That is how Madeira is made today. In Adams day the "repeated heating process" was simply crossing the equator with the wine still in barrels.
I note that President McKinley liked cocktails that contained absinthe. Subsequently absinthe was made illegal in this country. Has that ban been lifted? I saw a TV documentary about how someone re-engineered absinthe to make it exactly the way it was originally produced. Now I am very curious to try some.