Gatherings From Spain Part 10

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 sanct.i.ty, "_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 s.e.xes, 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 gla.s.s 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 d.a.m.ned 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 was.h.i.+ng is undoubtedly one reason why the French and other continentals consider our soap-loving countrymen to be cracked. Under the Spanish Goths the Hemerobaptistae, 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 sucres en pate, ou bien liquides, Dont estomacs devots furent toujours avides."

[Sidenote: ICED DRINKS.]

It was long a disputed point whether chocolate did or did not break fast theologically, just as happened with coffee among the rigid Moslems. But since the learned Escobar decided that _liquidum 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 these _jicaras_ have 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 gla.s.s of water should always be drunk after this chocolate, since the aqueous cha.s.se neutralizes the bilious propensities of this breakfast of the G.o.ds, as Linnaeus 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 b.u.t.ton's; in Spain exist, unchanged, the fans, the game of ombre, _tresillo_, and the _coche de colleras_, the coach and six, and other social usages of the age of Pope and the 'Spectator.'

[Sidenote: 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 cla.s.ses; the rich refrigerate themselves with _agraz_. This, the Moorish _Hacaraz_, is the most delicious and most refres.h.i.+ng drink ever devised by thirsty mortal; it is the _new_ pleasure 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 called _Michi Michi_, from the Valencian _Mitj e Mitj_, "half and half," and is as unlike the heavy wet mixture of London, as a coal-porter is to a pretty fair Valenciana. It is made of equal portions of barley-water and orgeat of _Chufas_, 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 sh.e.l.ls, are called _quesos_, 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 subst.i.tute of grapeless countries pa.s.sed 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 English _before_ the 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 between _celia ceria_, the ale, and _cerbisia_, beer, whence the present word _cerbeza_ is 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.

[Sidenote: WINES OF SPAIN.]

CHAPTER XIII.

Spanish Wines--Spanish Indifference--Wine-making--Vins du Pays--Local Wines--Benicarlo--Valdepenas.

The wines 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 pa.s.sed off for undoubted originals, and b.u.t.ts of the other, which are sold neat as imported. The Spaniard himself is neither curious in port, nor particular in Madeira; he prefers quant.i.ty 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 G.o.ds 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, gla.s.s, leather, and bungs.

[Sidenote: 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 princ.i.p.al growers and makers being Europeans, and their system altogether un-Spanish; nothing can be more rude, antique, and unscientific, than the wine-making in those localities 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 cla.s.sical; no Ariadne revel of t.i.tian is more glittering or animated, no bas-relief more cla.s.sical in which sacrifices are celebrated

"To Bacchus, who first from out the purple grape Crushed 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.

[Sidenote: VALDEPENAS.]

The wines of Spain, under a lat.i.tude 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 unprofitable does 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 Valdepenas 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 Carinena; the Catalans, from those of Sidges and Benicarlo; 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 Benicarlo is sent to the bay of Cadiz to the tune of 1000 b.u.t.ts 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 subst.i.tuted for the celebrated Valdepenas 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 ac.u.men of these connoisseurs.

[Sidenote: THE BEST VINEYARDS.]

The red blood of this "valley of stones" issues with such abundance, that quant.i.ties 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 Valdepenas, 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 cla.s.ses, 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 the _cuevas_ or 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 and _bodegas_ or 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 n.o.bleman, who certainly was one of the most distinguished among the grandees in rank and talent, was dining one day with a foreign amba.s.sador at Madrid, who was a decided admirer of Valdepenas, 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 gla.s.s exclaimed, "What capital wine! where do you manage to buy it in Madrid?" "I send for it," was the reply, "to your _administrador_ at Valdepenas, Anglice unjust steward, and shall be very happy to get you some."

[Sidenote: VALDEPENAS.]

The wine is worth on the spot about 5_l._ 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 up _double_ quarter sherry casks; the wine is then put into one, and that 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 subst.i.tute. 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, as _accidents_ in this _pays de l'imprevu_ constantly 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 the _accident_, be it an upset, a breaking of casks, or what not. Very little pure Valdepenas ever reaches England; the numerous vendors' bold a.s.sertions to the contrary notwithstanding. As sherry is a subject of more general interest, it will be treated with somewhat more detail.

[Sidenote: SHERRY.]

CHAPTER XIV.

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 s.p.a.ce which is included--consult a map--within a boundary drawn from the towns of Puerto de S. 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.

[Sidenote: FOUR CLa.s.sES OF SOIL.]

Although some authors--who, to show their learning, hunt for Greek etymologies in every word--have derived sherry from ?????, 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 precise _seco de Xerez_, the term by which the wine is known to this day in its own country; the epithet _seco_, or dry--the _seck_ of old English authors, and the _sec_ of French ones--being used in contradistinction to the _sweet_ malvoisies 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 under Ess.e.x sacked Cadiz in 1596, and brought home the fas.h.i.+on 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 a.s.sures 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 a.n.a.lysed by competent chemists. Omitting minute and uninteresting particulars, the first cla.s.s and the best is termed the _Albariza_; this whitish soil is composed of clay mixed with carbonate of lime and silex. The second sort is called _Barras_, and consists of sandy quartz, mixed with lime and oxide of iron. The third is the _Arenas_, 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 coa.r.s.e, 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 cla.s.s of soil is limited in extent, and is the _Bugeo_, 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 quant.i.ty exported.

[Sidenote: VINES OF ANDALUCIA.]

The varieties of the grape are far greater than those of the soil on which they are grown. Of more than a hundred different kinds, those called _Listan_ and _Palomina Blanca_ are 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. The _Pedro 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 called _Pajarete_ is made; a name which some have erroneously derived from _Pajaros_, 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 insp.i.s.sated, 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 G.o.doy, and by French partisans.h.i.+p, 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.

[Sidenote: 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 quant.i.ty 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 rank weeds. 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 compet.i.tion 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 part.i.tioned into infinite petty owners.h.i.+ps. Even the _Pago de Macharnudo_, the finest of all, the Clos de Vougeot, the Johannisberg of Xerez, is much subdivided; it consists of 1200 _aranzadas_, one of which may be taken as equivalent to our acre, being, however, that quant.i.ty 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 b.u.t.ts, of which some 350 only will run very fine. Among the next most renowned _pagos_, or wine districts, may be cited Carrascal, Los Tercios, Barbiana _alta y baja_, Anina, San Julian, Mochiele, Carraola, Cruz del Husillo, which lie in the immediate _termino_ or boundary of Xerez; their produce always ensures high prices in the market. Many of these vineyards are fenced with canes, the _arundo 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, the _capataz 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--_Ninas y vinos, son mal de guardar_.

[Sidenote: 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 selected grapes 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 pa.s.s 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 a _partido_ or lot.

[Sidenote: 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. n.o.bles 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 quant.i.ty 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 difference takes place in these new wines; some become _bastos_ or coa.r.s.e, others sour and others good; those only which exhibit great delicacy, body, and flavour are called _finos_ or fine; in a lot of one hundred b.u.t.ts, 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 the _almacenistas_ or storers of wines, that the grower looks for remuneration; the qualities of the wines usually produced in each particular _termino_ or 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 a.s.signed; the chemical processes of nature have hitherto defied the investigations of man, and in nothing more than in the elaboration of that lusus naturae vel Bacchi, that variety of flavour which goes by the name of _amontillado_; this has been given to it from its resemblance in dryness and quality to the wines of _Montilla_, 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. This _amontillado_, 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 b.u.t.ts of _vino fino_, not more than five will possess its properties. Much of the wine which is sold in London as pure _amontillado_, is a fict.i.tious preparation, and made up for the British market.