1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

28

Lisbon Wines.

slopes, and occasionally the plains. The railway runs through them, and at the time of our visit numerous small bands of" vintagers were busy among the scattered patches of vines, which are allowed to sprawl and straggle at will over the ground, dotted here and there with isolated fig and olive ti'ees, and. skirted by pine-groves. TheLavradio wines,greatfavourites with King Louis Philippe, are often full-bodied, as well as soft and. rich, the latter arising partly from the small,dark,thin-skinned, sweet bastardo grape entering into their composition,and partly from the addition ofsweet wine, or from the fermentation of the wine itself being checked by the addition of spirit,in oi'der that it may conserve an exti'a amount of saccharine. Mr. Cresswell, who owns the Qtunta do Esleiro Furado,some five miles from Lavradio, makes, however, a perfectly dry wine of considerable character, with a pleasant faint balsamic flavour. This -^vine is shipped by him under the name of Montijo, after the district where it is produced. His vineyard,from thirty to forty acres in extent, will yield as many as 100 pipes of wine when all the vines are in full bearing, although the year of our visit the produce had been unusually small. Lisbon wines appear to have gone completely out of fashion in England. A small quantity of Bucellas is still consumed; hut of white Lisbon—so universally drunk at one time, as Mr.Shaw tells us, by City men at limcheon—little is ever seen now, whether of the rich, mellow, or dry variety. The red Lisbon wines never were particularly popular with us, though I have no doubt that, mixed with poor thin French wines, we drink them to-day (as clarets) to a hundredfold the extent we ever did before. The unfortified Bucellas as now shipped is an admirable wine, and only needs to be better known to como rapidly into favour, especially as it can be retailed at a very economical rate, while as regards such excellent red growths as Collares, and wines of a similar type, it would surely be better for us to import them direct, instead of receiving them through France, after they have been emasculated by mixture with the undrinkable vins veiis of our enterprising French neighbours.