1895 Mixed Drinks by Herbert W Green

MIXED DRINKS.

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Madeira,a wine of fine bouquet and strong body,made of a mixture of black and wbite grapes. It is tbe cbief export from tbe island of Madeira,a province of Por tugal. The vine wasintroduced soon after tbe discovery of the island. The marriage of the Infanta Catharine of Portugal, to Charles II. of England, some two hundred years later, brought British merchants who established the wine trade at Funchal. Madeira wine became very fashionable in the eighteenth centry,being recommended by army officers, and reached its height at the opening of the nineteenth century. The vine crowded out most all other,crops in the island, necessi tating the importation of breadstufis. When it is men tioned that some of the wine has been keptfrom fifty to one hundred years for maturity; that in 1799 a fieet of ninety-six ships was escorted from Portsmouth to Fun chal by three British men of war; that this fieet took three thousand and forty-two pipes of Madeira wine, partly for the supply of the West Indian Colonies, but mainly for the beneficial effects of the voyage upon the wine,thence to England; that for many years Madeira- merchants sent wine on voyages to the east or west and back for the purpose of subjecting it to the intense heat of the ship's hold and the continued motion of the waves,and thus imparting to it a peculiar fiavor and rich