1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

The Wines of the Bay of Cadiz.

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decided yet refined flavour, and olorosos of subdued pungent taste and ricb aroma* For one of tbese last-named wines <£400 per butt bad been offered and refused,it being considered mucb too valuable for blending purposes to be parted with even atthis price. Over the door of the Duff Gordon sample-room projects the stuffed head of a wild-looking short-homed bull, which at some corrida de toros at the Puerto had killed its eleven horses and remained the master ofthe ring. Another important shippiug house is that of Senor M.de Mora, whose stock of wine exceeds 10,000 butts. All the appointments of this great establishment, which is also set off with its floral parterres and rows of orange-trees,are of the most perfect kind. Machinery has been brought into requisition, not only for steaming and washing, but for gaugiug and even moistening the outsides of empty casks, so as to prevent the stavesfrom shrinking. In the bodegas, too,the lower butts are supported on light iron stands instead of the usual cumbersome wooden beams or blocks of stone. Travelling stages are, more over, provided to enable the wine to be drawn from the upper casks without the men having to climb up from one butt to the other according to the prevailing practice. At these bodegas we tasted some finos with a delicate bouquet and soft aromatic flavour; a full, luscious, and powerfully-perfumed moscatel, .priced at <£300 the butt; a spirituous Pedro Jimenez of the con sistency of syrup, and some rich amber-tiuted Jerezano wine of great age but remarkably refined flavour. Messrs. Oosens and Co., of Jerez, have several large bodegas at Puerto de Santa Maria. The court of their principal pre mises here is planted with flower-beds,orange,cypress,mulberry, and flowering laurel-trees, rising among which are a profusion of casks and piles of oak staves,as though every square foot of vacant ground had to be turned to some useful purpose. In the remarkably cool bodega where the firm keep some of their high- class soleras are manzaniUas of fine fresh aromatic flavour and powerful floral bouquet, Jerez finos, cool to the palate, and with that tender almond taste which recalls the rarer growths of the