1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

Collares, To-n-es Vedras, the Tei-ino, Camarate, &c. 27

and agreeable, mtli a pleasant nutty aroma; a mucli older wine had great body and a pronounced almondy flavour; wHle a still more ancient sample, alike powerful and concentrated, had developed many of the characteristics of a fine old Madeira. Carcavellos lies at the mouth ofthe Tagus,and its vineyards are almost washed by both the river and the ocean. The wines were formerly held in great repute, more especially those of Oeiras, where the famous Marquis de Pombal—who caused his indomitable will to prevail over all the teachmgs of pohtical economy ^had a handsome quinta which, with its adega full of ancient tuns,is still shown to the passing tourist. The Sacavem wine-growers had little cause to like the stern and meddling marquis, for he compelled them—in common with all the vineyard proprietors between that place and Golegaa, near the prolific viticultural district of Torres Novas,a distance of some sixty miles—^to root up their vines in order to give room for the more extensive cultivation of wheat. The vines, however, were spGcdily rGplflJiljGd ajftcr s disgio-cG. The last wine shown to us at Messrs.Wynn and Custance's was a luscious old Muscatel, grown at Palmella, near Setubal, where the mostfamous muscatel wines of Portugal are vintaged. Adjoining Messrs. Wynn and Custance's adegas there is an ancient fountain, the decorations of which in colom-ed tiles offer a singular combination of the sacred and the profane. The central subject is the Virgin with the infant Jesus in her arms, benignly contemplating the burning of the wicked in the flames of hell, while the Holy Ghost,symbolised by a dove,hovers in the clouds over her head. On one side of this composition are numerous lords and ladies in the costume ofthe seventeenth century, prominent among whom are a couple of cavalheiros, with drawn swords and of angry mien,evidently bent upon a vigorous set-to. The vineyards of the Havradio district are on the opposite side of the Bay of Lisbon, and extend almost from the shore for some half-a-dozen nailes inland, occupying all the low sandy