687 
W I 
our detestation of the whole class of their dull heavy red 
wines. Whether they be known asTinto, Alicant, Benicarlo, 
or Catalonian—whether they avow themselves in their own 
fierce nature—or are latently and murderously present in cla¬ 
rets—or conspire with brandy to impose their liquid fire upon 
us in the guise of port—they have all our hearty condemna¬ 
tion. Yet Spain has every rich gift of nature for the production 
of excellent wines. An English traveller in Granada, in 1809, 
found red wine of the country, in the house of a native gen¬ 
tleman, equal in delicate flavour to Burgundy. But the 
owner had been compelled to send bottles for it to the vine¬ 
yard to prevent its being transported to him in sheep-skins 
smeared with tar ; and surrounded by whole forests of cork¬ 
trees, he was obliged to import his corks, as well as his bot¬ 
tles, from England! The principal vineyards of Xeres are in 
the hands of French and English settlers; and to this cir¬ 
cumstance alone may the improvement of the produce in late 
years be attributed. In Spain generally, except in the com¬ 
mercial towns and monasteries, casks, and bottles, and wine- 
cellars, are almost unknown ; the wine is carelessly and dir¬ 
tily made, rarely kept to acquire age ; when it is, instead of 
mellowing, it can only become muddy and nauseously im¬ 
pregnated with the rancid flavour of the sheep-skin. Some of 
the sweet growths, and those of Malaga particularly, it is the 
fashion to praise; but we shall laud none of them. Of all 
the wines of Spain, we shall rescue only one from judgment, 
and that shall be the dry old white wine of Xeres. Whether 
it be known for pure Falernian, or ‘ merry sack,’ or simply 
for your pale modern Sherry, Pasquil’s Palinodia saith justly, 
that 
“ The life of mirth, and the joy of the earth, 
Is a cup of good old Sherry.’ 
Yet it is monstrous that even this fine wine, so powerful in 
itself, should be defiled with brandy, and if the quantity do 
not exceed three or four gallons to the butt, it is several years 
before the wine recovers from its influence and developes its 
own oppressed flavour. The vitiated taste of the English 
market is the only excuse for the merchants; for the wine 
itself cannot require the admixture. Indeed even in its mel¬ 
lowed state, Sherry, containing nearly a fourth part by bulk 
of alcohol, is too powerful except in moderate quantities for 
healthful enjoyment; and if we still cling to the national 
passion for strong liquors, it is only because, in our cold and 
damp climate, there will always be a majority of days in 
which the lighter red wines of France will not sit quite plea¬ 
santly upon the stomach without a cushion—three or four 
glasses—of old Sherry or Madeira. Perhaps, to confess the 
truth, we are old-fashioned enough, of the two rather to pre¬ 
fer the latter; though the prejudice, we know, is running 
against it. But who that has lived in a warm climate does 
not know that, under an East or West Indian sun for exam¬ 
ple, a daily modicum of Madeira is the staff of life ?—main¬ 
taining the fainting stamina of the European constitution; the 
nerve of manhood, and the milk of old age. 
Of the wines of Portugal we had almost resolved to say not 
a syllable ; lest we should be betrayed into thread-bare dis¬ 
cussions on the ‘ Methuen treaty, and the impolicy of high 
duties on French wines.’ Yet we do think it a serious evil, 
no matter how produced or how far remediable, that the na¬ 
tional taste should have become habituated to the brandied, 
fiery, deleterious potations which are known as * common 
port;’ and that ‘ the man of moderate fortune, who pur¬ 
chases for daily use a cask of good ordinary French wine, at 
eightpence a gallon, must submit to a tax of more than 1,500 
per cent.’ This tax may now be 700 per cent, lighter, but 
still the main evil exists for the consumer : that the market is 
not open to the equal competition of French and Portuguese 
wines; that the genuine supply of good Oporto is notori¬ 
ously and utterly unequal to the demand which the protec¬ 
tion occasions for it; and that every temptation is therefore 
created to mix it with villainous trash, and to cover the adul¬ 
teration with excessive quantities of brandy. That the genu¬ 
ine wine—not the manufacture of Oporto or London, but 
the pure growth of the Douro—is excellent, many a cam- 
N E. 
paigning connoisseur can testify who has drunk it on the 
spot, and never recognised Port in the full mellow body, ex¬ 
quisite flavour, and seducing mildness of the native liquor. 
