1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

Some other Funchal Wine-Stores.

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never vritlioat a stock of. Another royal customer of the firm for high-class Madeiras is the Czarewitch. .. The largest stock of Madeira held by any shipping house in T'unchalis thatbelongingtoMessrs.BlandyBrothers. It amounts to some 5,000 pipes, varying in value from £06 to <£250 each,, and "was accumulated by the late Mr. Charles E. Blandy, subsequent to the destruction ofthe Madeira vineyards in 1852. These wines—which include some remarkable examples and a great variety of growths,preserved distinct both as to loeahty of production and the year of vintage—are contained in no fewer than forty stores, connected by passages,staircases, plat form landings,and doorways piercedthrough massive stone walls- You pass out of the oflices in the Eua Sao Francisco—a street running in the direction of the sea—^into a small court yard surrounded by quaint irregular buildings,the ground-floor of one of which is the ancient store in which the most venerable wines of the firm are collected. It is a long, dim apartment, lighted by small square windows protected by iron bars, and paved with flagstones. Here, ranged in rows, are some thirty or forty huge butts, all more or less antique-looking, and many bearing the brands of once-famous Madeira firms,now defunct, whose stocks are stiU represented here. Each of these butts holds from 620 to 670 gallons; and they all contain wines of rare flavour and aroma, although generally too concentrated and too powerfid to be drunk by themselves, their chief value being to give character to younger growths. We tasted here, among other samples,a blended Cama deLobos of greatvinosity and pleasant subdued pungency of flavour; a powerful choice old Eeserve from the same district, the solera of which was founded as far back as 1792; a fine old concentrated wine from the Torre Bella "rtneyard, marvellously round and soft; a remarkable Sercial, "vintaged half a centmy ago, and to-day emitting a wonderful aroma, and having a marked though pleasant pimgent flavour. During the first twenty years of its life this wine, we wer-e told, was far too harsh to be at all palatable. Another venerable wine was a Malvasia velhissimo,