Lower-quality whips may have no bellies at all, and are sometimes stuffed with materials such as newspaper which will break down with use.

Lower-quality fiber can be manufactured using pitch or rayon as the precursor instead of PAN.

Lower-quality balls with a 2-piece covering are also popular for practice and lower-level competition due to their lower purchase cost.

Madeira is produced in a variety of styles ranging from dry wines which can be consumed on their own as an aperitif, to sweet wines more usually consumed with dessert.

Some wines produced in small quantities in Crimea, California and Texas are also referred to as " Madeira " or " Madera ", although those wines do not conform to the EU PDO regulations.

In conformance with these EU regulations most countries limit the use of the term Madeira or Madère to only those wines that come from the Madeira Islands.

The customer was found to prefer the taste of this style of wine, and Madeira labeled as vinho da roda ( wines that have made a round trip ) became very popular.

The initial winemaking steps of Madeira start out like most other wines: grapes are harvested, crushed, pressed, and then fermented in either stainless steel or oak casks.

* Colheita or Harvest-This style includes wines from a single vintage, but aged for a shorter period than true Vintage Madeira.

Rather than dump the wines, the merchants tried to pass it off as a " new style " of Madeira and were surprised at its popularity among the Americans.

Before the advent of artificial refrigeration, Madeira wine was particularly prized in areas where it was impractical to construct wine cellars ( as in parts of the southern United States ) because, unlike many other fine wines, it could survive being stored over hot summers without significant damage.

* Terras Madeirenses VR, a Vinho Regional designation for simpler, non-fortified wines from Madeira

In the past, the names Malvasia, Malvazia, and Malmsey have been used interchangeably for Malvasia-based wines ; however, in modern oenology, " Malmsey " is now used almost exclusively for a sweet variety of Madeira wine made from the Malvasia grape.

Malvasia wines are produced in Italy ( including Lombardia, Sicily, Lipari, and Sardinia ), Slovenia, Croatia, Corsica, the Iberian Peninsula, the Canary Islands, the island of Madeira, California, Arizona, Australia and Brazil.

Presently, however, " Malvasia " generally refers to unfortified white table or dessert wines produced from this grape, while " Malmsey " refers to a sweet variety of Madeira wine, though the latter are also sometimes called " Malvasia " or " Malvazia ".

This led to the English becoming a main consumer of sweet fortified wines like sherry from Spain, and Port wine and Madeira wine from Portugal.

By 1455, the Venezian navigator, Luís de Cadamosto, on visiting Madeira, referred to the excellence of the Madeirense wines, principally the Malvasia castes from the island of Crete, which were being exported in greater numbers.

Products which are often solera aged include Sherry, Madeira, Port wine, Marsala, Mavrodafni, Muscat, and Muscadelle wines ; Balsamic, Commandaria, and Sherry vinegars ; Spanish brandy ; and rums.

Today, many Portuguese wines are known as some of the world's best: Vinho do Douro, Vinho do Alentejo, Vinho do Dão, Vinho Verde, and the sweet: Port Wine ( Vinho do Porto, literally Porto's wine ), Madeira wine, Muscatel of Setúbal, and Moscatel of Favaios.

Boal is a name given to several varieties of grape cultivated in Portugal, notably in the production of medium-rich fortified wines from Madeira Island.

The wide array of Portuguese grape varietals contributes as significantly as the soil and climate to wine differentiation, producing distinctive wines from the Northern regions to Madeira Islands, and from Algarve to the Azores.

The Madeira river rises more than 15 m ( 50 ft ) during the rainy season, and ocean vessels may ascend it to the Falls of San Antonio, near Porto Velho, Brazil, above its mouth ; but in the dry months, from June to November, it is only navigable for the same distance for craft drawing about 2 m ( from 5 to 6 feet ) of water.

Unflavored Madeira may also be used in cooking, such as the dessert dish " Plum in madeira ".

In areas where House Sparrows are absent, the Spanish Sparrow may live in urban habitats, as in the Canary Islands, Madeira, and some Mediterranean islands.

The forms breeding in Macaronesia on Madeira, Bugio in the Desertas Islands, and in the Cape Verde archipelago were long considered to be subspecies of the southern hemisphere Soft-plumaged Petrel P. mollis, but differences in size, vocalisations, breeding behaviour and mitochondrial DNA analysis showed that the northern birds are not closely related to P. mollis, and that the Bermuda Petrel or Cahow may be the closest relative of the Macaronesian birds.

This suggests that despite the close physical proximity of the two species of gadfly petrel found in the Madeiran archipelago, they may have arisen from separate colonisations of mainland Madeira and, later, the Desertas Islands.

