1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

Tlie Vintaging of Manzanilla,

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possible.' During a long night they commonly press at Torre Breva as many as sixty canretadas or cart-loads of grapes,which would ordinarily yield sixty butts of mosto, but on the occasion of our visit, thi'ough the excessive dryness of the season, gave much less than fifty. After the stalks have been roughly stripped from the pressed grapes the skins are subjected to hydraulic pressure, but the must yielded by this means is invariablyfermented by itself, and then commonly distilled into spirit, so great is the dread which the cosechero of sherry has of tannin in his wine, although he knows it will impai-t keeping power, and that its harsh flavour- passes off with time. Spirit is also distilled direct from the refuse grape-skins, which finally serve for manure. The must yielded by the first pressure of the grapes is poured, through metal strainers into ordinary butts, and at Torre Breva these are forwarded by bullock-carts to San Lucar, where a municipal tax of a dollar and a half is levied on each.. On their arrival at the bodega the contents, although fermentation may by thistime have set in, are, in accordance with the prevailing San Lucar practice, at once transferred to other receptacles, the must of perhaps a dozen butts being divided equally among the same number of fresh casks. Before returning to San Lucar wetook a peep at the vintagers supping in the casa de la gente, a long, low, narrow, dimly- lighted apartment, with a tiled floor, and a couple of huge bell- shaped depending chimneys, dividing it as it were into three. This is at once the refectory and dormitory for some 120 out of the 214 hands engaged in the vintage. Banged at equal dis tances down the centre of the apartment were a number of low tables, just sufficiently large to support a huge smoking bowl of bread and onion porridge ofthe circumference ofa smallsponging- bath. Seated around each of these tables, -with their eyes intently fixed on the steaming bowl, were seven ravenous meny who, quick as thought, plunged the wooden spoons -with which they were armed first into the smoking porridge and next into h3 ir distended jaws, taking special care never to make a