It has often been said that sherry is a compound wine; but this is a mistake. The best pale and light golden sherries are made from the pure Xeres grape, with only the addition of two bottles of brandy to a butt, which is no more than one two-hundred-and-fiftieth part. This brandy is of an excellent quality; it is imported from Catalunia, and seemed to me scarcely inferior to the best and purest cogniac. Neither are the deep golden and brown sherries of the best quality, compound wines, though they may be called mixed wines. The difference is thus produced:--If a butt of brown sherry be wanted, a butt of light sherry is boiled down to one-fifth part of its bulk, till it acquire a deep brown colour; and one half of this quantity is added to a butt of the best pale sherry, of course removing from it as much as makes room for this additional tenth-part of a butt of boiled wine. When it is said that a butt of light sherry is boiled down, it is not to be understood that this is wine of an inferior kind; it is wine produced from the Xeres grape, planted upon a lighter soil, near the mouth of the Guadalquivir, and producing a somewhat lighter wine. To make a butt of brown sherry, a butt and a half is therefore required, deducting a tenth part; but the brown sherry is not more expensive, because the grape from which the boiled wine is made, is more abundant than the other grape, and consequently cheaper. This boiled wine is also mixed, in the proportion of one half, with unboiled wine,--not to be drank, but to be added in smaller or larger quantities to other sherries, for the mere purpose of giving them colour, should this be desired by the English merchant. It is evident, therefore, from these details, that although brown sherry cannot be said to be a compound wine, inasmuch as it is all the wine of Xeres,--the pale sherries are nevertheless the purest; and all the gradations of colour upon which so much stress is laid, have nothing to do with the quality of the wine, but depend entirely upon the greater or smaller quantity of boiled wine used for colouring it. Taste in wines is one of the most capricious things in the world. I tasted, in the cellar of a merchant in Port St. Mary, a butt of sherry, more than one half of which was boiled wine,--not used for drinking, or meant for sale; but kept merely as colouring matter, and which came off as dark coloured as porter; and I found it delicious. I told the merchant to make an experiment of it, as curious sherry, and to send it to the English market; but he said no one would give the price at which he could afford to sell it: for, to prepare this single butt, three butts had been required--nearly half a butt of the unboiled wine, and more than two butts and a half of the boiled wine, reduced to one-fifth.