1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

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Facts about Sherry.

aisles, is capable of contaiiiing 5,000 buttsof ■wine, wbile another couple of thousand can be stored in the smaller cellars and annexes. Here we tastedsome finemanzanillas andamontillados, and a very old Jerez wine, the solera of which is said to have been established a century ago. It was of the oloroso type, dark in colotu", and without that excessive pungency which these antique ■wines commonly develop. Far more pungent was an oloroso of greater age, the solera of which is kno'wn in the bodegas by the name of "FernandoUI." This wine, we were informed, could not be shipped under .£500 per butt. Another oloroso, valued at .£300 per butt, proved to be a fine, deep- coloured, weli-rotmded ■wine of great body and character. Messrs. Heyward and Wilson's bodega, situated in the neighbourhood of the Pemartin Palace, is a handsome, well- lighted structure, with a spiral staircase at one end of it con ducting to a platform on the roof, whence a panoramic view of Jerez and its surroundings—including .its Alcazar, churches, bodegas, bull-ring, old Moorish towers and battlements, and neighbouring vineyards—is obtained. The ■wines shipped by this firm are principally Jerez ■vinos of ordinary and superior quality, manzanillas, and the Montilla gro^wths, 'with certain robuster varieties of the old Jerezano type. The ancient convent and church of the Jesuits, closed and sold by order of the State some forty years ago, are to-day the bodegas of Messrs. Matthiesen and Furlong—nave, aisles, choir, and cloisters being alike crowded ■with butts of sherry ranged as usual in triple tiers. This firm, instead of following the antiquated ways customary in most of the Jerez bodegas, avail themselves of all modern mechanical appliances. In the former refectory of the convent they have a number of large vats, the smallest holding some eight butts, which are used for maturing and fining wines. The most capacious of these vats is reserved for blending purposes, wine being pumped into it from the neighbouring vats through gutta-percha tubing. The court of the cloisters is fitted with apparatus for steaming the new casks,, ■which are here continually revolving in eccentric circles. The-