1880 Facts about Port and Madeira by Henry Vizetelly

78

In the Fort Wine Cowniry.

Barao da Eoeda has paid much attention to the cultivation ofthe vine in the Alto Douro,as well as tothe production of oUve oil, the rearing of silkworms,and the making of wine without spirit. He has studied the oidium and the phylloxera, having visited France the better to pursue his investigations respecting the depredations of this latter pest, and was one of the first to take measures for the repression of these twin scourges of the vine. It was in 1848 that the oidium first declared itself in the Alto Douro by a strange bitter flavour in that year's "wine. By 1851 it had fully developed itself, and its ravages during several subsequent years were of a most disastrous character. Against the phylloxera Barao da Eotida has tried,among other remedies, phosphate of lime, coal tar, sulphate of potash, natural mag nesia, and sulphurate of carbon, all being applied to the roots of the vines, but with little effect. Most of the remedies prescribed by the scientific world for this scourge are very costly under ordinary circumstances, while the expense of bringing them up to and applying them in the Alto Doui-o is fully double what it is elsewhere. From Eoeda we were ferried over to the Quinta dos Car- valhas,immediately opposite, where Messrs. W.and J. Graham usually have their Douro head-quarters. The press-house and adegas,shaded by spreading olive-trees, are clustered together close to the margin of the river, while the vines rise in terraces up the adjacent slopes. Carvalhas produces a high-class, stout, and at the same time mellow wine; but its present yield does not exceed seventy pipes. Higher up on the same side of the Douro, and with many of its slopes facing one of the minor valleys,is the Quinta de Ventozello,belonging to Senhor Antonio de Souza,and producing in good years 150 pipes of high-class wine, regularly purchased by Messrs.G.G.Sandeman and Sons. This quinta had suffered considerablyfrom the phylloxera,which had reduced the yield down to eighty-five pipes. On a subsequent occasion we made an excursion up the valley of the Eio Torto,so named fi-om the labyrinthine course taken by the mountain stream, which is bounded on either side