Daily Los Angeles herald., 1881-09-18

fermentation. When L say alcohol
in connection with high, or fair
~ high class Of port wine, 1 ought
to say distilled wine. 1t is a spirit
distilled from the wine itself, and
contains, of course, only that which
is inherent in the wine 1t is derived
from. This spirit, thus added DUR
Ing the growth, as it were, of the
wine, becomes chemically incor.
porated and combined with it
With the cold of autumn the wine
deposits it's lees; it is then racked
off into the ordinary port wiue
pipes-a long and narrow cask
containing lis gallons. In the
spring it is carried down the Douro
to ths warehouses of the merchants
at Oporto,
1t is the practice Of the estab.
lished English wine merchants at
Oporto to buy the grape produce of
the vineyards and to have the wine
made by the farmers uuder their
own superintendenoe, watched and
warehoused by their own employee,
and finally brought into their own
keeping at Oporto. The wine
firms hold enormous stocks of wine
In their warehouses ripenipg for
English consumption. This large
stock is essential to the business,
for the wines shipped are of two
sorts, 'vintage" wines, that is,
wines OF particular year, and
"brand" wines, which are usually
~ cd a ~ n in IF
years. When shipper gets an or
der for, say, n hundred pipes, more
or less, of wine of a particular char
acter, he naturally requires great
variety of wines wherewith to make
up the order. 1t Is to be observed
that a brand wine is not by any
means au inferior wine; it may
often be superior to a vintage wine,
and depends of course upon the
quality of the wines of which 1t is
made up Except in remarkable
years, where nature combines in
one vintage all the various excel
lencies which port wine can pos
sess, | am inclined to think that
port, like her vintage, Is the better
for being made Up Of the pro-
duce of different vineyards
aud even different years. The
wine district, as 1 have shown, is
one huge vineyard; beyond its
limits little good wine is made,
within them little that is not good.
There ia, therefore, no need for
classi fioation of wines by the
names OF their vineyards, as in
France. Some few port wine vine-
yards especially favored in soil
and aspect are known. to fame.
Vesuvio, RoGia, Roriz, Noval and
. very few others have regulations
beyond Portugal.
1t will be seen from my account
Of port wine growing, making and
selling, that the trade is something
Of monopely--a monopoly of le-
Ultimate kind enough, resulting
rom the skill and knowledge ap-
piled to 1t and the capital invested.
The supply, too, is limited by the
limits of the region that furnishes
1t. What with the ravages of the
oidium disease IN the past and of the
phylloXera vastatriX in the present |
and future, l do not think the port |
wine country will in future years |
ever send more than 1000 pipes of |
wine to England.
I have been often questioned, as
a person who ought to know. rs to
thea dietetical properties of port
wine. My own modest opinion
about wipe entirely coiucides with
that which the world at large has
held for several thousand years
past and will probably hold for as
long y timo to come. It is that
wine in moderation is the best and
most harmless restorati We in health
and sickness that the ingenuity of
man has ever invented. I think
that the more wine is wine the
m ere restorative it is. II The
of port wine in the
London hospitals ia, to my knowl-
edee, enormous. 1t is not
the alcohol, but the others and the
other various and purely vinous in
gredients, the cunning product of
natures own laboratory, which
are restorative. y II
Some few doctors advice people to
drink spirits and water rather than
wine. This suggestion seems to
me to be singularly opposed to
common sense and to be put for
ward on the assumption that it ia
the alcohol in the wine that 10
restorative and Of value,
which Is altogether q mistake. 1t
Is u question settled by any one
who drinks glass of fine old Bur-
gundy, or of port, or of sweet To-
kay. SolVitur bibendo. 1 consider
this suggestion of the doctors to be
q particularly mischievous one,
because raw spirits, with or with
out water, spirits not incorporated
and combined with wine, are
to most people stimulating
and certainly neither soothing nor
They certainly are in
furious sooner or later. II man
takes a glass Of wine when he re-
quires it he ia satisfied; he has
taken calmative and tonic. If
he drinks the equivalent alcohol
in the shape of spirits and water
u6 lS bOb saClsueu UT Iudu6 tue U6t-
ter, the dose is too small to calm
his nerves aud large enough to do
him hurt. He wants more and
he goes on. / think II we English
drank wine and beer, eschewing
spirits. we should cease to be u ma
ton of drunkards. I hardly see a
man about Oporto, where
strong port wine is to be got for
trifle in every public house. The
southern Spaniards are as sober rs
the Portuguese, though strong wine
Is their drink too. But it must
not be light wine that we should
drink. 1t Is found In practice that
the general run Of men who drink
light wine qualify it by drinking
spirits neat.
In conclusion, 1 will repeat in
very plain terms what is after all
the most important axiom in con-
nection with wine. 1t il that such
red wine az port, grown In the cen-
ter of the geographical zone which
is the habitat of the vine plant and