Malvasia Malmsey was one of the three major wines exported from Greece in medieval times. (For other examples, see Rumney wine and Cretan wine). It is alleged that when Edward IV of England convicted his brother, George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, of high treason, his private execution consisted of being "drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine," which is dramatized in Shakespeare's "Richard III". Both Monemvasia and Candia have lent their names to modern grape varieties. In Greece, there is a variety known as Monemvasia, evidently named after the port, though now grown primarily in the Cyclades. In western Europe,
Isleños in Louisiana Canary Islands. With the crisis occasioned by the collapse of the trade in the Canarian "malvasia" wine (called "malmsey" in England) in the 18th century, there was an increase in poverty. Beginning in the late 1700s, prickly pear cactuses were grown in the Canary Islands to serve as hosts plants for cochineal insects from which the dye carmine was made. It became a major export of the islands in its own right, but this trade collapsed in its turn after the dye began to be produced synthetically in Europe. Most of the affected people were farmers and laborers who had