1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

The Vintage at Santa Cruz and Sao Joao.

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many of the vines were seriously affected. The owner,however, by watchful care and judicious treatment,including the applica tion to the principal roots of the vine of a kind of varnish which in this instance seems to have proved specific, has succeeded in restoring most of the diseased vines to a comparatively healthy condition. Not only is the Madeira vmegrower in dread of the phylloxera, hut he has to guard his vines against the oidium as. well. This he accomplishes by freely sulphuiing them, on& disadvantage of which is the difiiculty of getting rid of the sulphur from the fruit. Mr.Leacock effects this by the aid of bellows and brushes which women have been taught to use with patience and skiU at the season ofthe year when the skins of the grapes commence to shine. Although the vineyard comprises less than thii'teen acres, the grapes would be picked at no less tha.n eight different times, only the perfectly ripe bunches being- gathered on each occasion. The vintage, which commenced on August 24th,owing to this circumstance would last for a period of fully three weeks. The pickers were barefooted women, in fight gowns and white linen jackets with red and yellow kerchiefs tied over their heads. Their pay was equal to only 7|^d. per day,while the men who collected the grapes in the larger baskets and trod them in the lagar received an equivalent to Is.3d. The casa do lagar is a low stone building with high jjitched roof, lighted by a couple of small windows, and shaded by the spreading branches ofa fine specimen of the eriobotrya japonica. It is provided with a couple of lagars, the larger of which is capable of pressing four or five pipes of mosto at a time. We found six men at work in it, three on either side of the cumber some dividing beam or vara. The first juice that ran off was emptied into a balceiro or small vat, holding about eighty gallons, and provided with a tap at the lower part to enable the juice to be drawn off after the little sulphur that had remained on the grapes had settled at the bottom. The treaders went through much the same movement as we have already described, and when the expressed juice could no longer escape from the lagar,through the aperture being stopped up with the crushed