Pedro could hardly believe his ears for joy, when the mysterious order was transmitted to him, to prepare for the secret return: yet he did not in his transports forget the coveted vine. The plant thus obtained, tended and preserved with much care and anxiety through the voyage, might still have been condemned to perish, had he been called to active service; but the rough life and the long voyage had impaired his health. After several months in hospital, during which time, you may be sure, he did not neglect his precious plant, he was sent home invalided.
He found his own viña in a sad state of neglect; but his native air having soon restored his strength, he was able within a few years more, not only to bring it round again, but also to produce a goodly show from his newly imported vine-stock. And from this vintage it is—the Rhenish stock planted in Andalusian soil, and cultivated with tender care and intelligence—that we get the choice variety of sherry wine (you can ask Papa to let you taste it some day at dessert) called “Pedro Jimenez.”
[1] There is so little trace of flesh meat in it that it was allowed on fast-days. [↑]
[2] Tamaño como del codo á la mano. [↑]
ST. MARTIN IN SPAIN.
About the time that the Pedro Jiménez vintage was coming into growth, a favourite old vintage of Spain was just becoming exhausted, or for some reason going out of fashion,—the white wine of San Martin, so called from the locality of its production in Castilla la Vieja, not far from Toledo.
Now it happens that in Spain—where Christianity has woven itself more familiarly perhaps than any where else into the home traditions of the people, and every class and state of man has assigned to it a special patron—that St. Martin is counted the patron Saint of drunkards. “Patron Saint of drunkards!” you will perhaps exclaim; “what have Saints got to do with drunkards?” But think a little, and remember how mercifully our Lord associated “with publicans and sinners,” that He might reclaim them, and then you will say it is not so strange after all. Drunkards are very few in Spain, so few that there is no idiomatic word to call them by—nothing but the popular mocking expression borracho, which is simply formed by putting a masculine termination to the word borracha, a wine-skin; for you know it is the common practice in Spain, to store all the wine that is intended for use within a short period, in skins instead of barrels. And very curious it is, I assure you, when you are travelling in Spain, to see great skins of pigs and goats, sometimes with the hair still on, hanging up in the wine-shops, swelled out to their utmost extent with wine.
I was curious to find out how St. Martin came to be reckoned the male-wineskin’s patron; and in course of my inquiries, came upon two or three little traditions which may amuse you.