1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

Elderberries andLogwood,—GenercCL remarJcs ahoutPort. 141

market was composed almost quite as muck of elderberries as grapes." This startling assertion was afterwards qualified,the .author explaining that his allusion only applied to the deepening ofthe colour ofthe wine with extractfrom theskins ofdried elder berries, and not to any admixture of elderberry juice with the wine itself. Lord Lytton had, moreover, afiBrmed that the Paiz Vinhateiro of the Alto Douro abounded with elder-trees. Both statements were inaccurate at the time,and are equally inaccu rate to-day. With regard to the elder-trees,I may remark that during daily rides through the Upper Douro I was constantly on the look-outfor them; but that above the Rio Corgo,whence the finest Port wine comes,I failed to observe even a single one. I do not saythat none exist; but they must beexceedingly rare to have escaped my notice. That elder-trees are prevalent lower down the Douro,in the neighbom-hood of Regoa,is well known,as also that the berries in a dried form are, or were, regularly exported in large quantities to Prance and Spain, presumably for colouring wine. Several years before the ex portation of themto France commencedthe Agricultural Council •of thePyrenees Orientales had called the attention of the French Minister of Commerce to the fact that wines imported into France from Spain were artificially coloured with elderberry ■extract. The principal shippers of Port wine to England either own or rent quintas in the Alto Douro, or, what is equivalent, -contract to purchase their produce in the form of wine. During the time of the vintage they or their representatives are every day engaged in riding about from one vineyard to another for the purpose of seeing that the vintage is properly made, that green or damaged grapes do not get into the lagares, that the pressing and fermentation take place under favourable condi tions, that brandy from the juice of the grape alone, which they take care themselves to supply, shall be added only at such times -and in such quantities as they shall approve of. This Alto Douro brandy Baron Forrester—an authority whom eveiy one now-a-days accepts—^preferred when old to the best cognac he