The _Bota_ must not be confounded with the _Borracha_ or _Cuero_, the wine-skin of Spain, which is the _entire_, and answers the purpose of the barrel elsewhere. The _bota_ is the retail receptacle, the _cuero_ is the wholesale one. It is the genuine pig’s skin, the adoration of which disputes in the Peninsula with the cigar, the dollar, and even the worship of the Virgin. The shops of the makers are to be seen in most Spanish towns; in them long lines of the unclean animal’s blown out hides are strung up like sheep carcases in our butchers’ shambles. The tanned and manufactured article preserves the form of the pig, feet and all, with the exception of one: the skin is turned inside out, so that the hairy coat lines the interior, which, moreover, is carefully pitched like a ship’s bottom, to prevent leaking; hence the peculiar flavour, which partakes of resin and the hide, which is called the _borracha_, and is peculiar to most Spanish wines, sherry excepted, which being made by foreigners, is kept in foreign casks, as we shall presently show when we touch on “good sherris sack.” A drunken man, who is rarer in Spain than in England, is called a _borracho_; the term is not complimentary. These _cueros_, when filled, are suspended in _ventas_ and elsewhere, and thus economise cellarage, cooperage, and bottling; and such were the bigbellied monsters which Don Quixote attacked. As the _bota_ is always near every Spaniard’s mouth who can get at one, all classes being ever ready, like Sancho, to give “a thousand kisses,” not only to his own legitimate _bota_, but to that of his neighbour, which is coveted more than wife: therefore no prudent traveller will ever journey an inch in Spain without getting one, and when he has, will never keep it empty, especially when he falls in with good wine. Every man’s Spanish attendant will always find out, by instinct, where the best wine is to be had; good wine neither needs bush, herald, nor crier; in these matters, our experience of them tallies with their proverb, “mas vale vino _maldito_, que no agua _bendita_,” “cursed bad wine is better than holy water;” at the same time, in their various scale of comparisons, there is good wine, better wine, and best wine, but no such thing as bad wine; of good wine, the Spaniards are almost as good judges as of good water; they rarely mix them, because they say that it is spoiling two good things. Vino _Moro_, or Moorish wine, is by no means indicative of uncleanness, or other heretical imperfections implied generally by that epithet; it simply means, that it is pure from never having been baptized with water, for which the Asturians, who keep small chandlers’ shops, are so infamous, that they are said, from inveterate habit, to adulterate even water; _aguan el agua_. [Sidenote: MONEY.]