1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

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The Vineyards and Wines of Madeira.

tlie cooperage,and undergoing a seasoning with water. When this is completed the casks are transferred to the armazem de Avinhar,there to he filled with common wine, which remains in them for two or three months. In these stores there are always in use for this purpose from eighty to a hundred pipes of wine, which after frequent employment is no longer suitable, and is distnied into spirit. In the rear of the cooperage is a dried-up watercourse, a steep ravine some forty feet deep, which inter sects the town ofPunchal,and is mostly bordered by an avenue of shadyplane-trees. During winter the water rushes down here from the mountains, bringing with it huge boulders fully a ton in weight, and sweeping away whatever it encounters in its pro gress. In the year 1803 the rushing torrent oveirflowed the steep banks of the ravine, carrying away a store of Cossart, Doi'don,and Co.'s,which had been erected at the verge,together with several hundred pipes of wine, all of which were lost. The same flood swept awaythe British Consulate(some distance lower down)and a church, not to speak of other damage. All the unoccupied ground at these Serrado stores is planted with vines trained in corridors,interspersed here and there with a mango,fig, or custard apple-tree. TreUised vines, moreover, cover in all the walks in front of the various stores, enabling the men employed in them to be always under shade. The first store which we visited—a long narrow building some three hun dred feet in length, with square grated openings along its front to allow of the free admission of air—is capable of holding six hundred pipes,in triple rows of two tiers each. It is used for receiving"vinho em mosto," or newly-made wine. Scarlet gera niums about a man's height are trained aU over its front, and ■under the broad canopy of trellised vines—stretching from the roof of the store to that of the opposite shed—empty casks waiting to be "wined" are stowed away. It is a common practice with the Madeira wine shippers to purchase the produce of a vineyard before the grapes are pressed, in which case they either send some one specially, or appoint an agent residing in the locality, to see that the grapes