1872 Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks (Mixellany)

Sherry. 25 has obtained a ripe age in bottle, and has acquired some bouquet, it is undeniably—whatever may be urged to the contrary—a noble and generous beverage, and among Englishmen will never fail to find admirers/' The other best known of the Portuguese wines are Calcavella, a white, sweet, muscatel wine; Bucellas, also a white wine, made from vines transplanted from the Rhenish districts; and Lisbon wine : these two latter, which are rich and dry, are grown in and near Lisbon. Sherry. —We now come to the well-known white wines of Spain, familiar to us under the designation of Sherry. They derive this name (an anglicised mode of pronouncing Xeres) from Xeres de la Frontera, a town in Andalusia, the frontier town of the Christians during the occupation of Cadiz by the Moors, from which port it is distant about 16 miles. Sherry, properly so called, is the produce of the vineyards of the triangular district formed by Xeres de la Frontera, Santa Maria, and San Lucar de Barrameda ; the vine district is about 12 miles square, and watered by the rivers Guadalquivir and Guadalete. The fine dry wines of the Xeres dis- trict were well known in this country during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The poets and writers of that period make frequent mention of