1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

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Facts ahout Sherry.

fermentation lias not terminated, and wMcli come far more frequently from Seville or La Mancha than from the Jerez district. Such wines are necessarily unwholesome, for heat revives their fermentative action, which completes itself in that delicate organisation,the human stomach. The genuine natural wines of Jerez are carefully-selected varieties, arrived not only at an age when their fermentation is complete, hut whose growth has, so to say, stopped—wines which, although remarkably delicate in flavour, still possess STxfficient robustness to incui- the risks of a sea-voyage without having alcohol added to them. The vintage wines, scarcely known at all in England,are the produce of good vineyards in the best viticultural districts,and have been rearedintact,passing through a solera in the majority of instances, but subjected to no admixture with other wine, and receiving merely one per cent, of spirit at the time of being drawn from the lees. In the regular solera wines the distinct types into which the Jerez growths are divided are kept perfectly distinct, although the solera[as it becomes diminished is replenished by the growths of varied years and districts, providing these are sufficiently approximate in character to the parent wine. In drawing these wines off for shipment,even as special types, they commonly receive a slight blend of dulce, being regarded, and in many instances with justice, as altogether too dry for English tastes, their pungency often rendering them somewhat unpalatable. The blended wines proper form the great bulk of the sherry shipped to England,and when of high quality and artistically treated are of splendid character, although perhaps less costly than exceptional examples of pure soleras. Being anxious to witness in all its details this process of blending wine for shipment,I profited by an invitation from the resident partner of the firm of Cosens and Co., well known for the perfection of their blends, and whose business places them at only one remove from the head of the list of sherry shippers. Most of the larger Jerez bodegas have their patches of flowers, their rows of orange-trees, their clusters or avenues of acacias.