But after the admixtures and adulterations to which the choice 
wines of the Alto Douro are subjected, to reduce them to the 
Port standard, it would be just as reasonable to expect the 
liquor to be good, as to hope to preserve the delicious quali¬ 
ties, and immeasurably to increase the quantity of true Bur¬ 
gundy—of Romanee Conti and Clos Vougeot—by throwing 
all the inferior vins-du-pays of the province into one im¬ 
mense vat with them. If the market were thrown open, if 
the Portuguese grower and merchant were reduced by com¬ 
petition to attend to the improvement of their produce, and 
to send it uncorrupted to our cellars, we suspect they would 
find a full sale for all that the banks of the Douro will ho¬ 
nestly yield. And however the politician may think, the 
consumer must regret that the wines of Europe are not fairly 
set before him for his choice ; and that if his pleasures must 
be taxed, they are not rated according to their value; that, in 
short, instead of one duty upon all French wines, he may not 
purchase permission to drink the inferior growths at a price 
somewhat proportioned to their original cost. 
The wines of Germany and Hungary we shall now speak 
of. Of the former, the class of Rhine wines alone deserve 
mention for their excellence and very singular nature. It is 
along the course of that river, between Mentz and Coblentz, 
that these are chiefly produced. Here the stream is confined 
on both sides by lofty uplands of strata, propitious to the 
grape, covered with extensive vineyards, supporting a nu¬ 
merous population, and giving an air of richness and anima¬ 
tion to the scenery which forms an agreeable contrast to the 
ruins of feudal magnificence that crown the principal heights. 
The choicest vintages of this country, however, are confined 
to a small district called the Rhinegau; and to the vineyards 
of Hockheim, which, though lying on the river Mayn, are 
usually classed with them as being of like nature and nearly 
of the same excellence. Hence all the best sorts of the Rhine 
wines have long been confounded in this country under the 
general name of Hock; while Rhenish has become the dis¬ 
tinguishing term of disrepute for inferior growths. The qua¬ 
lities peculiar to these growths are well known, and appear 
to form an exception to all received chemical theories: so 
sharp in flavour as often to occasion an unfounded suspicion 
of acidity, yet highly agreeable and abounding in delicate 
aroma; containing very little alcohol, (usually not above ten 
per cent, by volume,) yet dry and sound ; and so extremely 
durable, that they will keep and improve for almost an inde¬ 
finite number of years. It was this durability, probably, that 
introduced the singular custom of storing the Rhine wines in 
vessels of enormous magnitude. Every one has heard of the 
great tun of Heidelberg ; it was thirty feet in length by twenty 
in depth, and was yet almost equalled in capacity by some 
others, for herein lay a point of rivalry among the great pro¬ 
prietors. This method of preserving the wine had perhaps 
its advantages for the stronger kinds; but it was essential to 
keep the vessel always full, either by replacing each quantity 
drawn off with newer wine of similar growth, or by throwing 
in washed pebbles to fill up the void. In the last century, 
for want of such precautions, the residue of a cask at Stras¬ 
bourg, bearing date anno Dom. 1472, was found to have 
become thick and sour; which would not perhaps have oc¬ 
curred if it had been bottled. Of the growths of the Rhine¬ 
gau, the best are the Johannisberger, before referred to, the 
Riidesheimer, Grafenberger, and Steinberger: the better kinds 
of the Moselle, of similar species, may rank between these 
and the inferior Rhine wines. Of Hungary, extensively a wine 
country, the produce, though it might be excellent, is gene¬ 
rally bad, from defective culture and management. But fame 
claims an exception for Tokay, imperial Tokay. Of this 
peculiar and luscious product of the half-dried grapes of a 
district round the town of Tokay, all of us have heard, but 
few tasted; for the wine bears an extravagant price even at 
Cracow, where the chief deposit is established for the markets 
of Poland and Silesia. The old wine, or vino vitrawno, is 
so 
