1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

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Facts about Sherry.

an open press-house with numerous lagares, nearly a score of bodegas, a distillery, an admirably-organised cooperage, and various complementary workshops, together with steam-power and all the requisite mechanical appliances, including even a railway siding; so that here the processes of cask-making as well as wine-making,and the rearing, blending, and shipping of wines, may be followed from beginning to end, and a complete idea gained of what a great sherry shipper's establishmentis like. Immediately inside the courtyard are the ofSces,under the arcade of which some half-dozen wine-brokers, with the necks of numerous sample bottles peeping from their side-pockets, are waiting an audience, while a group of rustic mayetos, who have sold their vintages to the firm, are t3.king their turn at the cashier's desk to be paid. Passing through the clerks' ofSce, partitioned offinto numerous little cabinets,we enter the sanctum of the firm,the walls of which are hung with portraits of past and present partners, and paintings, plans, and maps, more or less relating to the production of a wine which has raised an Andalusian village almost to the rank of a city. The senior partner is engaged in testing samples brought by a wine-broker, and,this httle operation over, he courteously volunteers to con duct us through the vast estabhshment of which he is the head. We pass the porter's house, whereby is a charming flower-walk, skirted by palms and orange-trees, and bordered on the one side by a trellised arcade overgrown with vines. Hereabouts is a huge water-tank supplied from a deep well,the water of which is specially used for seasoning the casks. Passing the great square and circular bodegas, the garden and the fountain, the stables and the wheelwright's shop, the railway siding and the steep tramway incline, we make our way to the press-house, where mules keep arriving with baskets of grapes, which, after being weighed in a primitive fashion by the aid ofa beam supported on a couple of men's shoulders, are thrown into one or other of the seven lagares and trodden and pressed. A few paces off is the store-place for American oak staves,of which the casks are made, and which remain stacked up here in huge pUes until they have become thoroughly seasoned, while beside them lie innumerable