A Mule Will Travel In This Rough Country With A Load Of 250 Lbs.

This serious difficulty of transport will account for the rude and ancient method of conveying wine in goat-skins.

"No man will put new wine into old bottles," referred to this system of employing skins instead of casks, or other receptacles that could be cleaned and rendered tasteless. The goat-skin would quickly rot, unless it was prepared by a species of tar; thus not only is the naturally unpleasant flavour of the skin imparted to the wine, but the mixture of tar renders it completely abominable to any palate that has not been educated to receive it. Let any person conceive the result of pouring ten or twelve gallons of Chateau Lafitte into an old and dirty goat-skin thoroughly impregnated with tar, and carrying this burden upon one side of a mule, balanced by a similar skin on the other side filled with the choicest Johannisberger. This load, worth at least 70 or 80 pounds at starting, would travel for two days exposed to a broiling sun, and would lie for several days before it would be turned into the vat of the merchant at Limasol. By that time, according to civilised taste, it would be perfectly valueless and undrinkable; if the best wines in the world can be thus destroyed by a savage means of transport, what must the effect be upon such inferior qualities as the crude produce of Cyprus? Common sense will suggest that the first step towards improvement will be the completion of roads throughout the wine districts, that will enable the two-wheeled native carts to convey the wine in barrels direct from the growers to the merchants' stores at Limasol.

We will now commence at the beginning, "the cultivation of the vine," and trace its progress until the wine is ready for the consumer.

As I have already described, the commanderia and the black wines are produced by the two different qualities of soils, but there is no difference in the altitudes. The new British road from Limasol to Platraes, thirty miles, cuts directly through the principal vine districts of the country. From the deep valley and roaring torrent, up to the mountain-tops exceeding 4000 feet above the sea-level, the country is green with vineyards in the middle or latter end of May; not a yard of available land is lost. When the shoots are about three feet long and have shown the embryo bunches, a number of men enter the vineyard with switches and knock off the tender ends of the runners, which in a gentler method of cultivation would be picked off with the finger and thumb-nail. Sometimes goats are turned in to nibble off the shoots in order to save labour, and at the same time to feed the animals; they of course damage the vines, but the Cypriote thinks the system pays. The young vines are never staked and tied as in Europe, but are allowed to take their chance, and the heavy bunches in many instances rest upon the dusty ground.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 160 of 274
Words from 82995 to 83515 of 143016