Fresh, tart acidity cuts through the lightly candied cherry, white raspberry and melon notes, marked by spice and liquorice accents. Lip-smacking finish. --Wine Spectator

It seems a little out-of-kilter to be recommending a ros? in the middle of deep winter in the northern hemisphere. I look out my window from where I sit at my desk and the sky is low and iron grey, the wind - which sliced my breath away when I took the dog for a walk earlier - is bending the plum tree, and some of last night's frost still clings to the roof of the garden shed. The garden is bare, twiggy, bony. The most colourful thing in my eyeline is the periodic-table-of-elements mouse pad under my right hand. We're in lockdown, the virus is raging, and Brexit has Dutch customs officials confiscating ham sandwiches from British lorry drivers. Is this really the mood for ros?? Allow me to argue the case. First, I've always maintained that ros? is for food not summer - especially the good ros?s, made to be wine rather than alcopop substitutes. Second, we could all do with a bit of colour in our lives right now. Third, Valentine's Day is coming up - some of you might want a bit of pink to symbolise romance. Who cares if it's a clich?? Fourth, this particular ros? conjures up a bit of an escape, and for those confined by the virus, a vinous escape might be just the ticket. But the fifth reason is the real reason I'm writing about this surprising wine. A cheap pink table wine made from the 'workhorse' Tinta Negra grape grown on the island of Madeira should not, in theory, be as delicious as this. My husband and I managed to get on a plane to Madeira less than 12 hours before the portcullis of Tier 4 came down on southern England, banning international travel. Armed with COVID-negative certificates, a bagful of masks, the MadeiraSafe app and swimming costumes, we arrived at the most organised, disciplined and strictly COVID-controlled airport imaginable. Once out of Funchal airport, the first thing that greeted us was a wide blue sky, then great gulps of clean sea air, then riotous banks of red hot poker plants and bougainvillea tumbling down the steep hillsides. I was all set for two weeks of fish and madeira wine - the fortified stuff. I'd never tasted Madeiran table wine, but we were taught by the WSET that it was truly terrible and nothing else I'd read since had tried to convince me otherwise. Madeira grapes are as famous for their high acidity as UK grapes are. The table wines were, we were told, thin, acidic, weedy and painful to drink. Contrary to my expectations, the taste of that humble little ros?, roughly 87 times less than the price of the 1920 Bual, stayed with me. When we went to the marina for a delicious octopus lunch, I asked if they had the Atlantis ros?. I wanted to try it again. They didn't, but I found several more opportunities to try it while we were in Madeira - both the 2018 and 2019 vintages. Each time, it was just as delicious as I had remembered. We tried it on a rainy day, with pork ribs, at our little Airbnb in Ponta da Sol. We had it on Christmas Day with simple barbecued prawns and octopus and a salad made with local veg (half of it was drunk in a bit of a downpour when we had to dive for cover, and half of it on the balcony in warm sunlight). We tried it with local scabbard fish and tuna tartare, and we drank it with Madeiran Broas de Mel honey biscuits and bananas from our hosts' garden on a picnic in the mist up in the UNESCO-protected, ancient laurisilva forest - complete with freezing-cold, wet bums perched on the mossy stone walls of the levadas We had a chance to compare it with several other Madeirense ros?s: Barbusano, Colombo and one other which I shamefully failed to make a note of. The Atlantis was easily superior. But my burning question was: am I tasting the giddy sense of escape, island paradise and sunshine or am I actually tasting the wine? I brought a bottle home. It's every bit as good as it tasted in situ. Whether it's the volcanic rocks, the salty Atlantic winds or the light that not only comes from one of the widest skies I've seen but bounces off the ocean, Madeiran wines and veg/fruit just seem have the most vivid intensity of flavour. It's possibly to do with the acidity, but it's more than just that. I swear their electrons vibrate more. The total acidity of the Atlantis ros? is a cracking 8.71 g/l, and the pH is 3.14 - most wines would taste searingly tart at those numbers. But Albuquerque has been smart enough not to fear the anti-sugar brigade and he's left a residual sugar of 7.5 g/l. This has resulted in a wine with perfect balance, so although the fruit is ripe and present to begin with, the RS fills it out and accentuates tropical depth. The finish, however, is dry and elegant. Perhaps the secret is that most of th