The central provinces of Spain consume but little of these; Leon has a wine of its own which grows chiefly near Zamora and Toro, and it is much drunk at the neighbouring and learned university of Salamanca, where, as it is strong and heady, it promotes prejudice, as port is said to do elsewhere. Madrid is supplied with wines grown at Tarancon, Arganda, and other places in its immediate vicinity, and those of the latter are frequently substituted for the celebrated Valdepeñas of La Mancha, which was mother’s milk to Sancho Panza and his two eminent progenitors; they differed, as their worthy descendant informed the Knight of the Wood, on the merits of a cask; one of them just dipped his tongue into the wine, and affirmed that it had a taste of iron; the other merely applied his nose to the bung-hole, and was positive that it smacked of leather; in due time when the barrel was emptied, a key tied to a thong confirmed the degustatory acumen of these connoisseurs.
THE BEST VINEYARDS.
The red blood of this “valley of stones” issues with such abundance, that quantities of old wine are often thrown away, for the want of skins, jars, and casks into which to place the new. From the scarcity of fuel in these denuded plains, the prunings of the vine are sometimes as valuable as the grapes. Even at Valdepeñas, with Madrid for its customer, the wine continues to be made in an unscientific, careless manner. Before the French invasion, a Dutchman, named Muller, had begun to improve the system, and better prices were obtained; whereupon the lower classes, in 1808, broke open his cellars, pillaged them, and nearly killed him because he made wine dearer. It is made of a Burgundy grape which has been transplanted and transported from the stinted suns of fickle France, to the certain and glorious summers of La Mancha. The genuine wine is rich, full-bodied, and high-coloured. It will keep pretty well, and improves for four or five years, nay, longer. To be really enjoyed it must be drunk on the spot; the curious in wine should go down into one of the cuevas or cave-cellars, and have a goblet of the ruby fluid drawn from the big-bellied jar. The wine, when taken to distant places, is almost always adulterated; and at Madrid with a decoction of log wood, which makes it almost poisonous, acting upon the nerves and muscular system.
The best vineyards and bodegas or cellars are those which did belong to Don Carlos, and those which do belong to the Marques de Santa Cruz. One anecdote will do the work of pages in setting forth the habitual indifference of Spaniards, and the way things are managed for them. This very nobleman, who certainly was one of the most distinguished among the grandees in rank and talent, was dining one day with a foreign ambassador at Madrid, who was a decided admirer of Valdepeñas, as all judicious men must be, and who took great pains to procure it quite pure by sending down trusty persons and sound casks. The Marques at the first glass exclaimed, “What capital wine! where do you manage to buy it in Madrid?” “I send for it,” was the reply, “to your administrador at Valdepeñas, Anglice unjust steward, and shall be very happy to get you some.”
VALDEPENAS.
The wine is worth on the spot about 5l. the pipe, but the land carriage is expensive, and it is apt, when conveyed in skins, to be tapped and watered by the muleteers, besides imbibing the disagreeable smack of the pitched pigskin. The only way to secure a pure, unadulterated, legitimate article, is to send up double quarter sherry casks; the wine is then put into one, and that again is protected by an outer cask, which acts as a preventive guard, against gimlets, straws, and other ingenious contrivances for extracting the vinous contents, and for introducing an aqueous substitute. It must then be conveyed either on mules or in waggons to Cadiz and Santander. It is always as well to send for two casks, as accidents in this pays de l’imprévu constantly happen where wine and women are in the case. The importer will receive the most satisfactory certificates signed and sealed on paper, first duly stamped, in which the alcalde, the muleteer, the guardia, and all who have shared in the booty, will minutely describe and prove the accident, be it an upset, a breaking of casks, or what not. Very little pure Valdepeñas ever reaches England; the numerous vendors’ bold assertions to the contrary notwithstanding. As sherry is a subject of more general interest, it will be treated with somewhat more detail.
SHERRY.
CHAPTER XIV.
Sherry Wines—The Sherry District—Origin of the Name—Varieties of Soil—Of Grapes—Pajarete—Rojas Clemente—Cultivation of Vines—Best Vineyards—The Vintage—Amontillado—The Capataz—The Bodega—Sherry Wine—Arrope and Madre Vino—A Lecture on Sherry in the Cellar—at the Table—Price of Fine Sherry—Falsification of Sherry—Manzanilla—The Alpistera.
SHERRY, a wine which requires more explanation than many of its consumers imagine, is grown in a limited nook of the Peninsula, on the south-western corner of sunny Andalucia, which occupies a range of country of which the town of Xerez is the capital and centre. The wine-producing districts extend over a space which is included—consult a map—within a boundary drawn from the towns of Puerto de Sª. Maria, Rota, San Lucar, Tribujena, Lebrija, Arcos, and to the Puerto again. The finest vintages lie in the immediate vicinity of Xerez, which has given therefore its name to the general produce. The wine, however, becomes inferior in proportion as the vineyards get more distant from this central point.