Nor were our hopes disappointed. There are innumerable bodegas, or
wine-vaults, in the town, in which bottles and barrels of wine are
neatly caged in labelled array, according to age, quality, and kind.
Very clean and roomy these stores of vinous treasure are, with an
indescribable semi-medicinal odour languidly pervading them. We visited
a bodega belonging to an Englishman, who ranks as a grandee of the
first-class, the Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo and eke of Vitoria, but who is
better known as the Duke of Wellington. The natural wine of this
district is too thin for insular palates. They crave something fiery,
and, by my word, they get it. Like that Irish car-driver who rejected my
choicest, oily, mellow "John Jameson," but thanked me after gulping a
hell-glass of new spirit, violent assault liquefied, they want a drink
that will catch them by the throat and assert its prerogative going
down. What a beamy old imposition is that rich brown sherry of city
banquets, over which the idiot of a connoisseur cunningly smacks his
lips and rolls his moist eyes. If he were only told how much of it was
real and how much artificial, would he not gasp and crimson! It would be
unmerciful to inform him that his pet cordial is charged with sulphuric
acid gas, that it is sweetened with cane-sugar, that it is flavoured
with "garnacha dulce," that it is coloured with plastered _must_ and
fortified with brandy, before it is shipped. Let us leave him in
blissful ignorance. We tasted many samples before we left, but I own I
have no liking for sherries, simple or doctored. Among Spanish wines I
far prefer the full-bodied astringent sub-acidity of the common Val de
Penas, beloved of Cervantes. But the Queen of wines is sound Bordeaux.
To that Queen, however, a delicate etherous Amontillado might be
admitted as Spanish maid-of-honour, preceding the royal footsteps, while
the syrupy Malaga from the Doradillo grape might follow as attendant in
her train.

From wine to women is an easy transition. Both are benedictions from on
high, and I have no patience with the foul churl who cannot enjoy the
one with proper continence, and rise the better and more chivalrous from
the society of the other. Wine well used is a good familiar
creature--kindles, soothes, and inspirits: the cup of wine warmed by the
smile of woman gives courage to the soldier and genius to the minstrel.
With Burns--and he was no ordinary seer--I hold that the sweetest hours
that e'er we