The forms breeding in Macaronesia on Madeira, Bugio in the Desertas Islands, and in the Cape Verde archipelago were long considered to be subspecies of the Southern Hemisphere Soft-plumaged Petrel, P. mollis, but mitochondrial DNA analysis, and differences in size, vocalisations, breeding behaviour, showed that the northern birds are not closely related to P. mollis, and that the Bermuda Petrel or Cahow may be the closest relative of the Macaronesian birds.

This suggests that despite the close physical proximity of the two species of gadfly petrel found in the Madeiran archipelago, they may have arisen from separate colonisations of mainland Madeira and, later, the Desertas Islands.

It may alternatively be a single aberrant individual, a hybrid or an unknown taxon from Madeira or elsewhere.

The boater may also be seen worn by the ' carreiros ' of Madeira, the drivers of the traditional wicker toboggans carrying visitors from the parish church at Monte ( Funchal ) down towards Funchal centre.

It is adapted to dry climates, occurring wild from Morocco and Portugal east to Libya and Greece and north to France and Croatia ; it may also be native on Cyprus, the Canary Islands and Madeira.

The Parque Natural da Madeira national park has a management plan for the Trocaz Pigeon, and it is hoped that an education campaign and the promotion of bird scarers may reduce persecution.

The peoples of the Iberian peninsula, who were closest to the real Atlantic islands of the Canaries, Madeira and Azores, and whose seafarers and fisherman may have seen and even visited them, articulated their own tales.

Faria e Sousa notes they may not have reached their destination, but may have ended up instead on an Atlantic Ocean island " populated by Portuguese, that has seven cities ... which some imagine to be that one which can be seen from Madeira, but when they wish to reach it, disappears ".

Most of the Boal grown on Madeira is more fully known as Boal Cachudo ( a synonym for the Spanish variety Doña Blanca, though the two may be different grapes ), which has been shown by DNA profiling to be identical to the Malvasia Fina grown in the Douro valley.

Together it will total 19 years in these casks, after which it may lie in Madeira drums for a further two years until bottling.

If so, he may have been sent out in 1427 as just one of Henry's several expeditions in the 1420s down the West African coast in an attempt to double Cape Bojador, or that he may have been going on a routine trip to Madeira, and it has even been speculated he might have been part of a failed Portuguese attack or slave raid on the Canary Islands.

At Madeira, Amundsen alerted his men that they would be heading to Antarctica in addition to sending a telegram to Scott notifying him simply: < tt >" BEG TO INFORM YOU FRAM PROCEEDING ANTARCTIC -- AMUNDSEN.

* 1420 — The same sailors and Bartolomeu Perestrelo discovered the island of Madeira, which at once began to be colonized.

Because of this unique process, Madeira is a very robust wine that can be quite long lived even after being opened.

No wine-quality grapes could be grown among the 13 colonies, so imports were needed, with a great focus on Madeira.

In 2012, the longest HVDC link will be the Rio Madeira link connecting the Rondônia to the São Paulo area where the length of the DC line is over.

Throughout the year many events take place on Madeira Drive ( a piece of roadway on Brighton's seafront ), which was constructed in order to host what is commonly held to be the world's oldest motor race, the Brighton Speed Trials, which has been running since 1905.

In Portugal, it is called fatias douradas, rabanadas or fatias de parida, and is typically made during Christmas, from slices of bread leftovers ( when it is too hard to be eaten normally ) soaked in milk or water to soften it, dipped in beaten eggs, fried in the least amount of vegetable oil possible ( to prevent it from soaking up and becoming too greasy ) and then sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, soaked in a syrup made with water, sugar, cinnamon sticks and lemon skin or in Port or Madeira wine.

The Portuguese Constitution of 1976 specifies that Portugal have only, as first level divisions, the autonomous regions ( Azores and Madeira ) and the administrative regions ( to be created in mainland Portugal ).

Finding life at sea even more restricting, he pretended to be both deaf and lame so skillfully that he deceived the doctors at Madeira.

The Madeira Firecrest was formerly considered to be a subspecies, R. i. madeirensis, of the Common Firecrest R. ignicapillus.

" It also mentioned the potential invasion of Portugal if the British gained a foothold and requested that the occupation of Madeira and of the Azores be investigated.

The Madeira Firecrest, R. madeirensis, was formerly also considered to be a subspecies of the Common Firecrest, but phylogenetic analysis based on the cytochrome b gene showed that the Madeiran form is distinct at the species level.

In 1983, a bird was trapped on the Selvagens, Madeira on the 8th July and was confirmed to be the first record for the Atlantic Ocean.

In the Mediterranean region, it is cultivated mainly in southern Spain, where it was introduced before 1751 in the Motril, Almuñecar and Malaga areas, from where it was carried to Italy and lsla de Madeira ( Portugal ), but now can be also found in Morocco, Tunisia ( only in the orchards of Hammamet ), Lebanon, Egypt, Cyprus, and Israel.