1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

The Poii Wine Capital—Villa Nova Wine Lodges. 121

shipment. In an adjoining apartment the iron hoops for the casks are cut, bent, and pierced by means of a handy little machine of Biimingham manufacture. Some ofthe largest wine-lodges belonging to English ship ping-houses are grouped half-way up the hill which rises from the Douro at ViUa.Nova da G-aia. To reach them we thread the antiquated sunless street running parallel with the river, wind round by the church,and follow a- narrow tortuous lane bounded by moss-covered walls and overlooking alarge and care less-ordered garden. Eventually we gain a paved road, whence a doorway on the right conducts to the premises of Mai-tinez, Gassiot, and Co., who for two-thirds of a century have occupied a high position in the Oporto wine trade. Crossing a rudely- paved courtyard, where a few vines trained over a trellis partially screen from view a lofty lodge,in which older wines are stored, we pass the counting-house of the firm,a little low cottage with autumn flowers climbing up its rustic porch,and enter a long building where staves and hoops are being prepared for the tribe of coopers at work in the small inner court below and under the adjacent arcade. Here the construction of a Port wine pipe in all its various stages, from the fashioning of the individual staves to the driving in of its head,is going on. On one side the shapened staves are being set up and temporarily encompassed with iron hoops; elsewhere they encircle a fire which,charring them on the inner side, renders them pliable; close by men are hammering on the permanent iron hoops,while others fit the heads to the finished casks priorto the edgesofthe staves being bevelled and the bungholes drilled. At a neigh bouring tank new pipes are being gauged, and if found correct are subsequently branded with the mark of the firm and then seasoned with wine. A picturesque cluster of trees overlooksthe court on one side, and facing the arcade is the principal lodge, comprising three long cumes connected by large arches,each cume containing half- a-dozen rows of pipes piled up in three tiers. The roofs are suppoided by the usual blackened rafters, and but little light