IV

SEÑOR Aguera seems to have been a man who looked to the future with more fear than faith, In fact, in business character he appears to have been the direct antithesis of Mr. Gonzalez.
    While the latter was looking at least fifty years ahead with the most confident anticipations, the former was somewhat gloomily regarding the current annual shipments of the firm (a few hundred butts), and expressing the opinion that such a flourishing state of affairs in the Sherry trade could not last for very long!
    And here we may remark in parenthesis that Sr. Aguera was as much in the best traditions of the wine trade in his own particular way as Mr. Gonzalez was in his. Those who know the trade will agree that it could hardly go on without its "dismal jimmies," who are regularly prophesying disaster, and just as regularly being completely confounded!
    Not being gifted with second sight Sr. Aguera had no idea that the firm's annual shipments were to increase to such an extent year by year that the huge total of 10,000 butts (about 1.080,000 gallons) per annum would be reached in his own lifetime.
    So, being convinced that "it could not go on like this," he decided to go while the going was good, and after a very few years' association with Mr. Gonzalez, he retired.
    The business had now reached such a stage of prosperity that it was impossible for the Founder to carry on properly without a partner. Determined as he was to concentrate more and more on the producing side, Mr. Gonzalez had little time to visit England and other markets to make himself known to existing customers and establish contact with new ones.
    It was at this time that he was introduced to Mr. John Dubosc, a Frenchman resident in Spain and so firmly established there that even his name had acquired a Spanish flavour, and he was commonly called Mr. Del Bosc.
    Even by this time (and it was now near the close of the first half of last century) the inhabitants of Spain took little more than a passing interest in the fine wines their country produced, so trade with England was still the mainstay of the firm. It was to be Mr. Dubosc's duty to look after the English market, as well as visiting Germany, Russia, and other European countries where the products of M. M. Gonzalez & Co. were beginning to be known and appreciated.
    In tracing the history of the firm so far we have been rather too busy to take even a glance at the domestic life of Mr. Gonzalez and his hard-won wife, the former Miss de Soto. Not that it can interest the reader very much, since the match had proved to be an ideally happy one from every point of view-and it is only when the matrimonial situation is reversed that interesting reading matter is made possible.
    Their first son, Manuel Crispulo, was born in the year 1846, and their second, Pedro Nolasco, three years later. These were the children of the Founder who played an important part in the subsequent fortunes of the firm.
    Mr. Dubosc proved an excellent ambassador for Gonzalez' Sherries abroad, and within a very short time of their association beginning he was taken into partnership, and in the year 1851 the old style of the firm (M. M. Gonzalez & Co.) was abandoned, being replaced by the name of Gonzalez & Dubosc. In the days before limited liability companies generally replaced partnerships it was quite customary to change the name of the firm as different partners went in or out, but it is worthy of note that the first name in all the several titles that the firm has borne in its century of existence has always been "Gonzalez."
    Statistics of the shipments of Gonzalez and Dubosc at the time of their partnership agreement in 1851 show that the firm was now thoroughly on its feet and that the partners must have been a very overworked pair of men.

Mr. Gonzalez and Mr. Dubosc entertaining guests in the year 1851. Among those seen are Father Fontan, chaplain to the Gonzalez family, Mssrs. Romero Valdespino and P. Hermet and captain Thompson, who drew this picture.

    Mr. Gonzalez had built up such a generous solera system and such great stocks that the "Sacristy" bodega was almost fit to burst its walls with the quantity of Sherry that was housed in so limited a space. The partners now looked out of the window of their little sampling room and saw the adjoining area of barren ground, covered, more or less, with disused brick kilns.
    Little time was wasted in mere looking, however. Several acres were purchased, and work was put in hand to build that part of the present-day establishment which is known as "La Constancia." In 1853 the foundation stone was laid by M. M. Gonzalez's eldest son, Manuel.
    Meanwhile Dubosc had been as busy as he well could be in England. Trade was increasing so rapidly that he came to the conclusion that it was high time that Gonzalez and Dubosc had their own English agent.
    They appointed Mr. Robert Blake Byass, partner in the firm of Byass & Barclay, of the City of London. Byass & Barclay were well-known merchants with big interests in coal.
    The arrangement proved eminently satisfactory, and very shortly led to Mr. Byass joining the Jerez firm as a partner, resulting in yet another change in the style of the concern.
    For the first time there were three partners, Gonzalez, Byass and Dubosc, trading under the name of Gonzalez, Dubosc & Co. The partnership deed was signed in 1855 just as the new "Constancia" bodega was completed. At this time shipments of the firm to England were in the region of 3,000 butts annually, and it is no small tribute to the energies and abilities of the new English partner that that amount was much more than doubled in the first five or six years of his work in the Sherry business,
    For some years previously Mr. Gonzalez had been acquiring vineyards and other property in the district. These continued to belong to him personally, and were not affected by the partnership arrangements.
    In the year 1859 Dubosc died, and some difficulty arose owing to the fact that the remaining two partners were, very wisely, reluctant to change the name of the firm again. An arrangement was made with Mrs. Dubosc whereby the firm continued to be carried on under the same name as when her husband was alive.
    About this time the fashionable people of Madrid suddenly began to realise that England (which has always led and still continues to lead the world in the connoisseur-ship of wines) was making much of Sherry Wine, and it was not long before the Gilbertian situation arose in which Spanish gourmets began to offer their guests a glass of the wine produced within a few miles of their own homes because it was the fashionable thing to do in London,
    But, Gilbertian or not, this foible of fashion became in due course an established practice, and Spain was beginning to drink Sherry in earnest.

 

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