1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

In the Port Wine Country.

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Tided for the men and the women to sleep in. These cardenhas are usually large apartments with wooden berths—strewn with straw,on which is laid a piece of sailcloth—ranged along their sides. A woollen drugget is the ordinary covering, and this is often large enough to serve for thirty people. When the weather is cold a second drugget is provided. The Quinta da Boa Vista ranks among the best quintas of the Upper Uouro. Neither pains nor expense have been spared in its planting and cultivation and in improving the primitive system of vmification which commonly prevails in this compara tively inaccessible region. As already explained,the heavy beam press has been supplanted by the more commodiousand efficient screw; while the lagares are so arranged that the must can be run off through india-rubber tubes direct into the huge tonels, which occupy a lower level in the adjacent adega. In the old- fashioned lagares the must is emptied out of the stone reservoir into the tonels by means of a canefo, or hooped wooden bucket with a handle at its side—not only a waste of time and labour, but,if anything, detrimental to the wine itself, which at this epoch is still in a state offermentation. Unfortunately the Boa Vista vineyard, which in good years used to give fifty or sixty pipes of fine wine, was attacked some five years ago by the phylloxera, and its production has now fallen off considerably.

t . I.' J!