1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

The Vintage at Satila Crtiz and Sdo Joao.

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trees, with their feathery-looking foliage, and many others. Steep heights laid out in cultivated terraces, and with fir-trees crowning their summits, inclose the vineyard on both sides. The majority of the vines, which are mainly of the ver- delho variety, with an insignificant sprinkling of the tinta, or black grape, are trained on low horizontal trellises, raised aboutfour feetfrom the ground,and termed"latadas," almosta counterpart of the Kammerbau system of training prevalent in certain vine districts of Germany. The remaining vines are trained higher from the ground, in what is called corridor fashion, the trellises overhead affording a pleasant shade ffom the summer heats. These trellises are constructed of cane or pine, with chestnut poles serving as supports. There were no signs of phylloxera among the vines, and, considering the unusual dampness of the past season, no large amount of rottenness among the grapes, which had suffered more from legions of lizards and swarms of bees and wasps than any other cause. The island is, in fact, overrun with lizards. They scale the loftiest walls and feed upon the grapes; while as to bees, although it is forbidden to keep them in the neighbourhood of the vineyards,the interdict is disregarded,and the best bunches of grapes are commonly lost through their depredations. The pickers here were all men, black-bearded, barefooted, and in ragged raiment, with their skins almost as brown as their mahogany-coloured breeches. They cut off the grapes and fluno- them into round open baskets with handles, emptying these afterwards into a larger basket similar in shape, and known as the"cesto de vindima." Thelatter basket holds above a hundredweight of grapes, about sufficient to produce a baril of mosto,equal to a trifle over nine imperial gallons. The casa do lagar, or pressing-house, was in the centre of the vineyard, the lagar itself being a huge wooden trough similar to that used in the sherry district. Instead, however, of an iron screw rising up in the centre of the lagar, a huge wooden beam,like those in useinthe neighbourhood ofLisbonandintheUpperDouro,hangs across it,and aids in the extraction of the juicefrom the piled-up