONE EXPORT
For nearly 2 centuries, Madeira Wine was the island’s number one export and main source of revenue. Besides the bountiful vineyards above Câmara de Lobos and , the "poios" or terraces around Porta da Cruz offered ideal grape-growing conditions and their landowners were keen to cash in on the high demand for basic wine. This would be fortified and turned into the ‘Madeira’ in the barrels and wine lofts of Funchal. Getting the wine there was another matter. Sailing around the treacherous Ponta de São Lourenço was not an option so the more direct overland route was chosen using the services of the Borracheiros.
The surprising thing is this method of transport was still employed as late as the 1970s. Basílio Nóbrega, one of the men I met on our visit was 13 years old when he started carrying a lighter load than the rest of the men. He soon graduated to a full 50-litre sack which weighed around 50kgs.
TYRE REPAIR MEN
In the Porta da Cruz area, many of the fathers and grandfathers of the men we met had been Borracheiros or ‘Tyre Repair Men’ or “Rubber Men’. I can only think that those names had something to do with the rubber strap they placed around their heads to help support the 50-litre goat skins or ‘Borracho’, a sort of ‘suspension’ system making it easier to support the load as the men hiked up and down the mountain passes.
They also carried a small bag around their waist with bread and cured meat to sustain them as they walked. More likely, it was the course brandy poured from a longhorn into a short one that gave the men strength, not to mention the odd sample from the sack they were carrying - purely to lighten the load you understand!
BORRACHO
A final word for the other member of this illustrious team, the goat! In true Madeiran style, nothing goes to waste! They made good use of the goat meat as the goat’s skin was formed into a sack, tied off at the head and legs.
The goat skins or ‘Borracho’ were known to leak or even burst if they hadn’t been prepared properly, scraped with a knife then cured in the sun for a month. Still, there would often be ‘leakage’. I think this would also be a fine excuse for the Borracheiros when they arrived, their sacks being a bottle or two light!
AUTUMN HARVEST
The busiest time for the Borracheiros would be August and September when the grapes were picked and pressed before transport to the south. It was an intense time as there were multiple vineyards throughout the area, so much so the men had to do night shifts which is even harder to imagine given the precariousness of the roads.
The ‘boss’ was usually the owner of the vineyard and he would normally oversee his precious cargo's transport down to Funchal or Machico.
It was cooler up in Porta da Cruz but nothing that a couple of ‘horns’ of Brandy didn’t cure
SINGING
The Borracheiros were famous for singing as they walked and "The Borracheiros liked to take their mind off the walking. Singing was part of the deal and the lead man. The guy that had the easiest and most popular job was the rum carrier.
as a ‘tyre repairman’, a name given in Madeira to someone who carried wine on their backs in a container made of goatskin, a profession that has now become extinct.
The Associação Grupo Cultural Flores de Maio or ‘May Flowers Cultural Group’ has been founded to keep that memory alive. The group attends tourist or cultural events around the island such as the Madeira Wine Festival to let people see how things used to be.
