WANT OF CLEANLINESS.
As Spaniards at all times are as dry as the desert or a sponge, selling water is a very active business; on every alameda and prado shrill voices of the sellers of drinks and mouth combustibles—vendedores de combustibles de boca—are heard crying, “Fire, fire,candela—Water; who wants water?”—agua; quien quiere agua?which, as these Orientals generally exaggerate, is described asmas fresca que la nieve, or colder than snow; and near them little Murillo-like urchins run about with lighted ropes like artillerymen for the convenience of smokers, that is, for every ninety and nine males out of a hundred; while water-carriers, or rather retail pedestrian aqueducts, follow thirst like fire-engines; theAguadorcarries on his back, like his colleague in the East, a porous water-jar, with a little cock by which it is drawn out; he is usually provided with a small tin box strapped to his waist, and in which he stows away his glasses, brushes, and some lightazucarillos—panales, which are made of sugar and white of egg, which Spaniards dip and dissolve in their drink. In the town, at particular stations water-mongers in wholesale have a shed, with ranges of jars, glasses, oranges, lemons, &c., and a bench or two on which the drinkers “untire themselves.” In winter these are provided with anañafeor portable stove, which keeps a supply of hot water, to take the chill off the cold, for Spaniards, from a sort of dropsical habit, drink like fishes all the year round.Ferdinand the Catholic, on seeing a peasant drowned in a river, observed, “that he had never before seen a Spaniard who had had enough water.”
At the same time it must be remembered that this fluid is applied with greater prodigality in washing their inside than their outside. Indeed, a classical author remarks that the Spaniards only learnt the use ofhotwater, as applicable to the toilette, from the Romans after the second Punic war. Their baths andthermæwere destroyed by the Goths, because they tended to encourage effeminacy; and those of the Moors were prohibited by the Gotho-Spaniards partly from similar reasons, but more from a religious hydrophobia. Ablutions and lustral purifications formed an article of faith with the Jew and Moslem, with whom “cleanliness is godliness.” The mendicant Spanish monks, according to their practice of setting up a directly antagonist principle, considered physical dirt as the test of moral purity and true faith; and by dining and sleeping from year’s end to year’s end in the same unchanged woollen frock, arrived at the height of their ambition, according to their view of the odour of sanctity, insomuch that Ximenez, who was himself a shirtless Franciscan, induced Ferdinand and Isabella, at the conquest of Granada, to close and abolish the Moorish baths. They forbade not only the Christians but the Moors from using anything but holy water. Fire, not water, became the grand element of inquisitorial purification.
CHOCOLATE.
The fair sex was warned by monks, who practised what they preached, that they should remember the cases of Susanna, Bathsheba, and La Cava,—whose fatal bathing under the royal palace at Toledo led to the downfall of the Gothic monarchy. Their aqueous anathemas extended not only to public, but to minutely private washings, regarding which Sanchez instructs the Spanish confessor to question his fair penitents, and not to absolve the over-washed. Many instances could be produced of the practical working of this enjoined rule; for instance, Isabella, the favourite daughter of Philip II., his eye, as he called her, made a solemn vow never to change her shift until Ostend was taken. The siege lasted three years, three months, and thirteen days. The royal garment acquired a tawny colour, which was calledIsabelby the courtiers, in compliment to the pious princess. Again, Southey relates that the devout Saint Eufraxia entered into aconvent of 130 nuns, not one of whom had ever washed her feet, and the very mention of a bath was an abomination. These obedient daughters to their Capuchin confessors were what Gil de Avila termed a sweet garden of flowers, perfumed by the good smell and reputation of sanctity, “ameno jardin de flores, olorosas por el buen odor y fama de santidad.” Justice to the land of Castile soap requires us to observe that latterly, since the suppression of monks, both sexes, and the fair especially, have departed from the strict observance of the religious duties of their excellent grandmothers. Warm baths are now pretty generally established in the larger towns. At the same time, the interiors of bedrooms, whether in inns or private houses, as well by the striking absence of glass and china utensils, which to English notions are absolute necessaries, as by the presence of French pie-dish basins, and duodecimo jugs, indicate that this “little damned spot” on the average Spanish hand, has not yet been quite rubbed out.
However hot the day, dusty the road, or long the journey, it has never been our fate to see a Spanish attendant use a single drop of water as a detergent, or, as polite writers say, “perform his ablutions;” the constant habit of bathing and complete washing is undoubtedly one reason why the French and other continentals consider our soap-loving countrymen to be cracked. Under the Spanish Goths the Hemerobaptistæ, or people who washed their persons once a day, were set down as heretics. The Duke of Frias, when a few years ago on a fortnight’s visit to an English lady, never once troubled his basins and jugs; he simply rubbed his face occasionally with the white of an egg, which, as Madame Daunoy records, was the only ablution of the Spanish ladies in the time of Philip IV.; but these details of the dressing-room are foreign to the use made in Spain of liquids in kitchen and parlour.
