If The Population Of Cyprus Is About 200,000, The Maximum Wine-Crop Of 6,000,000 Okes Would Only Yield 30 Okes, Or 60 Ordinary Wine-Bottles, To Each Person During The Year.

The local consumption is exceedingly small, which can only be accounted for by the general poverty of the population.

The exports are directed principally to the various ports of the Levant, Constantinople, Smyrna, Alexandria, in addition to Trieste, and parts of Southern Italy. Some of the dark wines are shipped to Marseilles, for the well-known establishment at Cette, where they are used for mixing with other wines. It should at once be understood that no quality of Cyprus wines is suitable to the English market, as they are generally shunned even by the English residing in the island, where their extreme cheapness might tempt people into the bad taste of consuming them. At the same time, these wines are well appreciated by the native population, especially the dark astringent qualities.

The difficulty of introducing a new wine is well known to English wine-merchants, and the mysteries of the trade would somewhat astonish the innocent would-be connoisseur. There can be no doubt that the palate must be educated to enjoy fine dry wines, precisely as the ear must be instructed before it can appreciate classical music. There is a harmony in the senses of hearing, smell, and taste which is the result of civilised life; this may be right or wrong physically, as the nerves become more delicate and sensitive, which may affect the brain more or less directly. There can be no doubt that it affects the stomach. Certain civilised persons prefer game in a state approaching to decomposition; I have seen savages who enjoy flesh when actually putrid, and above all horrors, fish when stinking! Such food would disgust the civilised man who prefers his game "high," and would perhaps kill other civilised people whose palates and stomachs have been educated to avoid impurities. In the same manner the palate must be educated for wines or other drinks. I gave an old priest a bottle of Bass's pale India ale; he could not drink half a glassful but rejected it as picro (bitter); the same old man enjoyed his penny-a-bottle black Cyprus wine, reeking of tar and half-rotten goat-skins, in which it had been brought to market--a stuff that I could not have swallowed! It must therefore be borne in mind when judging of Cyprian wines, that "English taste does not govern the world." Although the British market would be closed to the coarse and ill-made wines of Cyprus, there are other markets which accept them gladly, and would absorb them to a high degree, were they improved by superior cultivation and manufacture.

At the same time that the produce of Cyprus is now a unsuitable to the English market, there is no reason why it should be excluded at a future time, when scientific culture shall have enhanced the quality.

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