VINES AND WINES 37 



implements, by breaking up the hard rock and building 

 up the scanty soil, formed vineyards on the steep mountain 

 sides, and often up to their very summits. These vine- 

 yards, he says, having been mostly planted in haste in 

 the happy days of the demand for wines (when French 

 vineyards were destroyed by phylloxera), were formed by 

 the personal labour of the peasant eked out by the help of 

 loans. Since then the wine trade has passed through 

 critical times and prices have often been greatly depreci- 

 ated. The small vine-growers, who are also for the most 

 part wine-producers, fell on evil times and became heavily 

 indebted. They have remained so until the last year or 

 two, when, owing to the large demand and the high prices 

 of wines in Egypt, they have been able to free them- 

 selves. 



Gennadius regarded the cultivation of the vine in 

 Cyprus as indisputably unprofitable, and was in favour o 

 checking its extension, and even advocated the imposition 

 of a special tax on new plantations. At the time he wrote 

 there was an overproduction, and the value of wine had 

 greatly fallen, and the revenue which Cypriot wine-makers 

 could gain therefrom would hardly suffice to cover the 

 expenses of its transport to the market, the annual interest 

 on their debts, and the taxes they had to meet. 



The village-made wine is usually clarified by means of 

 gypsum. It is carried down from the mountain villages 

 in goat-skins (askos or ashia) on pack animals, and then 

 sold to the Limassol merchants, who ship the greater part 

 to Egypt. 



The production of wine as carried out in Cyprus leaves 

 much to be desired. M. Mouillefert, who visited Cyprus 

 in 1892 to report on the wine industry, says : " The vintage 

 is often gathered too late. Insufficient care is given to the 

 picking of the grapes and diseased, rotten, mildewy or 

 unripe grapes are often used which detract from the 

 quality of the wine. 



' The grapes are trodden and the fermentation takes 

 place in jars and chatties of porous earth, of a capacity of 

 2 or 3 hectolitres, which are tarred inside to counteract 

 their porosity. The houses in which the fermentation 

 takes place are of almost the same temperature as the 