One word on chocolate, which is to a Spaniard what tea is to a Briton—coffee to a Gaul. It is to be had almost everywhere, and is always excellent; the best is made by the nuns, who are great confectioners and compounders of sweetmeats, sugarplums and orange-flowers, water and comfits,
“Et tous ces mets sucrés en pâte, ou bien liquides,Dont estomacs dévots furent toujours avides.”
“Et tous ces mets sucrés en pâte, ou bien liquides,Dont estomacs dévots furent toujours avides.”
ICED DRINKS.
It was long a disputed point whether chocolate did or did notbreak fast theologically, just as happened with coffee among the rigid Moslems. But since the learned Escobar decided thatliquidum non rumpit jejunium, a liquid does not break fast, it has become the universal breakfast of Spain. It is made just liquid enough to come within the benefit of clergy, that is, a spoon will almost stand up in it; only a small cup is taken,una jicara, a Mexican word for the cocoa-nuts of which they were first made, generally with a bit of toasted bread or biscuit: as thesejicarashave seldom any handles, they were used by the rich (as coffeecups are among the Orientals) enclosed in little filigree cases of silver or gold; some of these are very beautiful, made in the form of a tulip or lotus leaf, on a saucer of mother-o’-pearl. The flower is so contrived that, by a spring underneath, on raising the saucer, the leaves fall back and disclose the cup to the lips, while, when put down, they re-close over it, and form a protection against the flies. A glass of water should always be drunk after this chocolate, since the aqueous chasse neutralizes the bilious propensities of this breakfast of the gods, as Linnæus called chocolate. Tea and coffee have supplanted chocolate in England and France; it is in Spain alone that we are carried back to the breakfasts of Belinda and of the wits at Button’s; in Spain exist, unchanged, the fans, the game of ombre,tresillo, and thecoche de colleras, the coach and six, and other social usages of the age of Pope and the ‘Spectator.’
ICED LEMONADE.
Cold liquids in the hot dry summers of Spain are necessaries, not luxuries; snow and iced drinks are sold in the streets at prices so low as to be within the reach of the poorest classes; the rich refrigerate themselves withagraz. This, the MoorishHacaraz, is the most delicious and most refreshing drink ever devised by thirsty mortal; it is thenewpleasure for which Xerxes wished in vain, and beats the “hock and soda water,” the “hoc erat in votis” of Byron, and sherry cobler itself. It is made of pounded unripe grapes, clarified sugar, and water; it is strained till it becomes of the palest straw-coloured amber, and well iced. It is particularly well made in Andalucia, and it is worth going there in the dog-days, if only to drink it—it cools a man’s body and soul. At Madrid an agreeable drink is sold in the streets; it is calledMichi Michi, from the ValencianMitj e Mitj, “half and half,” and is as unlike the heavy wet mixture ofLondon, as a coal-porter is to a pretty fair Valenciana. It is made of equal portions of barley-water and orgeat ofChufas, and is highly iced. The Spaniards, among other cooling fruits, eat their strawberries mixed with sugar and the juice of oranges, which will be found a more agreeable addition than the wine used by the French, or the cream of the English,—the one heats, and the other, whenever it is to be had, makes a man bilious in Spain. Spanish ices,helados, are apt to be too sweet, nor is the sugar well refined; the ices, when frozen very hard and in small forms, either representing fruits or shells, are calledquesos, cheeses.
Another favourite drink is a weak bottled beer mixed with iced lemonade. Spaniards, however, are no great drinkers of beer, notwithstanding that their ancestors drank more of it than wine, which was not then either so plentiful or universal as at the present; this substitute of grapeless countries passed from the Egyptians and Carthaginians into Spain, where it was excellent, and kept well. The vinous Roman soldiers derided the beer-drinking Iberians, just as the French did the Englishbeforethe battle of Agincourt. “Can sodden water—barley-broth—decoct their cold blood to such valiant heat?” Polybius sneers at the magnificence of a Spanish king, because his home was furnished with silver and gold vases full of beer, of barley-wine. The genuine Goths, as happens everywhere to this day, were great swillers of ale and beer, heady and stupifying mixtures, according to Aristotle. Their archbishop, St. Isidore, distinguished betweencelia ceria, the ale, andcerbisia, beer, whence the present wordcerbezais derived. Spanish beer, like many other Spanish matters, has now become small. Strong English beer is rare and dear; among one of the infinite ingenious absurdities of Spanish customs’ law, English beer in barrels used to be prohibited, as were English bottles if empty—but prohibited beer, in prohibited bottles, was admissible, on the principle that two fiscal negatives made an exchequer affirmative.
WINES OF SPAIN.
Spanish Wines—Spanish Indifference—Wine-making—Vins du Pays—Local Wines—Benicarló—Valdepeñas.
Spanish Wines—Spanish Indifference—Wine-making—Vins du Pays—Local Wines—Benicarló—Valdepeñas.
