heavy kind, its fermentative principle will rectify this; but if old and light, it often takes a long time to become bright again.

A warm cellar, and still more quickly, the heat of a fire, or placing the bottle in warm water, will dissolve the floating opaque parts.

It is not surprising that there are grievous complaints against 'sweet' port, for it is often like syrup; but this fault will continue while dealers and drinkers require more colour and body than the juice of any grape can supply. The natural consequence has been, a call for dry;' but this frequently leads to disappointment, because dryness is generally the result of bad seasons, when there is a deficiency of the qualities necessary to constitute a perfect wine.

I have no doubt the demand for port may be resuscitated by any house of capital, experience, and energy which will resume the course practised previous to 1820, when port was the favourite wine of this country. There is not, and was not any mystery about it; for it was simply to retain the wine in Oporto, about three years, racking and fining it two or three times, and then shipping it. If originally good and well fermented, with less spirit than is now added, it will be a fine, fresh, good wine, with sufficient colour, and will be in perfection in four or five years.

On arrival it may, perhaps, be desirable to give it another fining and racking, to put it still earlier

forward. The albumen in whites of eggs, and isinglass, both from their weight and their combination with portions constituting the wine, carry to the bottom of the cask some of the colour as well as of the body, and should therefore be used cautiously. Racking has less effect, being little more than drawing off the bright part from the lees.

As a rule, almost invariable, ports with the hard stalky dryness, which are often liked from their contrast to those with sweetness, are the produce of a cold and unfavourable season. I remember once getting thirty or forty dozens of this kind from a gentleman's cellar-very old, and as black and dry as a piece of burned stick, with a dead, heavy flavour. It was very different from what I considered fine old port; but a few professed connoisseurs having tasted it, immediately divided it among them at a high price, and I often heard it praised afterwards.

When the produce of very hot seasons has been put into bottle before being allowed, by fermentation in bulk, to reduce the saccharine, and deposit a portion of the vegetable matter, little change can be expected to take place for many years; simply because, owing to the small quantity in a bottle, there is not fermentative matter sufficient to enable the process to operate except at a very slow rate.

But the same wine, if it has been kept in cask

until it has ripened by the deposit of its lees, and has been occasionally freed from them by racking, will turn out in bottle the best that can be expected of any wine with twenty or thirty gallons of spirit added to its own natural strength.

Mr. Ballantyne, to whose letter I have already alluded, gives an insight into the practical working of the trade and the social habits of the people, in a vivid and seemingly truthful manner. It is strange to read the description by Christopher Smith (probably the head of the still-existing firm of Sebastian Smith & Co.) of the manner of drinking at that period:

sure.

When he attained manhood, he drank wine at taverns at 8d. per quart, served up in a curious pewter meaWhen a good pipe of port on draught was grown flat, a hogshead was filled, and in time put on draught, and lastly was put in a half-hogshead; and those casks were seldom clean, and therefore it was often very bad in inns and taverns.

Wines long kept at Oporto grow tawny, vapid, and get what we call in Oporto the country taste. Those who took my advice ordered two-year-old wine, and obtained more praise from their customers than ever before.

About the year 1790 and 1791, I had about 170 wine merchants chiefly taking their port wine from me (among all of whom there were not ten who sought cheap wine), and these mostly great importers, who sold to publicans and the lesser dealers, making no pretensions to supply gentlemen's tables.

White port was very subject to ferment in summer and to grow foul in winter, when we mixed a little Teneriffe, which improved its flavour, and prevented any further fermentation; and when a pipe of red port became too

MISTAKE ABOUT OUR FOREFATHERS.

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old for our customers, we enriched it to their taste with newer wine; for at that time superannuated port was not esteemed.

The writer states that when he wrote (in 1807) the shipment to England of port, red and white, was 38,973 pipes, and of sherry 11,000 butts. In 1862, the quantities were 24,832 pipes of port, and 52,876 butts of sherry; and last year (1863) it was 30,044 pipes of port, and 66,321 butts of sherry.

We learn from this valuable letter that sherry was scarcely known till about 1780, and that previous to its introduction white port was much used; as also wines from Lisbon, as may be seen more at length in treating of Lisbon. In a former chapter, I have stated my belief, after a good deal of investigation, that it is altogether a mistake to suppose that our forefathers drank light wines;' and that, on the contrary, they drank coarse, ill-made, compounded wines, such as would now be abominated.

I am glad to be able to give here a drawing of a lodge in Villa Nova, and a description of the whole process of the trade there, so clear and excellent that it cannot be otherwise than generally interesting. It is from the evidence of Mr. Gassiot, the able head of the firm of Messrs. Martinez, Gassiot, & Co., on the occasion of a trial lately against the London Dock Company.

The lodges, as they are called in Villa Nova, in which the wines are kept, are large isolated ware

Bose from the boss to the g of the rocky hi and present a very plasing efen Joning ross the fiver from Spor

In his evidence, Mr. Gassiot says

The wines that arrive from the wine country after the vintage, about March, April, and May, are entered immediately in this manner :-Bought, No. so-and-so, ten pipes, eleven pipes, twelve pipes; generally about seventy pipes at a time. The fact is entered in the lodge diary; that is the first operation. When the vintage wines have all come down, they are tasted, one by one, by the proper authorised cooper, who examines each. He exercises his judgment, and separates the wines into one, two, or more lots; and when the entire purchase that was made in the wine country has been received, then comes the operation of general lotting for that vintage.

Afterwards follows the operation of blending, and bringing the lots into perfect uniformity together; and the mode in which that has been done, I can better exemplify