Amontillado, the produce also of the Xeres grape, is made either intentionally or accidentally: if it be intended to produce amontillado, the fruit is plucked a fortnight sooner than for sherry. But it is an extraordinary fact, that if a hundred butts of wine be taken from a Xeres vineyard, and treated in precisely the same way, several of them will, in all probability, turn out amontillado, without the grower or the merchant being able to assign any reason for this. Amontillado is the purest of all wine; for it will bear no admixture of either brandy, or boiled wine; whatever is added to it, entirely spoils it. Sherries, when adulterated, are not usually adulterated by the London wine merchant, with the exception of those extremely inferior wines, which, from their excessive low price, no one can expect to be genuine wines, and which are probably mixed with Cape. But the class of wines which pass under the denomination of “low-priced sherries,” are not adulterated in London, but at Xeres--by the grower, not by the exporter. These wines are mixed with the wines of Moguer, and with a larger proportion of brandy; and the exporter, in purchasing them from the grower, is quite well aware of their quality: but, being ordered to send a large cargo of low-priced wines, he is forced to purchase and export these. It may be laid down as a fact, that genuine sherry, _one year old_, cannot be imported under thirty shillings per dozen; and if to this be added, the profit of the merchant, and the accumulation of interest upon capital on older wine, it is obvious that genuine sherry, four years old, cannot be purchased in England under forty-five shillings. The principal depositories of wine at Xeres and at Port St. Mary’s, are not cellars, but lightly constructed buildings, containing various chambers. There are generally three tier of casks, laid horizontally upon beams; and in the principal vaults, as many as two thousand five hundred butts may be seen. I noticed many casks without bungs; this, I was told, is not at all prejudicial to the wine, but, on the contrary, if a brick be merely laid upon the hole, to keep out dust, the admission of air is considered an advantage. Sherry is a very hardy wine; and is well known, by the merchants of Xeres, to be improved by exposure to the weather. An illustration of this fact lately occurred: the roof of one of the wine-houses fell in; and, not being rebuilt, the wine was left exposed to the opposite temperatures of winter and summer; and this wine was celebrated as the finest that for many years had left Xeres.