THEwines of Spain deserve a chapter to themselves. Sherry indeed is not less popular among us than Murillo, in spite of the numbers of bad copies of the one, which are passed off for undoubted originals, and butts of the other, which are sold neat as imported. The Spaniard himself is neither curious in port, nor particular in Madeira; he prefers quantity to quality, and loves flavour much less than he hates trouble; a cellar in a private house, of rare fine or foreign wines, is perhaps a greater curiosity than a library of ditto books; an hidalgo with twenty names simply sends out before his frugal meal for a quart of wine to the nearest shop, as a small burgess does in the City for a pint of porter. Local in every thing, the Spaniard takes the goods that the gods provide him, just as they come to hand; he drinks the wine that grows in the nearest vineyards, and if there are none, then regales himself with the water from the least distant spring. It is so in everything; he adds the smallest possible exertion of his own to the bounties of nature; his object is to obtain the largest produce for the smallest labour; he allows a life-conferring sun and a fertile soil to create for him the raw material, which he exports, being perfectly contented that the foreigner should return it to him when recreated by art and industry; thus his wool, barilla, hides, and cork-bark, are imported by him back again in the form of cloth, glass, leather, and bungs.
WINES OF SPAIN.
The most celebrated and perfect wines of the Peninsula are port and sherry, which owe their excellence to foreign, not to native skill, the principal growers and makers being Europeans, and their system altogether un-Spanish; nothing can be more rude, antique, and unscientific, than the wine-making in thoselocalities where no stranger has ever settled. But Spain is a land bottled up for antiquarians, and it must be confessed that the national process is very picturesque and classical; no Ariadne revel of Titian is more glittering or animated, no bas-relief more classical in which sacrifices are celebrated
“To Bacchus, who first from out the purple grapeCrushed the sweet poison of misused wine.”
“To Bacchus, who first from out the purple grapeCrushed the sweet poison of misused wine.”
Often have we ridden through villages redolent with vinous aroma, and inundated with the blood of the berry, until the very mud was encarnadined; what a busy scene! Donkeys laden with panniers of the ripe fruit, damsels bending under heavy baskets, men with reddened legs and arms, joyous and jovial as satyrs, hurry jostling on to the rude and dirty vat, into which the fruit is thrown indiscriminately, the black-coloured with the white ones, the ripe bunches with the sour, the sound berries with those decayed; no pains are taken, no selection is made; the filth and negligence are commensurate with this carelessness; the husks are either trampled under naked feet or pressed out under a rude beam; in both cases every refining operation is left to the fermentation of nature, for there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we may.
VALDEPENAS.
The wines of Spain, under a latitude where a fine season is a certainty, might rival those of France, and still more those of the Rhine, where a good vintage is the exception, not the rule. Their varieties are infinite, since few districts, unless those that are very elevated, are without their local produce, the names, colours, and flavours of which are equally numerous and varied. The thirsty traveller, after a long day’s ride under a burning sun, when seated quietly down to a smoking peppery dish, is enchanted with the cool draught of these vins du pays, which are brought fresh to him from the skins or amphora jars; he longs to transport the apparently divine nectar to his own home, and wonders that “the trade” should have overlooked such delicious wine. Those who have tried the experiment will find a sad change for the worse come over the spirit of their dream, when the long-expected importation greets their papillatory organs in London. There the illusion is dispelled; there to a cloyed fastidious taste, to a judgment bewildered and frittered away by variety of the best vintages, how flat, stale, and unprofitabledoes this much-fancied beverage appear! The truth is, that its merit consists in the thirst and drinking vein of the traveller, rather than in the wine itself. Those therefore of our readers whose cellars are only stocked with choice Bordeaux, Xerez, and Champagne, may sustain with resignation the absence of other sorts of Spanish grape juice. If an exception is to be made, let it be only in favour of Valdepeñas and Manzanilla.
The local wines may therefore be tossed off rapidly. The Navarrese drink their Peralta, the Basques their Chacolet, which is a poor vin ordinaire and inferior to our good cider. The Arragonese are supplied from the vineyards of Cariñena; the Catalans, from those of Sidges and Benicarló; the former is a rich sweet wine, with a peculiar aromatic flavour; the latter is the well-known black strap, which is exported largely to Bordeaux to enrich clarets for our vitiated taste, and as it is rich red, and full flavoured, much comes to England to concoct what is denominated curious old port by those who sell it. The fiery and acrid brandy which is made from this Benicarló is sent to the bay of Cadiz to the tune of 1000 butts a year to doctor up worse sherry.
The central provinces of Spain consume but little of these; Leon has a wine of its own which grows chiefly near Zamora and Toro, and it is much drunk at the neighbouring and learned university of Salamanca, where, as it is strong and heady, it promotes prejudice, as port is said to do elsewhere. Madrid is supplied with wines grown at Tarancon, Arganda, and other places in its immediate vicinity, and those of the latter are frequently substituted for the celebrated Valdepeñas of La Mancha, which was mother’s milk to Sancho Panza and his two eminent progenitors; they differed, as their worthy descendant informed the Knight of the Wood, on the merits of a cask; one of them just dipped his tongue into the wine, and affirmed that it had a taste of iron; the other merely applied his nose to the bung-hole, and was positive that it smacked of leather; in due time when the barrel was emptied, a key tied to a thong confirmed the degustatory acumen of these connoisseurs.
