The cellar-man dips out and puts into the graduated glass amounts corresponding to the number of jars to be taken from each solera, sweet wine being added for sweetness, and color wine for color. As the sugar added in the sweet wine would excite fermentation, sufficient aguardiente, spirit, must be added to bring its alcoholic strength up to at least 18 per cent.
The right blend having been ascertained, it is left for a while, and tasted once or twice to make sure that it is correct. If it does not match the sample, a little of this and that solera is added till it exactly corresponds. The blend is then entered in the blend book, which gives the number of butts required, and the amount to be taken from each solera. The book is then handed in to the bodega for the execution of the blend. Supposing it to be a ten-butt shipment, ten butts are brought into the cellar, having been most carefully examined and rinsed out with spirit. If ten jars are required from a solera of fifty butts, two jars would be drawn from each of the fifty butts of the solera, and put into the ten butts, and so on from each solera; whatever the number of butts in a solera, an equal quantity of wine is drawn from each cask.
The following samples of blends are given by Verdad:
| ORDINARY PALE SHERRY. | ||
| Pale soleras, | 20 | jarras |
| Fino soleras, | 16 | “ |
| Vino dulce, | 3 | “ |
| Aguardiente, | 1 | “ |
| 40 | jarras | |
| ORDINARY GOLDEN SHERRY. | ||
| Pale soleras, | 22 | jarras |
| Oloroso soleras, | 8½ | “ |
| Vino de color, | 2 | “ |
| Vino dulce, | 6 | “ |
| Aguardiente, | 1½ | “ |
| 40 | jarras | |
| ORDINARY BROWN SHERRY. | ||
| Pale soleras, | 23 | jarras |
| Oloroso, | 4 | “ |
| Vino de color, | 5 | “ |
| Vino dulce, | 6 | “ |
| Aguardiente, | 2 | “ |
| 40 | jarras | |
Fining.—After the blend is complete, the wine is fined with the whites of eggs and fuller’s earth, a kind of earth found at Lebrija, near Jerez, and called Tierra de Lebrija. For a butt of wine, a handful of this earth is made into a paste with the whites of ten eggs. The paste is thrown into the cask, and the wine is stirred in the usual manner. (See [Fining].)
CHAPTER XV.
DEFECTS AND DISEASES.
These are Divided by Boireau into two classes: 1. Those defects due to the nature of the soil, to fertilizers employed, to bad processes in wine making, and to the abundance of common, poor varieties of grapes. It is evident that defects of this class may exist in the wines from the moment when they leave the fermenting vat, or the press, and they are as follows: earthy flavor, greenness, roughness, bitterness, flavor of the stems, acidity, want of alcohol, lack of color, dull, bluish, leaden color, flavor of the lees, and tendency to putrid decomposition. 2. Those vices which wines acquire after fermentation, and of which the greater part are due to want of care, or uncleanness of the casks, and they are: flatness, flowers, acidity (pricked wine), cask flavor, mouldiness, bad flavors communicated by the accidental introduction of foreign soluble matters, ropiness, bitterness, acrity, flavor of fermentation, degeneracy, and putrid fermentation.
General Considerations.—Before entering on the subject of the correction and cure of defects and diseases, it is proper to say, that whatever be the nature of the malady or defect, especially if the bad taste is very pronounced, wine once hurt, however completely cured of the disease, will never be worth as much as a wine of the same nature which has always had the correct flavor.
It is, therefore, wiser and more prudent, says our author, to seek to prevent the maladies of wines, than to wait for them to become diseased in order to cure them.
Of course, the wine maker should use every endeavor to remedy the natural defects of his wines. And as for the wine merchant and the consumer, they should reject all vitiated wines, unless they can be used immediately, for they lose quality instead of gaining by keeping.