1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

Some other FtmcJud Wine-Stores.

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most perfect old Madeiras we ever tasted, far surpassing iu flavoui", altliougli it failed to rival as a curiosity, a wine of the year 1760,of which it is sufficient praise to say that, although but a phantom of its former self, it had not in the slightest •degree turned acid, as many another robust growth would have •done at least halfa century earlier. The finn of Leacock and Company was established more .than a century and a quarter ago. The business has descended from father to son through successive generations, and there seems every prospect of its continuing to do so. This firm and that of Cossait, Gordon, and Co. are the only two houses remaining in Madeira who were members ofthe once-important British factory, which had almost a monopoly of the wine trade of the island, annually fixing the price to be paid for mosto purchased of the growers, as well as the prices at which wines were to be shipped. By levying a tax upon every pipe of wine shipped by themselves they raised the necessary funds to make a cemetery in which British subjects might be decentlyinterred; for at that time the bodies of all those who were not of the Eoman Cathohc faith were flung contumeliously into the sea. Before this cemetery was provided, a member of the factory, who had a strong prejudice to his dead body furnishing food to •the flshes,begged his partners to bury him when he died under his desk in their counting-house. This they secretly did, aud had the coffin which had been prepared for his corpse filled with stones and duly handed over to the authorities to be thrown into the sea. In a former chapter we described our visit to Mr. Leacock's vineyard and the intelligent system upon which we found it cultivated and its produce vintaged; and at his stores we had an opporturrity of tasting the wine grown by him. Wefound the 1873 vintage hght, dry,and fine-flavoured, while the 1872, being slightly more matured, was soft and delicately aromatic. A Sercial of 1848 was deep in colour, and dry and pungent in flavour; and a wine of 1834-5 had acquired a sin gular softness and delicacy, and proved much less spirituous than we expected to find it.