1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

The Yilla Nova Wine Lodges—Yintage Foris. 131

tiles, and a steam pump,by the aid of which the wine is con veyed through tubes to and from the pipes and vats in any part of the establishment. Beneath the principal lodge are some ancient vaults with an almost total absence of light and venti lation,where various rare old wines are stored. In the adjoining tonel-house,reached down a steep incline,seven additional large vatsare rangedinarow,each ofthem being provided withavertical shaft with fan-shaped wings,and a screw propeller worked by a line shaft aflSxed to the opposite wall,and by the action of which the thorough amalgamation of the wine is secured. Connected mth the line shaft is a small pump,enabling the blended wine to be readily transferi-ed from the vats to the pipes in any one ofthe lodges. The superfluous steam fi'om the boiler is used for steaming new casks in a neighbouring old-fashioned cooper age,where as many as eighty hands are employed,and the usual animated scene presents itself. Men in red and blue Phrygian caps, check shirts, and either tattered or elaborately-patched velveteen nether-garments, are splitting staves with wonderful precision with their primitive hatchets, or trimming them to shape on their quaint wooden horses; are fashioning heads or drilling bungholes,setting up casks or taking them to pieces, hammers and mallets keeping up a continuous deafening sound as the heads or hoops are being driven on and fastened to the finished pipes. At Messrs. W.and J.Graham's lodges a variety of wines were shown to us,including young and fi-uity high class vintage wines, with softer, drier, and more matured growths, as well as fine,thin,tawny ports, which had mellowed during half- a-century in the wood. Notable among the latter was a grand ■wine of the year 1815, remarkable yet refined in flavour and exhaling a soft etherous bouquet, and scarcely darker in colour than ordinary golden sherry. When the vintage in the Tipper Douro proves an unusually fine one, it is the practice to ship the pick of the "wine as a vintage wine—that is, without the admixture of wines of other years. In every quinta there are certain favourable situations where the grapes ripen more perfectly than in others ; and in