1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

Tlie Villa Nova Wine Lodges—Vintage Ports. 137"

among them had much of the lightness and delicacy of a wine vintaged from white grapes. The lodges of Mackenzie,DriscoU,and Co. are situated at the farther end of the long steep paved Eua das Freiras,leading from the Douro to the summit of the hill of Villa hTova. They are entered through a large doorway and up a slight incline leading into a comdyard, where a crowd of coopers are briskly at work making new pipes and rearranging old ones. Thelodges comprise a couple of long and lofty cumes,each with its four rows of pipes frequently arranged in triple tiers. Here we went through a series of fine-flavoured vintage wines and dryand rich shipping wines, as well as some luscious white Ports and the usual venerable curiosities, dating back to the early part of the century, of which all the leading Oporto houses are certain to possess their quota. Mackenzie, Driscoll, and Co. own two other lodges in the Eua Cordas, near to the Douro,in which they store wines of various classes of all the more recent, vintages. There are a few other Port wine shippers doing a consider able business whose lodgesI had not an opportunity of visiting, notably Messrs. Clode and Baker,T. Gr. Sandeman,Smith and Woodhouse, &c. Those which I have described, however,, furnish a sufficiently complete idea of the Villa Nova wine- stores, with their 150,000 pipes of Port of varying age and character, valued at something like .£4,000,000 sterling. Before I quitted Oporto I made a point of visiting the Tanoaria a Vapor,or Steam Cooperage,recently established by an English company atVillaHova da Gaia. Crossing theriverbythe suspension-bridge, nearly opposite the precipitous Eua Hova de Sao Joao, and passing under the shadow of the commanding Serra convent—where the British batteries were installed when Wellington effected his daring passage of the Douro—one mounts a well-paved road leading to the Villa Hova railway station, midway between which and the river stands the establishment in question. The premises were only partially completed at the time of our visit,and comprised a large square