1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

The VUla Nova Wine Lodges—Vintage Ports. 127

the highest. Established in the year 1761,and vineyard pro prietors as well as large shippers,they monopolise most of the trade in the higher class white Ports with Russia. Baron For rester, whose name is indissolubly connected with the Alto Douro and its wines,and whose lamented death at the Cachao de Valleira we have alluded to, was a member of this firm. Their lodges,known as the Armazens das Aguias,fromthe circumstance of the gables being surmounted by sculptui-ed eagles with crowned heads, are reached by a narrow winding granite-paved road,shut in by high walls, overgrown with moss and ivy. A somewhat pretentious portal conducts uj) a steep incUne to a spacious courtyard,the structures surroimding which are tinted, in Portuguese fashion,a lively salmon colour. A trellis of vines casts flickering shadows around,and beyond arethe two principal lodges, with a smallbelfry rising upin the centre of their gabled fagade. Adjoining is a third lodge, and right and left are the cooperage and carpenter's shop. At Messrs. Offley, Forrester, and Co.'s we witnessed the process of preparing Port wine for shipment. Ranged against the wall of the shipping lodge were a score or so of newly-painted pipes, into which wines of varying character and quality were being poured through small tub- shaped funnels out of the customary cane90s, which a string of matulas kept constantly arriving with. The basis ofan ordinary shipment is usually a wine of a year or two old rendered sweeter or drier, as may be required, by the admixture of either a fruity or fully-fermented wine, and improved in flavour by a dash of old wine of fine quality. The intended shipment consisted of a blend of three varieties, and as successive almudes were emptied into the various pipes they were duly checked off on a black board on which the precise proportions of the blend were indi cated. The brandy was added bythe aid ofasmallmetalcan,filled from alarger vesselholding nearly a couple of quarts,and having a scale indicated inside by means of a number of small wooden, pegs. When the pipes were filled to the bunghole the latter was closed with a wooden plug,and the casks had their shipping marks cut deeply into them. All being ready they were rolled