THE BEST VINEYARDS.
The red blood of this “valley of stones” issues with such abundance, that quantities of old wine are often thrown away, for the want of skins, jars, and casks into which to place the new.From the scarcity of fuel in these denuded plains, the prunings of the vine are sometimes as valuable as the grapes. Even at Valdepeñas, with Madrid for its customer, the wine continues to be made in an unscientific, careless manner. Before the French invasion, a Dutchman, named Muller, had begun to improve the system, and better prices were obtained; whereupon the lower classes, in 1808, broke open his cellars, pillaged them, and nearly killed him because he made wine dearer. It is made of a Burgundy grape which has been transplanted and transported from the stinted suns of fickle France, to the certain and glorious summers of La Mancha. The genuine wine is rich, full-bodied, and high-coloured. It will keep pretty well, and improves for four or five years, nay, longer. To be really enjoyed it must be drunk on the spot; the curious in wine should go down into one of thecuevasor cave-cellars, and have a goblet of the ruby fluid drawn from the big-bellied jar. The wine, when taken to distant places, is almost always adulterated; and at Madrid with a decoction of log wood, which makes it almost poisonous, acting upon the nerves and muscular system.
The best vineyards andbodegasor cellars are those which did belong to Don Carlos, and those which do belong to the Marques de Santa Cruz. One anecdote will do the work of pages in setting forth the habitual indifference of Spaniards, and the way things are managed for them. This very nobleman, who certainly was one of the most distinguished among the grandees in rank and talent, was dining one day with a foreign ambassador at Madrid, who was a decided admirer of Valdepeñas, as all judicious men must be, and who took great pains to procure it quite pure by sending down trusty persons and sound casks. The Marques at the first glass exclaimed, “What capital wine! where do you manage to buy it in Madrid?” “I send for it,” was the reply, “to youradministradorat Valdepeñas, Anglice unjust steward, and shall be very happy to get you some.”
VALDEPENAS.
The wine is worth on the spot about 5l.the pipe, but the land carriage is expensive, and it is apt, when conveyed in skins, to be tapped and watered by the muleteers, besides imbibing the disagreeable smack of the pitched pigskin. The only way to secure a pure, unadulterated, legitimate article, is to send updoublequarter sherry casks; the wine is then put into one, andthat again is protected by an outer cask, which acts as a preventive guard, against gimlets, straws, and other ingenious contrivances for extracting the vinous contents, and for introducing an aqueous substitute. It must then be conveyed either on mules or in waggons to Cadiz and Santander. It is always as well to send for two casks, asaccidentsin thispays de l’imprévuconstantly happen where wine and women are in the case. The importer will receive the most satisfactory certificates signed and sealed on paper, first duly stamped, in which the alcalde, the muleteer, the guardia, and all who have shared in the booty, will minutely describe and prove theaccident, be it an upset, a breaking of casks, or what not. Very little pure Valdepeñas ever reaches England; the numerous vendors’ bold assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. As sherry is a subject of more general interest, it will be treated with somewhat more detail.
SHERRY.
Sherry Wines—The Sherry District—Origin of the Name—Varieties of Soil—Of Grapes—Pajarete—Rojas Clemente—Cultivation of Vines—Best Vineyards—The Vintage—Amontillado—The Capataz—The Bodega—Sherry Wine—Arrope and Madre Vino—A Lecture on Sherry in the Cellar—at the Table—Price of Fine Sherry—Falsification of Sherry—Manzanilla—The Alpistera.
Sherry Wines—The Sherry District—Origin of the Name—Varieties of Soil—Of Grapes—Pajarete—Rojas Clemente—Cultivation of Vines—Best Vineyards—The Vintage—Amontillado—The Capataz—The Bodega—Sherry Wine—Arrope and Madre Vino—A Lecture on Sherry in the Cellar—at the Table—Price of Fine Sherry—Falsification of Sherry—Manzanilla—The Alpistera.
SHERRY, a wine which requires more explanation than many of its consumers imagine, is grown in a limited nook of the Peninsula, on the south-western corner of sunny Andalucia, which occupies a range of country of which the town of Xerez is the capital and centre. The wine-producing districts extend over a space which is included—consult a map—within a boundary drawn from the towns of Puerto de Sª. Maria, Rota, San Lucar, Tribujena, Lebrija, Arcos, and to the Puerto again. The finest vintages lie in the immediate vicinity of Xerez, which has given therefore its name to the general produce. The wine, however, becomes inferior in proportion as the vineyards get more distant from this central point.
FOUR CLASSES OF SOIL.
