There are other modes of adulteration, into the mysteries of which I was not admitted. One fact, communicated to me by an eminent wine-merchant, may shake the faith of our connoisseurs as to the genuineness of their favorite beverage. It is, that, from a single pipe of "mother wine," ten pipes are manufactured by the help of inferior wine. This "mother wine" is that which has been selected for its excellence, and is seldom exported pure. The wines, when fresh from the vintage, are as various in their flavor as our cider. It is by taste and _smell_ that the various kinds are selected, after which the poorer wines are distilled into brandy, and the better are put in cases, and placed in store to ripen. The liquor is from time to time racked off, and otherwise managed until ready for exportation. It is _invariably_ "treated" with brandy. French brandy was formerly used, which being now prohibited, that of the island is substituted, although of an inferior quality. Besides the "Madeira wine," so famous among convivialists, there are others of higher price and superior estimation. There is the "Sercial," distinguished by a kind of Poppy taste. There is the Malmsey, or "Ladies' wine," and the "Vina Tinta," or Madeira Claret, as it is sometimes called. The latter is made of the black grapes, in a peculiar manner. After being pressed, the skins of the grapes are placed in a vat, where the juice is poured upon them and suffered to stand several days, until it has taken the hue required. The taste of this wine is between those of Port and Claret. There is a remarkable difference in the quality of the vintages of the north and south sides of the island; the former not being a third part so valuable as the latter. The poorer classes drink an inferior and acid wine. The vineyards are generally owned by rich proprietors, by whom they are farmed out to the laborer, who pays half the produce when the wine has been pressed; the government first taking its tenth. The grape-vines run along frame-work, raised four or five feet from the ground, so as to allow the cultivator room to weed the stalks beneath. The finest grapes are those which grow upon the sunny side of a wall. At the season of vintage, the grapes are placed in a kind of canoe, where they are first crushed by men's feet (all wines, even the richest and purest, having this original tincture of the human foot), and then pressed by a beam.