Port wine

“ A nutty flavour is produced by bitter almonds; fictitious Port wine is flavoured with a tincture drawn from the seeds of raisins, and the ingredients employed to form the bouquet of high-flavoured wines, are sweet brier, orris-root, clary, cherry-laurel-water, and elder flowers. The flavouring ingredients used by manufacturers, may all be purchased by those dealers in wine who are initiated in the mysteries of the trade. ”

“ If Port wines are short of body, put a gallon or two of brandy into each pipe, as you see necessary. If the wines be in your own stock, put it in by a quart or two at a time, as it feeds the wine better in this way than putting it in all at once; but, if your wines are in a bonded cellar, procure a funnel that will go down to the bottom of the cask, that the brandy may be completely incorporated with the wine. ”

“ And if what you buy for port or sherry be not absolutely a decoction, but only inferior wine made up, then the water equally acts as a detective. For the dilution has the effect of separating, so to speak, the respective tastes of the component parts—brings them out, sir; and you get each distinct. You get, on the one hand, the taste of the bad brandy, harsh, raw, and empyreumatic: and you get, on the other hand, the taste of the poor, paltry wine, wretched stuff, the true vinho ordinario flavour, that makes you think at once of some dirty roadside Portuguese posada, swarming with fleas. ”

“ The Port wine is grown on the banks of the Douro, in a district commencing about fifty miles above the city. It is made in the autumn, and remains in large vats on the farms till the spring, when it is put into casks, and brought down in flat-bottomed boats to the lodges at Villa Nova. Here it is racked and lotted to get rid of impurities, and has brandy put to it to keep it. Our friend assured us that Port wine will not keep for any length of time without brandy; the experiment has been tried over and over again. The only way to make it keep for a short time is to rack it constantly ”

“ From too much ale or porter or claret or burgundy or champagne or sherry or Rhine Wine or Clover Clubs or Piper Heidsieck or brandy or Bronxes or absinthe or stingers, but the worst of all and the best of all is port wine. ”

“ Wine is imported from foreign countries, and is dear. The port wine which is usually drunk, and is the cheapest, is two shillings a quart, retailed in taverns, and not much less than eighteen or twenty pounds the hogshead, when purchased at the best hand ”

“ The white port is grown in vineyards which are not quite so favoured as regards position as the red port growths. White port is made from white grapes, and a peculiarity of its manufacture is that the must is frequently fermented in the presence of the skins, which is most unusual in the case of white wines. This gives a certain stringency to white port, which is characteristic of the wine. ”

“ The following are a few of the recipes employed in the manufacture of spurious wine:
To make British Port Wine. [31] —"Take of British grape wine, or good cyder, 4 gallons; of the juice of red beet root two quarts; brandy, two quarts; logwood 4 ounces; rhatany root, bruised, half a pound: first infuse the logwood and rhatany root in brandy, and a gallon of grape wine or cyder for one week; then strain off the liquor, and mix it with the other ingredients; keep it in a cask for a month, when it will be fit to bottle."
British Champagne.—"Take of white sugar, 8 pounds ”

“ Also one cellar will forward wine much sooner than another. Sound good port is generally in perfection when it has been from three to five years in the wood, and from one to three in bottle.
“Ordinary port is a very uncleansed fretful wine; and we have been assured by wine-merchants of good taste, accurate observation, and extensive experience, that the [Pg 311] best port is rather impoverished than improved by being kept in bottle longer than two years; that is, supposing it to have been previously from two to four years in the cask in this country ”

“ "Port-wine, he says, when rich and sound.
Warms his old bones like nectar:
And as the inns, where it is found,
Are his especial hunting-ground,
We call him the Inn-Spectre." ”

“ But, notwithstanding that there is a more considerable consumption of Champagne than of other light wines, it is not advisable that any private gentleman should have a large stock of this wine in his cellar, as after a twelvemonth it is apt to get ropy, and to require fresh bottling. But of the vins de garde, such as Madeira, Sherry, Port, first-rate Claret, and Burgundy, a host may profitably cellar as large a quantity as his fortune will allow. ”

