VINES AND VINEYARDS. 



" On entering his cellar, or rather pressing-room, we found the labourers 

 at their dinner. Bread seemed here, as elsewhere, the chief article of their 

 diet. There was also abundance of prickly pears and grapes. We passed 

 to the cellar where the new-made wine was stored, and tasted it in its various 

 states. The wine of a fortnight old was still very sweet, although the fer- 

 mentation was now barely sensible. We also tasted the sweet wine of the 

 same age, made from the Pedro Ximenes grape, and we conceived it to be 

 barely possible for any thing to be more luscious, although we were in- 

 formed that in a dry season it is much richer. He said he had about 

 200 butts of the sweet wine, and wished it were all of that quality, it was 

 so useful in mixing with his purchased wine for exportation." 



Roguery is in full force go where he will. Here follows a descrip- 

 tion of the press-work : 



" On returning from the cellar to the pressing-room we found the presses 

 at work. There were eight troughs, similar in shape and dimensions to 

 those formerly described, each with its wooden screw in the centre. A 

 large quantity of grapes being heaped up in one part of the trough, they 

 commence by strewing upon them as much powdered gypsum, or sulphate 

 of lime, as a man can take up with both hands. A portion of the grapes 

 are then spread over the bottom of the remainder of the trough, upon which 

 the men jump with great violence, having wooden shoes, with nails to pre- 

 vent their slipping. After the greater part of the grapes are pretty well 

 broken, they are piled up round the screw, and a flat band, made of a kind 

 of grass, is wound round the pile, commencing at the bottom, the broken 

 grapes being heaped and pressed in as the band is wrapped higher and 

 higher, till they are all compressed into it. They then commence working 

 the screw, and the must flows with great rapidity." 



Here the author takes leave of his friends at Xeres, and proceeds 

 by the steam-boat to Seville, and thence to Malaga. It may here be 

 as well to observe, that the whole extent of the Xeres vineyards does 

 not exceed 7*000 acres, consequently, the greater quantity of the 

 wines known in England as sherry wines, are fraudulent concoctions, 

 made up in the laboratory of the London wine-merchant, and impu- 

 dently foisted upon the public as wine. The whole quantity of sherry 

 annually exported for Xeres does not exceed 25,000 butts, and in no 

 case do even the exporters themselves send a genuine natural wine ! Let 

 the sherry drinkers hug themselves on that fact ; and, moreover when 

 they rejoice over the true nutty flavour, let them not be niggardly in 

 the praise of Don Jacobo Gordon, Don Pedro Domecq, and other 

 enlightened men, to whom the glory of the invention is justly due. 



The wine of Malaga is not much in vogue at the present day; the 

 trade of the place is principally confined to raisins aud almonds. The 

 method of preserving and packing fruit is given; likewise the descrip- 

 tion of a sugar plantation ; from which he appears that sugar has 

 been cultivated with success in Spain, for upwards of 100 years, and 

 the quality is so good that the produce of the estate visited by Mr. 

 Busby, brought that year a higher price by 10 per cent, than im- 

 ported sugar. The produce of the vineyards round Malaga, which 

 is not converted into raisins, is a sort of inferior sherry chiefly taken 

 by the Americans, with whom it has been much in demand since the 

 establishment of Temperance Societies. Very little of the old moun- 

 tain or Malaga wine is made. 



