ic April, 1909.] Cataluna. 267 



Points of Viticulthral Interest. 



Before leaving Australia I had been told that I should find less to 

 interest me, so far as the work of my mission was concerned, near Bar- 

 celona, than in Andalucia, La Rioja, &c. I was therefore somewhat 

 surprised, on obtaining official statistics in Madrid, to find how vast 

 was the importance of viticulture in Cataluna, which produces more wine 

 than any other region in Spain. My visit was a revelation to me. 

 Nowhere else in Spain did I see wine handled in such enormous _ quan- 

 tities. I had seen wineries which dealt with very; large quantities, in 

 La Mancha, The Levante and La Rioja, but these could not compare 

 with the Bodegas of the leading wine merchants in Barcelona and Reus. 

 The size of the storage vessels and the power and capacity of the wine 

 pumps were truly astounding. I was brought face to face with a trade 

 in wine on a scale of which I certainly had no idea, nor do I think its 

 importance is usually realized outside of the country. One feels in- 

 clined to ask. What happens to these rivers of wine? A good deal of 

 it is no doubt consumed in Spain, in which country, as in its Latin 

 neighbours, wine is looked upon as a necessary of life. A large quan- 

 tity is shipped to England under the name of Tarragona Port, and the 

 balance, a very large proportion, finds its way to South America. The 

 importance of the latter trade must still be very great, though it is 

 rather less than it was some 20 years back, owing to the increase of 

 the wine production of these countries. Their populations are mainly 

 of Spanish descent and, although long since separated from their mother 

 countrv, they still look to her for what is fashionable in the way of 

 eatables and drinkables. Being descendants of wine drinking people, they 

 take more kindly to wine than our beer and whiskv drinking people so that, 

 in spite of their own locallv grown wine, there is room for considerable 

 importation from Spain and most of this comes from Cataluna. 



I regret that I was not able to secure statistics as to the quantities 

 shipped. Though I was treated with the utmost courtesy and shown 

 far more than was really to be expected, under the circumstances, T could 

 note a certain amount of reticence concerning trade with South America 

 which compelled me to limit the questions I should like to have asked. 



I was shown samples of a good many of the wines shipped. Al- 

 though belonging to several different types, they all had for foundation 

 the wine known in old days under the name of Priorato — after a small 

 district some miles south-west of Barcelona and near Tarragona. The 

 modern Priorato type is different from the ancient which was essentially 

 what was known as a Rancio wine, a term which will be explained pre- 

 sentlv. The modern or table Priorato — Priorato de Mesa, as it is termed 

 in Spanish, the name under which it is largely shipped — is intermediate 

 between the older type and the " vin ordinaire " of Spain — a light coloured 

 red wine of fairly high alcoholic strength, either dry or slightly fruity. 

 This wine will be more fully described later. 



From a geological point of view, Cataluna is most interesting, especially 

 to an Australian, for Primary formations, similar to our own, are much 

 more frequently to be met with here than in other parts of Spain. Espe- 

 cially in the Pyrenees, are rocks of this age plentiful, even in the lower 

 ramifications of the ranges they are frequently to be seen. Don NicoK 

 de Los Salmones at Pamplona had already drawn my attention to this fact 

 (see Journal, November, 1908, p. 690), and advised me to visit the pxovince 

 of Gerona, the northern part of which is largely of Primary geological 

 age. I therefore looked forward eagerly to my investigations in these 