“ Besides elderberry wine mother made gooseberry wine, currant wine, ginger wine, cowslip wine—all manner of wines; the cellar was kept stocked with a large variety, costing next to nothing. She used them where the modern hostess uses tea in the entertainment of company. Afternoon callers had cake and wine offered to them, and the careful wife of a wasteful husband did not squander the port and sherry. ”

“ Champagne, of course, they make by hogsheads. Do you wish sweet liqueur wines from Italy and the Levant? The Cette people will mingle old Rhone wines with boiled sweet wines from the neighbourhood of Lunel, and charge you any price per bottle. Port, sherry, and Madeira, of course, are fabricated in abundance with any sort of bad, cheap wine and brandy, for a stock, and with half the concoctions in a druggist’s shop for seasoning. Cette, in fact, is the very capital and emporium of the tricks and rascalities of the wine-trade ”

“ The wine growers favor the bill on account of the advantage which the port inspection gives foreign wines over the uninspected American wines. Wines, however, are largely distributed through the wholesale liquor dealers. ”

“ We have good reason to believe that this trick is very often practised in a variety of instances, to the manifest injury of the public and brewers.
Wine is far too wide a subject to be treated here. The great [Pg 87] mass of ports at a cheap and moderate price are made up, it is well known, of several kinds, and doctored according to cost. There is one compound, however, which particularly claims our attention, “publicans’ port.” We are all of us familiar with the announcement to be seen in the windows of such tradesmen, “Fine old crusty port, 2s. 9d. a bottle;” ”

“ Rare ports, “worn-out ports,” grown colourless from age and strength, that cannot be looked at without winking—wondrous bitter Sherries—strange yellow Rhine wines, that gurgle in the glass when poured out—Claret that has made bankrupt the proprietors of the vignobles who grew them, or else sent them mad to think their stock was out—indescribable Cognacs—Maraschinos and Curaçoas that filtrate like rich oil: all these are stored by special wine-merchants in the cellars of the club. ”

“ Carts piled up with baskets, or crowded with peasants from a distance on their way to the vineyards, jostle the low railway-trucks laden with brand-new casks, and the somewhat rickety cabriolets of the agents of the big Champagne houses, who are reduced to clinch their final bargain for a hundred or more pièces of the peerless wine of Ay or Bouzy, Verzy or Verzenay, beside the reeking wine-press. ”

“ In 1860-65 I saw the grape in a piteous plight: the huge bunches were composed of dwarfed and wilted berries, furred and cobwebbed with the foul mycelium. The produce fell to 100-150 pipes, and at present only some 200 to 300 are exported. The Peninsula and the West African coast take the bulk; England and Germany ranking next, and lastly Spain, which used the import largely in making-up wines. The islanders now mostly drink the harsh, coarse Catalonians; they still, however, make for home consumption a cheap white wine, which improves with age. ”

“ Miles of long, dark-brown, dampish-looking galleries stretch away to the right and left, and though devoid of the picturesque festoons of fungi which decorate the London Dock vaults, exhibit a sufficient degree of mouldiness to give them an air of respectable antiquity. These multitudinous galleries, lit up by petroleum-lamps, are mostly lined with wine in bottles stacked in compact masses to a height of six or seven feet, only room enough for a single person to pass being left. ”

“ On descending into the basement beneath, the popping of corks and the continual clatter of machinery intimate that the disgorging and re-corking of the wine are being accomplished, and in the dim light we discern groups of workmen engaged in the final manipulation which champagne has to undergo, while fresh relays of wine are arriving from the cellars by the aid of endless chains. ”

“ It might be worth while to apply electricity in the form used to destroy fusel-oil. Lastly, the wine made for the market is a brand or a blend, not a 'vintage-wine.' At any of the armazems, or stores, you can taste the wines of '70, '75, '76, and so forth, of A 1 quality; and you can learn their place as well as their date of birth. But these are mixed when wine of a particular kind is required and the produce becomes artificial. What is now wanted is a thin light wine, red or white, with the Madeira flavour, and this will be the drink of the future. ”

