Funchal Food Tours

The tours

The Madeira Food and Wine Walking Tour and Taste Funchal are the walking options on this page, running through the city on foot with multiple stops, and both carry strong ratings from hundreds of reviews, 4.8 from 534 and 4.7 from 853 respectively. The practical difference between them is framing rather than route: one leans on food and wine tastings as the throughline, the other on a broader cultural story of the city, so pick based on whether you want the tasting or the context to lead.

H.M. Borges: the Cheapest Wine Stop

The H.M. Borges Winery Guided Tour at $22.97 is a single-stop visit rather than a walking tour, and it is the cheapest compared here by a wide margin, at under a quarter of the top walking tour's price. The lodge itself is why the stop is worth naming: H.M. Borges was founded in 1877 by Henrique Menezes Borges and originally traded from a site closer to Mercado dos Lavradores before moving in 1924 into its current building, a former grain mill adapted for wine. It is still run by the fourth generation of the founding family, so a visit is a stop at a family business that has aged wine on the same premises for a century.

It suits visitors who want a focused winery visit without a multi-stop itinerary, and it rates 4.7 from 429 reviews, close to the walking tours despite the far lower price.

Sommelier Tasting: the Middle Ground

The Madeira Wine Tasting with Sommelier sits at $44.22, roughly double H.M. Borges and less than half the walking tours, with a 4.7 rating from 123 reviews, the smallest review count on this page. Where H.M. Borges sells a visit to one specific lodge and its own century of history, this tour sells expertise instead, a sommelier's framing of the wine rather than a single producer's premises. It is the pick for visitors who want expert-led tasting without either the market walk or the full winery tour, and the trade-off is learning less about any one lodge's story in exchange for a wider guided comparison of styles.

The Free Alternative

None of these tours is required to eat well or taste Madeira wine in Funchal. Mercado dos Lavradores is free to browse on your own, and Blandy's Wine Lodge, the city's other historic cellar, runs its own self-guided and guided tours starting at $19.48 (€17), cheaper than most tours on this page. The consequence for your budget is direct: if a wine lodge visit without a food-tour wrapper is what you actually want, walking in on your own at Blandy's costs less than the sommelier tasting and less than half of either walking tour, though you give up the food tastings and the hotel pickup that come bundled with the paid options.