Although some authors—who, to show their learning, hunt for Greek etymologies in every word—have derived sherry fromΞηρος, dry, to have done so from the Persian Schiraz would scarcely have been more far-fetched.Sherris sack, the term used by Falstaff, no mean authority in this matter, is the preciseseco de Xerez, the term by which the wine is known to this day in its own country; the epithetseco, or dry—theseckof old English authors, and thesecof French ones—being used in contradistinction to thesweetmalvoisies and muscadels, which are also made of the same grape. The wine, it is said, was first introduced into England about the time of Henry VII., whose close alliance with Ferdinand and Isabella was cemented by the marriage of his son with their daughter. It became still more popular among us under Elizabeth, when those who sailed underEssex sacked Cadiz in 1596, and brought home the fashion of good “sherris sack, from whence,” as Sir John says, “comes valour.” The visit to Spain of Charles I. contributed to keeping up among his countrymen this taste for the drinks of the Peninsula, which extended into the provinces, as we find Howell writing from York, in 1645, for “a barrell or two of oysters, which shall be well eaten,” as he assures his friend, “with a cup of the best sherry, to which this town is altogether addicted.” During the wars of the succession, and those fatal quarrels with England occasioned by the French alliance and family compact of Charles III., our consumption of sherries was much diminished, and the culture of the vine and the wine-making was neglected and deteriorated. It was restored at the end of last century by the family of Gordon, whose houses at Xerez and the Puerto most deservedly rank among the first in the country. The improved quality of the wines was their own recommendation; but as fashion influences everything, their vogue was finally established by Lord Holland, who, on his return from Spain, introduced superlative sherry at his undeniable table.
The quality of the wine depends on the grape and the soil, which has been examined and analysed by competent chemists. Omitting minute and uninteresting particulars, the first class and the best is termed theAlbariza; this whitish soil is composed of clay mixed with carbonate of lime and silex. The second sort is calledBarras, and consists of sandy quartz, mixed with lime and oxide of iron. The third is theArenas, being, as the name indicates, little better than sand, and is by far the most widely extended, especially about San Lucar, Rota, and the back of Arcos; it is the most productive, although the wine is generally coarse, thin, and ill-flavoured, and seldom improves after the third year: it forms the substratum of those inferior sherries which are largely exported to the discredit of the real article. The fourth class of soil is limited in extent, and is theBugeo, or dark-brown loamy sand which occurs on the sides of rivulets and hillocks. The wine grown on it is poor and weak; yet all the inferior produces of these different districts are sold as sherry wines, to the great detriment of those really produced near Xerez itself, which do not amount to a fifth of the quantity exported.
VINES OF ANDALUCIA.
The varieties of the grape are far greater than those of the soilon which they are grown. Of more than a hundred different kinds, those calledListanandPalomina Blancaare the best. The increased demand for sherry, where the producing surface is limited, has led to the extirpation of many vines of an inferior kind, which have been replaced by new ones whose produce is of a larger and better quality. ThePedro Ximenez, or delicious sweet-tasted grape which is so celebrated, came originally from Madeira, and was planted on the Rhine, from whence about two centuries ago one Peter Simon brought it to Malaga, since when it has extended over the south of Spain. It is of this grape that the rich and luscious sweet wine calledPajareteis made; a name which some have erroneously derived fromPajaros, the birds, who are wont to pick the ripest berries; but it was so called from the wine having been originally only made at Paxarete, a small spot near Xerez: it is now prepared everywhere, and thus the grapes are dried in the sun until they almost become raisins, and the syrop quite inspissated, after that they are pressed, and a little fine old wine and brandy is added. This wine is extremely costly, as it is much used in the rearing and maturation of young sherry wines.
There is an excellent account of all the vines of Andalucia by Rojas Clemente. This able naturalist disgraced himself by being a base toady of the wretched minion Godoy, and by French partisanship, which is high treason to his own country. Accordingly, to please his masters, he “contrasts the frank generosity, the vivacity, and genial cordiality of the Xerezanos, with the sombre stupidity and ferocious egotism of the insolent people on the banks of the Thames,” by whom he had just before been most hospitably welcomed. This worthy gentleman wrote, however, within sight of Trafalgar, and while a certain untoward event was rankling in his and his estimable patron’s bosom.
THE VINTAGE.
The vines are cultivated with the greatest care, and demand unceasing attention, from the first planting to their final decay. They generally fruit about the fifth year, and continue in full and excellent bearing for about thirty-five years more, when the produce begins to diminish both in quantity and in quality. The best wines are produced from the slowest ripening grapes; the vines are delicate, have a true bacchic hydrophobia, or antipathy to water—are easily affected and injured by bad smells and rankweeds. The vine-dresser enjoys little rest; at one time the soil must be trenched and kept clean, then the vines must be pruned, and tied to the stakes, to which they are trained very low; anon insects must be destroyed; and at last the fruit has to be gathered and crushed. It is a life of constant care, labour, and expense.
