1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

The Vines,their Cultivation,and Chief Vineyard Districts. 175

■with several varieties of vines, it is not worth the cultivator's while to separate the different species before pressing them in the lagar. Consequently the whole get crushed together, the result being a rich and somewhat deep-coloured white wine, •due to the admixture of black grapes, a certainquantity of which are to be found in every vineyard. In -vineyards of greater extent more care is ordinarily taken, the various kinds of grapes ■are crushed separately, and the mosto from each is kept apart, especially that from the sercial, bual, andmalvasia varieties. InMadeira the vines are propagated by cuttings, which used to be planted merely some twenty inches deep in the ground. Now, however, it is the practice to imbed these in trenches four feet or more in depth, according to the character of the soU. At the bottom of the trench a layer of loose stones is placed to pre vent the roots frompenetrating to the stiff soil beneath. In the better-class vineyards these cuttings are commonly planted very wide apart. The vines bear in their third year, and are trained in the majority of instances either in latada or corridor fashion, both of which have been described in my account of Messrs. Krohn'svineyardin SantaCruz. One disadvantageof these latadas is that under many of them there is barely room for the men to •creep in order to weed, prune, and train the vines, to partially strip the leaves from them, as is commonly done during the summer months, or to pluck the grapes at the time of the vintage. Only in particular instances is any more modem system of training, such as that pursued by Mr. Leacock at Sao Joao, adopted. When viewed from a height the framework of these latadas, blanched as it commonly is by the combined influence of sun and rain, presents much the appearance of a number of nets spread out upon the ground. On the north side of the island, previous to the ravages caused by the o'idium, the vines were trained to the numerous chestnut-trees and allowed to grow to almost any height, or else were left to straggle at will over the rocks and ground. As good wine only comes from grapes grown near the surface of the fioil, much of the produce from the vines trained to trees was