Daily Los Angeles herald., 1881-09-18
Wine and Wine Merchants.
VI

Hook and burgundy can hardly
be regarded as common wines. In
England. The common, rough
burgundies, indeed, find their way
into consumption, and an indis-
eliminating public classes them
with clarets; and not unwisely.
seeing that the inferior French red
wines are artificialiy brought to
something of common standard.
The "great wines' of the burgun-
dy district, the "clos vougeot,"
"richebourg," and "Romanee con-
ti,p the most exquisite of wines,
true. "drink of the gods" will
probably never be known in their
full perfection beyond the region Of
their production. They will hard
Iy bear travel by land, and transit
by sea almost always Injuries them.
Unfortunately in the case of the
wine of modern times, which is im-
measurably superior to all others,
the skill of the modern wine-curer
utterly breaks down. Though port
wine has the reputation of being
the most adulterated and the least
natural Of al! wines, it is to the
beet of my knowledge and belief
and I have had opportunities of
watching all the processes of maxi
ing it during thirteen years-one of
the very purest. L believe that a
man who drinks glass of port
drinks nearly patural and as con-
centrsted form of fermented
grape juice as it is humanity posi-
BILE to set before him.
Adulteration is in wine, or in
every thing else, mostly an affair
of competition and of public taste.
Formerly Englishmen liked port
wine to be almost black in color,
and very fruity and strong, where
upon dried elderberries were em-
ployed to help to stain it. If one
merchant did it Ills rivals had to
follow suit. 1t was deplorable
enough, but little too much was
made of it, for the wine was by no
means seriously injured or made
upwholeseme. AS for
adulterstion by log-wood it always
was a libelous fable. Any chemist
knows that the peculiar reaction of
lockwood makes it absolutely in-
operative as dye in any sort of
wine. AS long as the public want
port wine to have no more than its
own true .garnet-red color, which
turns with age to D dark amber, no
merchant would bs SO extravagant
as to put elderberry into it. If the
wine is required to be made darker,
there is much cheaper dye, aud q
far more beautiful one always at
hand in Portugal; it IS the natural
color of the darker varieties of the
port wine grape. TO say that
grapes are cheaper in Portugal
than elderberries in England,
seems an eXaggerati0n, but to my
certain knowledge they are much
cheaper. [ wish to
make this point clear in support of
my contention that port wine 10
pure, because there is nothing so
cheap as port wine itself to adul-
terate it with. A curious fact is
that the common rough claret
wines grown in the neighborhood
of Oporto and drunk by the peas
anlry are often dearer than the
choice vintages of the port wine
district. The apparent anomaly is
to be accounted for by the fact that
while the commoDer wine ia drink
able within six months of it's leav-
ing the wine vat, new port wine
the trade speak of 1t as Young
wiue-has gone but one stage OF
Its journey toward being ,drinkable
port wine. 1t has to be kept, to be
racked, to be fined, to be sklllfully
"turned over,n to be carefully
watched, to be fortified with dis
titled wine, and previous to all this
to be carried perilous voyage
down the River Douro, to pay
warehouse charges in Oporto
and England, to pay tax on
export, a heavy import duty,
merchants profits, freight charges,
insurance charges aud several
others. Port wine had need then
to start cheap, for else, assuredly,
none but millionaires could ever
drink it,
Port wine is made 10 only one
corner of Portugal. 1t Is district
marked out by nature itself to be
one huge vineyard; its soil is y
peculiar brown, crumbling, slaty
schist; it is cut off from the sea by
one lofty range of mountains, it is
shut in from the north and east by
Others. This district OF the port
wine vineyard is billy and precip.
itous, and the vines grow GU the
barren looking soil built up in
multitudlnous terraces often from
top to bottom of the hills. This
singular tract lies about sixty
miles up tho Douro and on its
banks, and it occupies d strip of
country about twenty-seven miles
in length and five or SIX in breadth.
1t is cold here in winter, but in
sum mer the sun shines in the mar
row valley, and it 10 reverberated
from the hill amphitheatres with a
particular intensity. The whole
region cut off from the breezss,
lies still and becalmede under the
summer sun; the heat is tropical.
Nowhere else in Europe can The
vines get such roasting, nowhere
else are the juices of the grape
elaborated INTO such rich and po-
tent liquor. One understands port
wine at the first glance of the wine
country. 1t would of course he
easy to get hotter sum mer in the
tropics, but the vine is not plant
of the tropics, it wants the severe
cold of winter to give it seasonal.
BILE rest. 1t gets THE; the port
wine district ia one Of the few parts
of Portugal where have seen ice