Gatherings from Spain

by Richard Ford

When the period of the vintage arrives, the cares of the proprietors and the labours of the cultivators and makers increase. The bunches are picked and spread out for some days on mattings; the unripe grapes, which have less substance and spirit, are separated, and are exposed longer to the sun, by which they improve. If the berries be over-ripe, then the saccharine prevails, and there is a deficiency of tartaric acid. The selected grapes are sprinkled with lime, by which the watery and acetous particles are absorbed and corrected. A nice hand is requisite in this powdering, which, by the way, is an ancient African custom, in order to avoid the imputation of Falstaff, “There is lime in this sack.” The treading out the fruit is generally done by night, because it is then cooler, and in order to avoid as much as possible the plague of wasps, by whom the half-naked operators are liable to be stung. On the larger vineyards there is generally a jumble of buildings, which contain every requisite for making the wine, as well as cellars into which the must or pressed grape juice is left to pass the stages of fermentation, and where it remains until the following spring before it is removed from the lees. “When the new wine is racked off, all the produce of the same vineyard and vintage is housed together, and called a partido or lot.

MANUFACTURE OF SHERRY.

The vintage, which is the all-absorbing, all-engrossing moment of the year, occupies about a fortnight, and is earlier in the Rota districts than at Xerez, where it commences about the 20th of September; into these brief moments the hearts, bodies, and souls of men are condensed; even Venus, the queen of neighbouring Cadiz, and who during the other three hundred and fifty-one days of the year, allies herself willingly to Bacchus, is now forgotten. Nobles and commoners, merchants and priests, talk of nothing but wine, which then and there monopolises man, and is to Xerez what the water is at Grand Cairo, where the rising of the Nile is at once a pleasure and a profit. When the vintage is concluded, the custom-house officers take note in their respective districts of the quantity produced on each vineyard, to whom it is sold, and where it is taken to; nor can it be resold or removed afterwards, without a permit and a charge of a four per cent. ad valorem duty. It need not be said, that in a land where public officers are inadequately paid, where official honesty and principle are all but unknown, a bribe is all-sufficient; false returns are regularly made, and every trick resorted to to facilitate trade, and transfer revenue into the pockets of the collectors, rather than into the Queen’s treasury; thus are defeated the vexations and extortions of commerce-hampering excise, to hate which seems to be a second nature in man all over the world. Commissioners excepted. In the first year a decided difference takes place in these new wines; some become bastos or coarse, others sour and others good; those only which exhibit great delicacy, body, and flavour are called finos or fine; in a lot of one hundred butts, rarely more than from ten to fifteen can be calculated as deserving this epithet, and it is to the high price paid for these by the almacenistas or storers of wines, that the grower looks for remuneration; the qualities of the wines usually produced in each particular termino or district do not vary much; they have their regular character and prices among the trade, by whom they are perfectly understood and exactly valued.

These singular changes in the juice of grapes grown on the same vineyard, invariably take place, although no satisfactory reason has been yet assigned; the chemical processes of nature have hitherto defied the investigations of man, and in nothing more than in the elaboration of that lusus naturæ vel Bacchi, that variety of flavour which goes by the name of amontillado; this has been given to it from its resemblance in dryness and quality to the wines of Montilla, near Cordova: the latter, be it observed, are scarcely known in England at all, nor indeed in Spain, except in their own immediate neighbourhood, where they supply the local consumption. This amontillado, when the genuine production of nature, is very valuable, as it is used in correcting young Sherry wines, which are running over sweet; it is very scarce, since out of a hundred butts of vino fino, not more than five will possess its properties. Much of the wine which is sold in London as pure amontillado, is a fictitious preparation, and made up for the British market.

THE CAPATAZ.

