1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

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Facts ahoitt Sherry.

judging by its flat monotonous banks hereabouts,scarcely merits the flowery praise bestowed upon it by the poets of all ages and nations. All the flner qualities ofthe pale,delicate,dry,tonical- tasting wine known as manzanilla, which we first came to hear of in England through Dr. Gorman's evidence before the Wine Duties Committee,and Mr.Richard Ford's Handbook for Spain, come from the neighbourhood of San Lucar,where the vintage commences a fortnight earlier than at Jerez. Hither,therefore, Ihied the day following my arrival,after fii-st retracing my steps to Puerto de Santa Maria(Port St. Mary),which hasits own vine yards and vast bodegas,and whence aboutaquarter ofthe sherry annually sent to England is shipped. From Porto de Santa Maria one drove over to San Lucar in the conventional carretela, an antique style of vehicle, hung well upon its springs, but requiring foui* horses, with their customaryragged trappings and jingling bells,to drag it over the villainous pavements ofthe steep streets,and along thefurrowed, sandy country roads. After passing some pleasant suburban gardens, with their tall flowering aloes and large-leaved tropical plants,we were soon among the few vineyards skirting the town, and,crossing a sandy heath studded with pines,emerged into the open country. A faint, ruddy-streaked purply haze of hills, indicating the flner Jerez vineyards, rose up on our right hand, while our road lay through fields of stubble eaten close down to the roots by browsing herds, or by brood mares turned out to feed after their task of threshing the lately-garnered corn had ended. We passed occasional huge-wheeled buUock-carts carrying empty wine-butts to San Lucar, and solitary pannier- laden mules and donkeys; sighted ragged peasants tending thickly-fleeced sheep,or lazily watching herds ofswine battening upon the skins of newly-trodden grapes,or drawing water from ancient wayside wells; occasionally startled an errant partridge or scattered a flock of staid-looking turkeys. The broad tracts of arable land, bounded by low hiUs, with some white farmhouse commonly crowmng their summits,soon began to be intersected by patches of vineyards which, shut off by dusty hedges of