The highest qualities of flavour depend on the grape and soil, and as the favoured spots are limited, and the struggle and competition for their acquisition great, the prices paid are always high, and occasionally extravagantly so; the proprietors of vineyards are very numerous, and the surface is split and partitioned into infinite petty ownerships. Even thePago de Macharnudo, the finest of all, the Clos de Vougeot, the Johannisberg of Xerez, is much subdivided; it consists of 1200aranzadas, one of which may be taken as equivalent to our acre, being, however, that quantity of land which can be ploughed with a pair of bullocks in a day—of these 1200, 460 belong to the great house of Pedro Domecq, and their mean produce may be taken at 1895 butts, of which some 350 only will run very fine. Among the next most renownedpagos, or wine districts, may be cited Carrascal, Los Tercios, Barbianaalta y baja, Añina, San Julian, Mochiele, Carraola, Cruz del Husillo, which lie in the immediateterminoor boundary of Xerez; their produce always ensures high prices in the market. Many of these vineyards are fenced with canes, thearundo donax, or with aloes, whose stiff-pointed leaves form palisadoes that would defy a regiment of dragoons, and are called by the natives the devil’s toothpicks; in addition, thecapataz del campo, or country bailiff, is provided, like a keeper, with large and ferocious dogs, who would tear an intruder to pieces. The fruit when nearly mature is especially watched; for, according to the proverb, it requires much vigilance to take care of ripe grapes and maidens—Niñas y vinos, son mal de guardar.
THE VINTAGE.
When the period of the vintage arrives, the cares of the proprietors and the labours of the cultivators and makers increase. The bunches are picked and spread out for some days on mattings; the unripe grapes, which have less substance and spirit, are separated, and are exposed longer to the sun, by which they improve. If the berries be over-ripe, then the saccharine prevails, and there is a deficiency of tartaric acid. The selectedgrapes are sprinkled with lime, by which the watery and acetous particles are absorbed and corrected. A nice hand is requisite in this powdering, which, by the way, is an ancient African custom, in order to avoid the imputation of Falstaff, “There is lime in this sack.” The treading out the fruit is generally done by night, because it is then cooler, and in order to avoid as much as possible the plague of wasps, by whom the half-naked operators are liable to be stung. On the larger vineyards there is generally a jumble of buildings, which contain every requisite for making the wine, as well as cellars into which the must or pressed grape juice is left to pass the stages of fermentation, and where it remains until the following spring before it is removed from the lees. “When the new wine is racked off, all the produce of the same vineyard and vintage is housed together, and called apartidoor lot.
MANUFACTURE OF SHERRY.
The vintage, which is the all-absorbing, all-engrossing moment of the year, occupies about a fortnight, and is earlier in the Rota districts than at Xerez, where it commences about the 20th of September; into these brief moments the hearts, bodies, and souls of men are condensed; even Venus, the queen of neighbouring Cadiz, and who during the other three hundred and fifty-one days of the year, allies herself willingly to Bacchus, is now forgotten. Nobles and commoners, merchants and priests, talk of nothing but wine, which then and there monopolises man, and is to Xerez what the water is at Grand Cairo, where the rising of the Nile is at once a pleasure and a profit. When the vintage is concluded, the custom-house officers take note in their respective districts of the quantity produced on each vineyard, to whom it is sold, and where it is taken to; nor can it be resold or removed afterwards, without a permit and a charge of a four per cent. ad valorem duty. It need not be said, that in a land where public officers are inadequately paid, where official honesty and principle are all but unknown, a bribe is all-sufficient; false returns are regularly made, and every trick resorted to to facilitate trade, and transfer revenue into the pockets of the collectors, rather than into the Queen’s treasury; thus are defeated the vexations and extortions of commerce-hampering excise, to hate which seems to be a second nature in man all over the world. Commissioners excepted. In the first year a decided differencetakes place in these new wines; some becomebastosor coarse, others sour and others good; those only which exhibit great delicacy, body, and flavour are calledfinosor fine; in a lot of one hundred butts, rarely more than from ten to fifteen can be calculated as deserving this epithet, and it is to the high price paid for these by thealmacenistasor storers of wines, that the grower looks for remuneration; the qualities of the wines usually produced in each particularterminoor district do not vary much; they have their regular character and prices among the trade, by whom they are perfectly understood and exactly valued.
These singular changes in the juice of grapes grown on the same vineyard, invariably take place, although no satisfactory reason has been yet assigned; the chemical processes of nature have hitherto defied the investigations of man, and in nothing more than in the elaboration of that lusus naturæ vel Bacchi, that variety of flavour which goes by the name ofamontillado; this has been given to it from its resemblance in dryness and quality to the wines ofMontilla, near Cordova: the latter, be it observed, are scarcely known in England at all, nor indeed in Spain, except in their own immediate neighbourhood, where they supply the local consumption. Thisamontillado, when the genuine production of nature, is very valuable, as it is used in correcting young Sherry wines, which are running over sweet; it is very scarce, since out of a hundred butts ofvino fino, not more than five will possess its properties. Much of the wine which is sold in London as pureamontillado, is a fictitious preparation, and made up for the British market.
THE CAPATAZ.
