1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

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In the Fort Wine Country.

out the Upper Douro. In addition, the Visconde possesses a MabiUe press, the general introduction of which would be, he conceives, of great benefit to the wine-growers, who by its use would obtain the full quantity of mosto which the grapes are capable of yielding. The vintage operations were drawing to a close at the time of our visit, a score or so of men being engaged in treading the grapes in the last lagar. We noticed that all the bunches which displayed any greenness or rottenness had been carefully removed, as well as a portion of the grape-stalks, an excess of which gives a harsh flavour to the •wine. Certain spots in the Quinta do Noval have been attacked by the phylloxera since 1875, and considerable damage has resulted to the "vines, so that, instead of 300 pipes being -vintaged in that quinta alone, the Noval and the Marco quintas combined now yield merely 200 pipes—equivalent to about two-thirds of u pipe per acre—which, small as it may seem, is nevertheless a high yield for the Alto Douro under existing circumstances. Among these 200 pipes are twenty-five pipes of very superior white wine, made without any addition of spirit. The quality of the red wine -vintaged the year of our visit promised to be very good, judging by the depth of colour and amount of saccharine it indicated when tested. The Visconde de Villar Allen,like other enterprising growers and shippers, has devoted his attention to the problemof making Port -wine -without the addition of spirit, and has experimented largely "with the ISToval and other gro-wths. At his quinta he was unable to show us any f^oval wine of this description, although he has a stock of it at his adegas in Oporto, but he gave us some -wine made at a vineyard near Covellinhas, below Boa Vista, on the right bank of the Douro, and which had not received any spirit either when being made, dra-wn off its lees, fined, or bottled. The wine was only a twelvemonth old, and naturally undeveloped; nevertheless it showed considerable depth of colour, had a pleasant perfume, and was clean and fresh-tasting, and by combining a certain roundness with a