1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

The Vintaging of Manzanilla,

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less gay and picturesque costumes ofthe common people,to give to the great sheny metropoHs a cheerful and pleasing aspect. Its broader streets are planted with acacias or orange-trees, while its many little plazas, rendered gay with floral parterres, ornamented by stately palms,or bordered byumbrageousfohage, invite to the afternoon lounge or evening promenade. The market-places of Jerez offer a series of bright pictures, which any artist with an eye for grouping and for brilliant contrasts of colour would delight in transferring to his sketch book; while in the narrow winding thoroughfares of the more retired quarters of the town we constantly come upon little scenes of manners,in which portly shovel-hatted curas, stately senoras, and bright-eyed senoritas play a prominent part, and which seem to relegate one for the time being to the region of comedy and opera. For distraction the Jerezanoshave,besidesthe customary carnival and spring and autumn fairs,their horse-races and bull-fights,theirteatro,circo,and acouple of casinos,together with a roulette-table, at which a couj)le of grandees of this poor degenerate Spain act nightly as croupiers, handliug the rake with the same seeming pride as their ancestors of old wielded lance and sword. Vineyards encompass Jerez on all sides. Those scattered over the plain in the immediate vicinity of the town, more par ticularly on the north and north-east (the soil of which is either sand or sand and clay impregnated with oxide of iron combined, and known as barro-arenoso), yield wine ordinarily of little repute; whereas the "more distant plantations, covering the chalky slopes and ridges of the outlying amphitheatre of hills, the compact white soil of which is termed albariza,produce Avines ofthe veiy highest character, and developing remarkable variety of flavour. Wine of an intermediate yet coarse quahty comes from the vineyards of the lower slopes and valleys, the soil of which is dark earth,and goes under the name of bugeo. In one comer of the sherry district proper is the little town of San Lucar de Barrameda, dating back to the dim>traditional ages, and commanding the mouth of the G-uadalquivi'r, which,

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