All sherries are a matured mixture of grape juice; champagne itself is a manufactured wine; nor does it much matter, provided a palateable and wholesome beverage be produced. In all the leading and respectable houses, the wine is prepared from grapes grown in the district, nor is there the slightest mystery made in explaining the artificial processes which are adopted; the rearing, educating and finishing, as it were, of these wines, is a work of many years, and is generally intrusted to theCapataz, the chief butler, or head man, who very often becomes the real master; this important personage is seldom raised in Andalucia, or in any wine-growing districts of Spain; he generally is by birth an Asturian, or a native of the mountains contiguous to Santander, fromwhence the chandlers and grocers, hence calledLos Montañeses, are supplied throughout the Peninsula. These Highlanders are celebrated for the length of their pedigrees, and the tasting properties of their tongues; we have more than once in Estremadura and Leon fallen in with flights of these ragged gentry, wending, Scotch-like, to the south in search of fortune; few had shoes or shirts, yet almost every one carried his family parchment in a tin case, wherein his descent from Tubal—respectable, although doubtful—was proven to be as evident as the sun is at noon day.
These gentlemen of good birth and better taste seldom smoke, as the narcotic stupifying weed deadens papillatory delicacy. Now as few wine-masters in Spain would give up the cigar to gain millions, theCapatazsoon becomes the sole possessor of the secrets of the cellar; and as no merchants possess vineyards of their own sufficient to supply their demand, the purchases of new wines must be made by this confidential servant, who is thus enabled to cheat both the grower and his own employer, since he will only buy of those who give him the largest commission. Many contrive by these long and faithful services to amass great wealth; thus Juan Sanchez, theCapatazof the late Petro Domecq, died recently worth 300,000l.Towards his latter end, having been visited by his confessor and some qualms of conscience, he bequeathed his fortune to pious and charitable uses, but the bulk was forthwith secured by his attorneys and priests, whose charity began at home.
BODEGAS OF XEREZ.
As the chancellor is the keeper of the Queen’s conscience, so theCapatazis the keeper of thebodegaor the wine-store, which is very peculiar, and the grand lion of Xerez. The rich and populous town, when seen from afar, rising in its vine-clad knoll, is characterised by these huge erections, that look like the pent-houses under which men-of-war are built at Chatham. These temples of Bacchus resemble cathedrals in size and loftiness, and their divisions, like Spanish chapels, bear the names of the saints to whom they are dedicated, and few tutelar deities have more numerous or more devout worshippers; but Romanism mixes itself up in everything of Spain, and fixes its mark alike on salt-pans and mine-shafts, as on boats andbodegas. These huge repositories are all above ground, and are the antithesis ofour under-ground cellars. The wines of Xerez are thus found to ripen both better and quicker, as one year in abodegainspires them with more life than do ten years of burial. As these wines are more capricious in the development of their character than young ladies at a boarding-school, the greatest care is taken in the selection of eligible and healthy situations for their education; the neighbourhood of all offensive drains or effluvia is carefully avoided, since these nuisances are sure to affect the delicately organised fluids, although they fail to damage the noses of those to whose charge they are committed; and strange to say, in this land of contradictions, Cologne itself is scarcely more renowned for its twenty and odd bad smells ascertained by Coleridge, than is this same tortuous, dirty, and old-fashioned Xerez. Here, as in the Rhenish city, all the sweets are bottled up for exportation, all the stinks kept for home consumption. The newbodegasare consequently erected in the newer portions of the town, in dry and open places; connected with them are offices and workshops, in which everything bearing upon the wine trade is manufactured, even to the barrels that are made of American oak staves. The interior of thebodegais kept deliciously cool; the glare outside is carefully excluded, while a free circulation of air is admitted; an even temperature is very essential, and one at an average of 60 degrees is the best of all. There are more than a thousandbodegasregistered at the custom house for the Xerez district; the largest only belong to the first-rate firms, and mostly to Europeans, that is, to English and Frenchmen. A heavy capital is required, much patience and forethought, qualities which do not grow on these or on any hills of Spain. This necessity will be better understood when it is said, that some of these stores contain from one to four thousand butts, and that few really fine sherries are sent out of them until ten or twelve years old. Supposing, therefore, that each butt averages in value only 25l., it is evident how much time and investment of wealth is necessary.
WINE-MIXING.
Sherry wine, when mature and perfect, is made up from many butts. The “entire,” indeed, is the result of Xerez grapes, but of many different ages, vintages, and varieties of flavour. The contents of one barrel serve to correct another until the proposed standard aggregate is produced; and to such a certaintyhas this uniform admixture been reduced, that houses are enabled to supply for any number of years exactly that particular colour, flavour, body, &c., which particular customers demand. This wine improves very much with age, gets softer and more aromatic, and gains both body and aroma, in which its young wines are deficient. Indeed, so great is the change in all respects, that one scarcely can believe them ever to have been the same: the baby differs not more from the man, nor the oak from the acorn.
