1876 Facts About Sherry by Henry Vizetelly

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Facts about Sherry.

was still very sweet, but more vinous and darker in colour; while at fifteen years much of its sweetness had gone, and its tint was almost black. Some muscatelfrom Romano sixty years of age had consumed the greater part of its saccharine,and become a perfect liqueur. After tasting the muscatela glass of light Jerez wine,known as Tio Pepe,seven years old,and con taining only 25 deg. of proofspirit, proved agreeably refreshing. This wine has the bouquet and much of the fiavour,including all the delicacy, of the rarer growths of the Rhine,coupled with that peculiar soft almond taste which these latter wines not unfi'equently develop. Leaving the half-dozen remaining bodegas unvisited,we now direct our steps to the blending cellar, beneath the prolonged colonnade, which, from its succession of columns and vast length—600 feet—isjocularly known as the Rue de Rivoli. At one end of it scores of casks are being steamed by machinery, while along it, and beneath the adjacent trees, thousands of butts,undergoingthe necessary seasoning with water,are stacked in tiers. Other casks imder the colonnade are seasoning with common wine,and at its farther end some himdred butts of prensa—wine from the final pressing ofthe grapes are waiting their turn to be distilled into spirit. A powerful hydraulic press has been erected for squeezing the lees of the wine perfectly dry, also for the purpose of distillation. In the blending cellar, butts of common wine are being rapidly filled from the taps of half-a-dozen of the seventeen large blending vats containing their 120 butts; or more slowly, by means of jars, when a mixture of several varieties has to be made. In the adjoining distillery a large still and rectifying apparatus are in fu operation, but the fire of the huge iron caldron in which arrope is boiled for vino de color is unkindled. All that now remams for us to visit is the steep railway incline, down which butts o wine are being whirled on trucks for conveyance by the tram in waiting below, which will convey them to the Trocadero mo e, whence they will be shipped to England and elsewhere. Messrs. Gonzalez, who are at the same time growers,rearers,