1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

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Facts about Sherry.

Eheingau,and amontillados ttat are almost essences while still continuing to be wines. Messrs. Gronzalel and Co. have also their bodegas at the Puerto,an abandoned convent being crowded with wines oftheirs,comprising exclusively the cheaper qualities. The bodegas of Senores Gastelu contain 4,000 butts of exclusively high-class wines,principally.choice fines with remarkablyfragrant bouquets and of varied degrees of delicate yet sufla.ciently pro nounced flavour, together with some highly odorous, matured, weU-rounded amontiUados. Each of these admirable wines seemed to have a distinct character of its own. At the bodega of Mr. J. W.Burden we also met with some exquisite fines of great fragrance and delicacy, and went through an interesting scale of amontillados of splendid equality. Beta lies to the north-west of Puerto de Santa Maria, and close to the seashore. The road for some little distance is bordered by acacia-trees, a perfect novelty in the sherry district, for leave Jerez on whichever side you will not a single tree along the public highway will obstruct your view. Trees, say the Jerez agriculturists, harbour birds, and birds only devour our crops, thei'efore we keep our fields and highways completely clear of trees. After the last tree in the outskirts ofthe Puerto is passed the road skirts numerous patches of vines, planted in either loamy or sandy soils, known respectively as barros and arenas. It then intersects a broad plain, dotted over with white casas and cortijos, with their adjacent cattle-sheds and huge stacks of straw, and bounded on the left by a range of heights laid out as olive groves and pine plantations. Ahead there riseS' up a steep hill overgrown with vines,and having at its summit an ancient telegraph tower. Some little distance farther on the road to Eota branches off to the left, and we ascend a gentle slope crowned by a dark pine wood,and soon the bright blue sea and low Moorish-looking houses ofEota appear in sight. Vine yards are here intermingled with tomato fields, and market gardens furnished with the old-fashioned Moorish norias, with their revolving wheels and earthenware jars, by means of which the land is irrigated. Eota contributes largely to the supply of