ThatCapatazhas attained the object of his fondest wishes, who has observed in his compositions the poetical principles of Horace, thecallida junctura, theomne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci; this happy and skilful junction of the sweet and solid, should unite fulness of body, an oily, nutty flavour andbouquet, dryness, absence from acidity, strength, durability, and spirituosity. Very little brandy is necessary, as the vivifying power of the unstinted sun of Andalucia imparts sufficient alcohol, which ranges from 20 to 23 per cent. in fine sherries, and only reaches about 12 in clarets and champagnes. Fine pure sherry is of a rich brown colour, but in order to flatter the conventional tastes of some English, “pale old sherry” must be had, and colour is chemically discharged at the expense of delicate aroma. Another absurd deference to British prejudice, is the sending sherries to the East Indies, because such a trip is found sometimes to benefit the wines of Madeira. This is not only expensive but positively injurious to the juice of Xerez, as the wine returns diminished in quantity, turbid, sharp, and deteriorated in flavour, while from the constant fermentation it becomes thinner in body and more spirituous. The real secret of procuring good sherry is to pay the best price for it at the best house, and then to keep the purchase for many years in a good cellar before it is drunk.
WINE IN CASK.
To return to theCapataz. This head master passes this life of probation in tasting. He goes the regular round of his butts, ascertaining the qualities, merits, and demerits of each pupil, which he notes by certain marks or hieroglyphics. He corrects faults as he goes along, making a memorandum also of the date and remedy applied, and thus at his next visit he is enabled to report good progress, or lament the contrary. The new wines, after the fermentation is past, are commonly enriched with anarrope, or sort of syrup, which is found very much to encouragethem. There are extensive manufactories of this cordial at San Lucar, and wherever thearenas, or sandy soil, prevails. The must, or new grape juice, before fermentation has commenced, is boiled slowly down to the fifth of its bulk. It must simmer, and requires great care in the skimming and not being burnt. Of this, when dissolved, thevino de color, themadre vino, or mother wine, is made, by which the younger ones are nourished as by mother’s milk. When old, this balsamic ingredient becomes strong, perfumed as an essence, and very precious, and is worth from three to five hundred guineas a butt; indeed it scarcely ever will be sold at all. All the principalbodegashave certain huge and time-honoured casks which contain this divine ichor, which inspires ordinary wines with generous and heroic virtues; hence possibly their dedication of their tuns not to saints and saintesses, but to Wellingtons and Nelsons. It is from these reservoirs that distinguished visitors are allowed just a sip. Such a compliment was paid to Ferdinand VII. by Pedro Domecq, and the cask to this day bears the royal name of its assayer. Whatever quantity is taken out of one of these for the benefit of younger wines, is replaced by a similar quantity drawn from the next oldest cask in the cellar.
TASTING WINE.
After a year or two trial of the new wines, it is ascertained how they will eventually turn out; if they go wrong, they are expelled from the seminary, and shipped off to the leathern-tongued consumers of Hamburgh or Quebec, at about 15l.per butt. All the various forms, stages, and steps of education are readily explained in the great establishments, among which the first are those of Domecq and John David Gordon, and nothing can exceed the cordial hospitality of these princely merchants; whoever comes provided with a letter of introduction is carried off bodily, bags, baggage, and all, to their houses, which, considering the iniquity of Xerezan inns, is a satisfactory move. Then and there the guest is initiated into the secrets of trade, and is handed over to theCapataz, who delivers an explanatory lecture on vinology, which is illustrated, like those of Faraday, by experiments: tasting sherry at Xerez has, as Señor Clemente would say, very little in common with the commonplace customs of the London Docks. Here the swarthy professor, dressed somewhat like Figaro in the Barber of Seville, is followed by sundry jacketedand sandalled Ganymedes, who bear glasses on waiters; the lecturer is armed with a long stick, to the end of which is tied a bit of hollow cane, which he dips into each butt; the subject is begun at the beginning, and each step in advance is explained to the listening party with the gravity of a judicious foreman of a jury: the sample is handed round and tasted by all, who, if they are wise, will follow the example of their leader (on whom wine has no more effect than on a glass), by never swallowing the sips, but only permitting the tongue to agitate it in the mouth, until the exact flavour is mastered; every cask is tried, from the young wine to the middle-aged, from the mature to the golden ancient. Those who are not stupefied by the fumes, cannot fail to come out vastly edified. The student should hold hard during the first trials, for the best wine is reserved until the last. He ascends, if he does not tumble off, a vinous ladder of excellence. It would be better to reverse the order of the course, and commence with the finest sorts while the palate is fresh and the judgment unclouded. The thirster after knowledge must not drink too deeply now, but remember the second ordeal to which he will afterwards be exposed at the hospitable table of the proprietor, whose joy and pride is to produce fine wine and plenty of it, when his friends meet around his mahogany.
What a grateful offering is then made to the jovial god, by whom the merchant lives, and by whom the deity is now set from his glassy prison free! What a drawing of popping corks, half consumed by time!—what a brushing away of venerable cobwebs from flasks binned apart while George the Third was king! The delight of the worthy Amphitryon on producing a fresh bottle, exceeds that of a prolific mother when she blesses her husband with a new baby. He handles the darling decanter, as if he dearly loved the contents, which indeed are of his own making; how the clean glasses are held up to the light to see the bright transparent liquid sparkle and phosphoresce within; how the intelligent nose is passed slowly over the mantling surface, redolent with fragrancy; how the climax of rapture is reached when the god-like nectar is raised to the blushing lips!