Commercial Investigator's Journal [?Hughes, Augustus]

Journal of an investigation into the abuses of the Porto Wine Trade, manuscript, 1829. 8vo, half leather over marbled boards; pp. 67 pages MSS.

The unknown author was sent by 'Mr Lancaster' to investigate fraud committed against him by the Porto wine trade. The author appears to be writing to M'rs Horton and Peter Garton with his information. This journal is principally a record of the agent's findings, with digressions for sight-seeing and a letter home to his family. After this letter is the name Augustus Hughes, which may be the signature of the author. By this time the British monopoly, symbolised by the British Factory building, had been broken by the Portugese regulatory powers granted to the Douro Wine Company. The long and detailed breakdown of the operations of the farmers, Douro Wine Company and the English Factory covers the erratic approval process, the dubious storage mechanisms and the mixing of bad wine with good (the 1818 and 1825 vintages being especially poor) which led to the buyer not being sure about the vintage they were buying. The agent describes the splitting of the production into three: home consumption, lucrative export to Brazil, and the remaining third for the British market - all at different prices. There are several pages of probing questions and the answers he received and more on wine-growing districts and the controllers of the Company. The whole has an air of cloak and dagger - he writes about sending letters via a local agent who can get them unintercepted by the packet agent and about being advised not to go into the farming country because of the danger - but still has time to record the sights and experiences of travel. The author appears to have preferred the clean Porto to Lisbon's beggars, though he seems to have enjoyed the trip between them. By the end, he is clearly seeking an exit, writing about his fatigue, before recounting a harrowing triple hanging he saw from his window. A fascinating record of the corruption of the wine trade in Portugal of the 19th century.