T. T. Greg

“ And again on the slopes, in full blaze and glare of the sun, do men grow the celebrated Malmsey, and the grapes whence proceed this notorious wine must needs be over-ripe and all but shrivelled, so that the juice expressed therefrom may be of an exceeding fragrance and superabundant richness. ”

“ The highest quality Malmsey, with a proper sense of remoteness and insolent aristocracy, comes, or came, from a small avalanche of tufa lying at the foot of a cliff all but inaccessible. And one small farm only grows the wine which the Royal House of Portugal was wont to keep for its own exclusive use. And cousin-german to the Malmsey, through the collateral line, is the Sercial, descended from the grape which in other lands nearer home produced Hock; the wine of the Affinities. ”

“ The march of Time can do nothing against him, only to mellow and soften him and make us love him. Indeed, one can hardly be said to be on speaking terms with him unless we have him lurking in the wood these eight or ten years, and afterwards have completed his education and softened the acidities of his young temper in bottle for at least twice that period. ”

“ Alone and unaccompanied he should disappear slowly and with method down the throats of those who love him, conferring some essence of his own greatness upon them; for, great as he is in all other particulars, he has, above all, the indescribable qualities—style and distinction. ”

“ He appears at fitful intervals at the tables of men who have heavy and loaded clarets, and ports that are of little good save to administer to the dying poor to accelerate their end. Now the reason of this is not far to seek. He is such a mysterious fellow that he has hobnobbed with a man’s ancestors, and has taken up an abode in their cellars, and comes down to this ignorant generation by an accident of bequest or intestacy, and these modern heirs bring him out with a sort of mixed pride and diffidence, offering him as some old wine which “my grandfather” was sometime the possessor of ”

“ He is so rare, so select, so refined. Few there be who can ever meet him face to face. He is filled with curious and quaint learning, and he has picked up in the common rooms of Oxford colleges a knowledge of mixed oaths and the now dead languages. ”

“ For the vines are planted upon lines of trellis-work in front of the houses, and the branches are deftly led over the tops, and the sun rays fall down and beat upon them horizontally, so that beneath is an arbour of shady and green coolness. ”

“ Rather, this venerable fellow is the companion of the advanced Sybarite. He is a product of extreme artificiality; he has nothing in common with nature. Moreover, he induces, so his enemies assert, the fell Podagra or gout. ”