1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

Buying New Wine. A Tour of Inspection.

45

TAKING- A SAMPLE OP NEW ^VINB. wlaicli the owner of the qiiinta had installed himself for the vintage were neitherluxurious nor inviting. In the comer of a long low room over the adega—in a kind of granary,in fact, strewn with baskets, monster pumpkins, and sacks of maize, rice, and potatoes—^were an iron camp bedstead,a couple of old ohairs,and a table; and with such poor accommodation as this a well-to-do Douro wine-farmer is perfectly content. Senhor Senna informed us that his vines had suffered but slightly from the phylloxera; still he expected to vintage only eighty pipes instead of the hundi-ed which his vineyard commonly yielded. Mounting our horses again, we wind rotmd the sides of a ravine,always surrounded by stone terraces and vines,leaving