1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

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The Vineyards and Wines of Madeira.

The house of Henry Dru Drmy,formerly Rutherford,Drury,. and Co., was originally established in Madeira soon after the commencement of the present century. Its armazens,situated in the western quarter of Punchal, and entered up a narrow court, comprise a couple of large buildings, not much under 200 feet in length, of two stories each, and connected on the first floor by a wooden gallery arched over with trellises of vines left to grow at their own sweet will. On the one side mosto is stored while it comi^letes its fermentation,while on the other are the matmred and grand old wines of the firm,the latter being kept by themselves in ancient-looking pipes on the upper floor- The cooperage is in the rear of the stores,adjoining a small plot of vines from which the firm vintage a few pipes of wine. This little vineyard is bounded on one sideby an old nunnery in which seven venerable nuns—the youngest being aged about seventy—■ were installed at the time of our visit. The suppression of con ventual establishments having been decreed by the Portuguese legislature, additions are no longer made to the venerable sis terhood. At Mr. Henry DruDrury's stores we tasteda powerful Cama de Lobos wine of 1874which had never been to the estufa, and one of the year 1870 which had been matured by exposure to the sun; also a delicate and fresh-tasting Dual of 1876,a splendid Campanario with fine bouquet, pale in colour, soft, slightly sweet, but of remarkably fine flavour. In our judg ment the best Campanario growths surpass the more powerful and more generally prizedCama de Lobos vintages by reason of their greater delicacy of flavour and more fragrant bouquet. The older wines comprised a Sercial of 1820, with a powerful bouquet and a dry but scarcely pungent flavour; a Bual of about the same age exceedingly pungent and powerful—an essence of wine, so to speak; and some deep-tinted luscious Malmsey of the same period. We further tasted some wines the casks of which were marked "Koda" to indicate that they had voyaged either to the East or West Indies and home again. They were not particularly deep in colour, but remarkably powerful, and with that indefinable flavour which Madeira.