All sherries are a matured mixture of grape juice; champagne itself is a manufactured wine; nor does it much matter, provided a palateable and wholesome beverage be produced. In all the leading and respectable houses, the wine is prepared from grapes grown in the district, nor is there the slightest mystery made in explaining the artificial processes which are adopted; the rearing, educating and finishing, as it were, of these wines, is a work of many years, and is generally intrusted to the Capataz, the chief butler, or head man, who very often becomes the real master; this important personage is seldom raised in Andalucia, or in any wine-growing districts of Spain; he generally is by birth an Asturian, or a native of the mountains contiguous to Santander, from whence the chandlers and grocers, hence called Los Montañeses, are supplied throughout the Peninsula. These Highlanders are celebrated for the length of their pedigrees, and the tasting properties of their tongues; we have more than once in Estremadura and Leon fallen in with flights of these ragged gentry, wending, Scotch-like, to the south in search of fortune; few had shoes or shirts, yet almost every one carried his family parchment in a tin case, wherein his descent from Tubal—respectable, although doubtful—was proven to be as evident as the sun is at noon day.

These gentlemen of good birth and better taste seldom smoke, as the narcotic stupifying weed deadens papillatory delicacy. Now as few wine-masters in Spain would give up the cigar to gain millions, the Capataz soon becomes the sole possessor of the secrets of the cellar; and as no merchants possess vineyards of their own sufficient to supply their demand, the purchases of new wines must be made by this confidential servant, who is thus enabled to cheat both the grower and his own employer, since he will only buy of those who give him the largest commission. Many contrive by these long and faithful services to amass great wealth; thus Juan Sanchez, the Capataz of the late Petro Domecq, died recently worth 300,000l. Towards his latter end, having been visited by his confessor and some qualms of conscience, he bequeathed his fortune to pious and charitable uses, but the bulk was forthwith secured by his attorneys and priests, whose charity began at home.

BODEGAS OF XEREZ.

As the chancellor is the keeper of the Queen’s conscience, so the Capataz is the keeper of the bodega or the wine-store, which is very peculiar, and the grand lion of Xerez. The rich and populous town, when seen from afar, rising in its vine-clad knoll, is characterised by these huge erections, that look like the pent-houses under which men-of-war are built at Chatham. These temples of Bacchus resemble cathedrals in size and loftiness, and their divisions, like Spanish chapels, bear the names of the saints to whom they are dedicated, and few tutelar deities have more numerous or more devout worshippers; but Romanism mixes itself up in everything of Spain, and fixes its mark alike on salt-pans and mine-shafts, as on boats and bodegas. These huge repositories are all above ground, and are the antithesis of our under-ground cellars. The wines of Xerez are thus found to ripen both better and quicker, as one year in a bodega inspires them with more life than do ten years of burial. As these wines are more capricious in the development of their character than young ladies at a boarding-school, the greatest care is taken in the selection of eligible and healthy situations for their education; the neighbourhood of all offensive drains or effluvia is carefully avoided, since these nuisances are sure to affect the delicately organised fluids, although they fail to damage the noses of those to whose charge they are committed; and strange to say, in this land of contradictions, Cologne itself is scarcely more renowned for its twenty and odd bad smells ascertained by Coleridge, than is this same tortuous, dirty, and old-fashioned Xerez. Here, as in the Rhenish city, all the sweets are bottled up for exportation, all the stinks kept for home consumption. The new bodegas are consequently erected in the newer portions of the town, in dry and open places; connected with them are offices and workshops, in which everything bearing upon the wine trade is manufactured, even to the barrels that are made of American oak staves. The interior of the bodega is kept deliciously cool; the glare outside is carefully excluded, while a free circulation of air is admitted; an even temperature is very essential, and one at an average of 60 degrees is the best of all. There are more than a thousand bodegas registered at the custom house for the Xerez district; the largest only belong to the first-rate firms, and mostly to Europeans, that is, to English and Frenchmen. A heavy capital is required, much patience and forethought, qualities which do not grow on these or on any hills of Spain. This necessity will be better understood when it is said, that some of these stores contain from one to four thousand butts, and that few really fine sherries are sent out of them until ten or twelve years old. Supposing, therefore, that each butt averages in value only 25l., it is evident how much time and investment of wealth is necessary.

WINE-MIXING.