A food and Madeira wine walking tour of Funchal

This is Funchal eaten in a morning, on foot, with a local guide. The group meets at 09:45 by the H&M entrance on the Infante roundabout, at the western end of the city centre, and sets off at 10:00. The operator, Wine Tours Madeira, lists eight venues on GetYourGuide, with 11 food tastings and 6 drinks, and ends in the old town, the Zona Velha, at the eastern end of the centre.

The order, as the listing gives it: five-year-old Madeira wine at a producer, a Sercial and a Malmsey; carne de vinha d'alhos, pork marinated in wine and garlic, with bolo do caco, the island's flat bread, and a Coral beer; chocolates flavoured with pitanga, the Brazilian cherry, and tamarillo; bolo de mel, the dark honey cake, and biscuits at an old factory; a white wine made from the Barbusano grape, with crostini of black scabbard fish and of avocado with fresh cheese; poncha at a tavern; seasonal fruit in the Mercado dos Lavradores, Funchal's farmers' market, which the operator says opened in 1940; and tuna with fried cornmeal and a passion-fruit soda at the last stop, which the listing says comes with a view. The operator describes poncha as sugar cane rum shaken with lemon and sugar.

The wine is the reason to start where it does. Madeira's four noble white grapes run from dry to sweet, and the University of Madeira's wine pages put Sercial at the dry end and Malvasia, sold in English as Malmsey, at the sweet end, so the first glass and the second are the two extremes. The wine is aged warm: either in heated tanks for at least three months at no more than 50°C, or slowly in casks at room temperature, the canteiro method, for at least three years before bottling. A label that names a grape must hold at least 85% of it.

The operator's own page gives the times as 10:00 to 13:00 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, in English; GetYourGuide lists it as 3.5 hours. It is a small group, booked at least 10 hours ahead, with free cancellation. On 26 October 2026 it cost from 95 euros on GetYourGuide, the same as the operator's own site, where everyone pays the adult price.

Two Funchal food walks on GetYourGuide have hundreds of reviews, and on 26 October 2026 this was the higher rated of the two: 4.8 from about 550 reviews, with the guides scored 4.9 out of 5. The other, Funchal: Food, Wine and Cultural Tour with Market Visit, is rated 4.7 from about 890 reviews and costs from 93 euros for 4 hours. GetYourGuide labels that one wheelchair accessible, which makes it the better choice for anyone who uses a wheelchair. For everyone else we would book this one, for the Madeira wine at the start and the sheer number of stops.

Booking direct with Wine Tours Madeira costs the same 95 euros. If you want the wine without the food, the same operator runs a full day at the vineyards with lunch, rated 4.9 from about 180 reviews on GetYourGuide at 210 euros; and its own site sells a Wednesday bar crawl with a poncha workshop, 16:00 to 19:00 from Blandy's Wine Lodge, for 90 euros, the one to pick if you want an evening out rather than a morning. If the sky is clear and the sea is calm, give that day to the boats instead, the whale catamaran or the sunset sail under Cabo Girão, and keep this for a grey one.