ON VITICULTURE IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL. 



337 



skins, or other receptacles wherein to store their redundant 

 crop, than wine to fill them withal. In traversing many a 

 hundred dusty leagues of the wildest parts of Spain, we 

 seldom failed to replenish our wine-skins with good, rough, 

 red vino del jiais, grown on some neighbouring slope ; racy 

 of the soil, refreshing, and delicious after hard work under 

 a torrid sun, and at an average price of two pesetas the 

 arroba, or about one-third the price of " small beer " ! 



One soon grows to like and appreciate these rough red 

 wines of Northern and Central Spain, whose generous 

 fulness and refreshing asperity are so requisite in this hot 

 land. After a course of several months of the Eiojas and 

 Valdepenas of Spain, how thin tastes that first bottle of 

 the Bordelais— price two francs — at the breakfast-buffet of 

 Hendaye ! 





^^^^^ ^ 



