The following note of exports I obtained through the kindness of Mr. Brackenbury, his Majesty’s consul at Cadiz.

“The export of sherry wine and of others under the same denomination, from Xeres, and Port St. Mary, has been for the years following, as under:

“In the year 1821, there were exported 1499 butts.
—1822—11,508¾
—1823—12,476½
—1824—15,059½
—1825—21,297¾
—1826—no return.
—1827—20,150
—1828—26,901
—1829—17,839.”

I expected to have received the note of the first half-year’s export of 1830; but I could not obtain it before leaving Cadiz. I may state, however, that the export of 1830 was expected to fall below fourteen thousand butts.

Taking the average of the last eight years from the foregoing table, presuming the export of 1830 to be fourteen thousand butts, the average export will be seventeen thousand four hundred butts. The price varies much, from 15l. up to 65l.; but as the lower priced sherries form the bulk of the export, the average must be stated low; taking the result of the opinions of the most competent judges, the price of the export overhead, may be stated at 26l. per butt. The value of the sherries exported is therefore 452,000l. sterling—the duty upon the export is 504,600l.; so that if freight and the profit of the merchant in London be added, the consumption of sherries exceeds one million sterling yearly. It will also be observed from the table, that the export for the years 1827, 1828, 1829, and 1830, has exceeded that of 1822, 1823, 1824, and 1825, by seventeen thousand five hundred and fifty butts, though the export of the last two years, has fallen under that of the two years immediately preceding them.

The grape that produces the wine of Xeres, is a green grape; it is allowed to become perfectly ripe, being plucked just before it begins to shrivel: this, in average years, is on the 9th of September,—a day marked in Catholic countries, by being the day before the feast of the immaculate Conception; but in less forward years, the plucking is deferred until the 15th of September, beyond which day it is never protracted. After the plucking, those growers who are the most attentive to their wines, place the grapes in baskets, exposed to the sun for forty-eight hours,—turning and sorting them all the while, according as they appear to require this attention.

It has often been said that sherry is a compound wine; but this is a mistake. The best pale and light golden sherries are made from the pure Xeres grape, with only the addition of two bottles of brandy to a butt, which is no more than one two-hundred-and-fiftieth part. This brandy is of an excellent quality; it is imported from Catalunia, and seemed to me scarcely inferior to the best and purest cogniac. Neither are the deep golden and brown sherries of the best quality, compound wines, though they may be called mixed wines. The difference is thus produced:—If a butt of brown sherry be wanted, a butt of light sherry is boiled down to one-fifth part of its bulk, till it acquire a deep brown colour; and one half of this quantity is added to a butt of the best pale sherry, of course removing from it as much as makes room for this additional tenth-part of a butt of boiled wine. When it is said that a butt of light sherry is boiled down, it is not to be understood that this is wine of an inferior kind; it is wine produced from the Xeres grape, planted upon a lighter soil, near the mouth of the Guadalquivir, and producing a somewhat lighter wine. To make a butt of brown sherry, a butt and a half is therefore required, deducting a tenth part; but the brown sherry is not more expensive, because the grape from which the boiled wine is made, is more abundant than the other grape, and consequently cheaper. This boiled wine is also mixed, in the proportion of one half, with unboiled wine,—not to be drank, but to be added in smaller or larger quantities to other sherries, for the mere purpose of giving them colour, should this be desired by the English merchant. It is evident, therefore, from these details, that although brown sherry cannot be said to be a compound wine, inasmuch as it is all the wine of Xeres,—the pale sherries are nevertheless the purest; and all the gradations of colour upon which so much stress is laid, have nothing to do with the quality of the wine, but depend entirely upon the greater or smaller quantity of boiled wine used for colouring it. Taste in wines is one of the most capricious things in the world. I tasted, in the cellar of a merchant in Port St. Mary, a butt of sherry, more than one half of which was boiled wine,—not used for drinking, or meant for sale; but kept merely as colouring matter, and which came off as dark coloured as porter; and I found it delicious. I told the merchant to make an experiment of it, as curious sherry, and to send it to the English market; but he said no one would give the price at which he could afford to sell it: for, to prepare this single butt, three butts had been required—nearly half a butt of the unboiled wine, and more than two butts and a half of the boiled wine, reduced to one-fifth.

Amontillado, the produce also of the Xeres grape, is made either intentionally or accidentally: if it be intended to produce amontillado, the fruit is plucked a fortnight sooner than for sherry. But it is an extraordinary fact, that if a hundred butts of wine be taken from a Xeres vineyard, and treated in precisely the same way, several of them will, in all probability, turn out amontillado, without the grower or the merchant being able to assign any reason for this. Amontillado is the purest of all wine; for it will bear no admixture of either brandy, or boiled wine; whatever is added to it, entirely spoils it.

Sherries, when adulterated, are not usually adulterated by the London wine merchant, with the exception of those extremely inferior wines, which, from their excessive low price, no one can expect to be genuine wines, and which are probably mixed with Cape. But the class of wines which pass under the denomination of “low-priced sherries,” are not adulterated in London, but at Xeres—by the grower, not by the exporter. These wines are mixed with the wines of Moguer, and with a larger proportion of brandy; and the exporter, in purchasing them from the grower, is quite well aware of their quality: but, being ordered to send a large cargo of low-priced wines, he is forced to purchase and export these. It may be laid down as a fact, that genuine sherry, one year old, cannot be imported under thirty shillings per dozen; and if to this be added, the profit of the merchant, and the accumulation of interest upon capital on older wine, it is obvious that genuine sherry, four years old, cannot be purchased in England under forty-five shillings.

The principal depositories of wine at Xeres and at Port St. Mary’s, are not cellars, but lightly constructed buildings, containing various chambers. There are generally three tier of casks, laid horizontally upon beams; and in the principal vaults, as many as two thousand five hundred butts may be seen. I noticed many casks without bungs; this, I was told, is not at all prejudicial to the wine, but, on the contrary, if a brick be merely laid upon the hole, to keep out dust, the admission of air is considered an advantage. Sherry is a very hardy wine; and is well known, by the merchants of Xeres, to be improved by exposure to the weather. An illustration of this fact lately occurred: the roof of one of the wine-houses fell in; and, not being rebuilt, the wine was left exposed to the opposite temperatures of winter and summer; and this wine was celebrated as the finest that for many years had left Xeres.