“ Passing through a large open gateway we enter the vast courtyard of the establishment, which, with arriving and departing carts—the first loaded with wine in cask or with new bottles, and the others with cases of champagne—presents rather an animated scene. ”

“ They are, without any manner of doubt, the most perfect wines that France produces. They keep perfectly, are improved by sea carriage, and may be freely exported to any part of the world. The original fermentation being usually very complete, they are less disposed to acidity, and are more wholesome than the wines of Burgundy. A great proportion of the wine, however, which is drunk as Claret, is but vin ordinaire, or the secondary wine of the country, for the prime growths fall far short of the demand which prevails for these wines all over the world. ”

“ In the autumn when the apples and pears are falling, the peasants will make cider and perry, and get outrageously drunk when these beverages grow hard; but outside of Normandy such drink seldom appeals to castle folk. There are also in common use many substitute 121wines, really infusions of wormwood, hyssop, and rosemary, and taken mostly to clear the system; although "nectar" made of spices, Asiatic aromatics, and honey is really in request.
The great competitor of wine is beer. In northern France we are in the dividing zone between the land of the winepress and the land of the brewhouse. ”

“ A large proportion of the so-called foreign wines sold in America are of American manufacture. The medium grade clarets and so-called Sauternes are made in California, in great quantities. Our Senator, Leland Stanford, makes excellent wines. On the islands of Lake Erie, the lake region of Central New York, and along the banks of the Ohio and Missouri Rivers, are vineyards producing excellent wines. An honest American wine is an excellent thing to drink; and yet it disgusted Commodore McVicker, who was entertained in London as President of our Yacht Club, to be asked to drink American wines. ”

“ The inherited French taste of the greater portion of the population, and the education by contact of the American element, makes claret the universal table wine. The climate, too, renders this wine particularly palatable, and during the long heated term it is seldom absent from the table of even the most economical. At the restaurant it is the exception to see a person dining without a bottle of vin ordinaire, while for breakfast, during hot weather, white wines of the lighter kinds are much used. ”

“ Meanwhile the wine is merely a good wine; the best that I have tasted better than a Beaujolais, and not unlike. But the trade is poor; it lives from hand to mouth, putting its all into experiments, and forced to sell its vintages. To find one properly matured, and bearing its own name, is to be fortune’s favourite.
Bearing its own name, I say, and dwell upon the innuendo.
“You want to know why California wine is not drunk in the States?” a San Francisco wine merchant said to me, after he had shown me through his premises. ”

“ When, in 1510, the ambassadors sent by the Emperor Maximilian to Louis XII., travelled across France to find the prince at Tours, where he was, the queen, on their passage through Blois, sent them fresh sea-fish, with three barrels of old wine of Beaune and Orleans.”
There is a great deal of fashion and caprice in the rise and fall of wines. The reputation of different [315] vintages may be compared to the characters of certain men. To rise above the crowd, it does not alone suffice to be possessed of real merit. ”

“ Different countries produce wines peculiar to themselves; and the wine of Western Australia will be found to be entirely sui generis. All that I have tasted, though made from the poorest of grapes, the common sweet-water, have one peculiarity; a good draught, instead of affecting the head or flushing the face, causes a most delightful glow to pervade the stomach; and it is of so comforting a nature, that the labourers in harvest prefer the home-made colonial wine to any other beverage. Every farm-settler is now adding a vineyard to his estate. ”

“ We also possess the finest sand, and the best adapted for the manufacture of all kinds of glass, in the world; and when it is known that the exports of our wines must, to yield their due value, be put in bottles for the spirit, necessarily, to prevent their fermentation in wood—for export destroys the peculiar flavour of the genuine grape wine of the colony—it cannot be doubted that it is the interest of the vine-growers to forward the establishment of glass manufactories, so essential to the just appreciation of their wine in Europe ”