Sherry wine, when mature and perfect, is made up from many butts. The “entire,” indeed, is the result of Xerez grapes, but of many different ages, vintages, and varieties of flavour. The contents of one barrel serve to correct another until the proposed standard aggregate is produced; and to such a certainty has this uniform admixture been reduced, that houses are enabled to supply for any number of years exactly that particular colour, flavour, body, &c., which particular customers demand. This wine improves very much with age, gets softer and more aromatic, and gains both body and aroma, in which its young wines are deficient. Indeed, so great is the change in all respects, that one scarcely can believe them ever to have been the same: the baby differs not more from the man, nor the oak from the acorn.
That Capataz has attained the object of his fondest wishes, who has observed in his compositions the poetical principles of Horace, the callida junctura, the omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci; this happy and skilful junction of the sweet and solid, should unite fulness of body, an oily, nutty flavour and bouquet, dryness, absence from acidity, strength, durability, and spirituosity. Very little brandy is necessary, as the vivifying power of the unstinted sun of Andalucia imparts sufficient alcohol, which ranges from 20 to 23 per cent. in fine sherries, and only reaches about 12 in clarets and champagnes. Fine pure sherry is of a rich brown colour, but in order to flatter the conventional tastes of some English, “pale old sherry” must be had, and colour is chemically discharged at the expense of delicate aroma. Another absurd deference to British prejudice, is the sending sherries to the East Indies, because such a trip is found sometimes to benefit the wines of Madeira. This is not only expensive but positively injurious to the juice of Xerez, as the wine returns diminished in quantity, turbid, sharp, and deteriorated in flavour, while from the constant fermentation it becomes thinner in body and more spirituous. The real secret of procuring good sherry is to pay the best price for it at the best house, and then to keep the purchase for many years in a good cellar before it is drunk.
WINE IN CASK.
To return to the Capataz. This head master passes this life of probation in tasting. He goes the regular round of his butts, ascertaining the qualities, merits, and demerits of each pupil, which he notes by certain marks or hieroglyphics. He corrects faults as he goes along, making a memorandum also of the date and remedy applied, and thus at his next visit he is enabled to report good progress, or lament the contrary. The new wines, after the fermentation is past, are commonly enriched with an arrope, or sort of syrup, which is found very much to encourage them. There are extensive manufactories of this cordial at San Lucar, and wherever the arenas, or sandy soil, prevails. The must, or new grape juice, before fermentation has commenced, is boiled slowly down to the fifth of its bulk. It must simmer, and requires great care in the skimming and not being burnt. Of this, when dissolved, the vino de color, the madre vino, or mother wine, is made, by which the younger ones are nourished as by mother’s milk. When old, this balsamic ingredient becomes strong, perfumed as an essence, and very precious, and is worth from three to five hundred guineas a butt; indeed it scarcely ever will be sold at all. All the principal bodegas have certain huge and time-honoured casks which contain this divine ichor, which inspires ordinary wines with generous and heroic virtues; hence possibly their dedication of their tuns not to saints and saintesses, but to Wellingtons and Nelsons. It is from these reservoirs that distinguished visitors are allowed just a sip. Such a compliment was paid to Ferdinand VII. by Pedro Domecq, and the cask to this day bears the royal name of its assayer. Whatever quantity is taken out of one of these for the benefit of younger wines, is replaced by a similar quantity drawn from the next oldest cask in the cellar.
TASTING WINE.
After a year or two trial of the new wines, it is ascertained how they will eventually turn out; if they go wrong, they are expelled from the seminary, and shipped off to the leathern-tongued consumers of Hamburgh or Quebec, at about 15l. per butt. All the various forms, stages, and steps of education are readily explained in the great establishments, among which the first are those of Domecq and John David Gordon, and nothing can exceed the cordial hospitality of these princely merchants; whoever comes provided with a letter of introduction is carried off bodily, bags, baggage, and all, to their houses, which, considering the iniquity of Xerezan inns, is a satisfactory move. Then and there the guest is initiated into the secrets of trade, and is handed over to the Capataz, who delivers an explanatory lecture on vinology, which is illustrated, like those of Faraday, by experiments: tasting sherry at Xerez has, as Señor Clemente would say, very little in common with the commonplace customs of the London Docks. Here the swarthy professor, dressed somewhat like Figaro in the Barber of Seville, is followed by sundry jacketed and sandalled Ganymedes, who bear glasses on waiters; the lecturer is armed with a long stick, to the end of which is tied a bit of hollow cane, which he dips into each butt; the subject is begun at the beginning, and each step in advance is explained to the listening party with the gravity of a judicious foreman of a jury: the sample is handed round and tasted by all, who, if they are wise, will follow the example of their leader (on whom wine has no more effect than on a glass), by never swallowing the sips, but only permitting the tongue to agitate it in the mouth, until the exact flavour is mastered; every cask is tried, from the young wine to the middle-aged, from the mature to the golden ancient. Those who are not stupefied by the fumes, cannot fail to come out vastly edified. The student should hold hard during the first trials, for the best wine is reserved until the last. He ascends, if he does not tumble off, a vinous ladder of excellence. It would be better to reverse the order of the course, and commence with the finest sorts while the palate is fresh and the judgment unclouded. The thirster after knowledge must not drink too deeply now, but remember the second ordeal to which he will afterwards be exposed at the hospitable table of the proprietor, whose joy and pride is to produce fine wine and plenty of it, when his friends meet around his mahogany.
What a grateful offering is then made to the jovial god, by whom the merchant lives, and by whom the deity is now set from his glassy prison free! What a drawing of popping corks, half consumed by time!—what a brushing away of venerable cobwebs from flasks binned apart while George the Third was king! The delight of the worthy Amphitryon on producing a fresh bottle, exceeds that of a prolific mother when she blesses her husband with a new baby. He handles the darling decanter, as if he dearly loved the contents, which indeed are of his own making; how the clean glasses are held up to the light to see the bright transparent liquid sparkle and phosphoresce within; how the intelligent nose is passed slowly over the mantling surface, redolent with fragrancy; how the climax of rapture is reached when the god-like nectar is raised to the blushing lips!
PRICES OF SHERRY.
The wine suffices in itself for sensual gratification and for intellectual conversation: all the guests have an opinion; what gentleman, indeed, cannot judge on a horse or a bottle? When differences arise, as they will in matters of taste, and where bottles circulate freely, the master-host decides—
“Tells all the names, lays down the law,
Que ça est bon; ah, goûtez ça.”