Wine and Wine Countries. A Record and Manual for Wine Merchants and Wine Consumers. New Edition

London Whittaker & Co..., 1877. Small 8vo, 165 x 102 mms., pp. viii, 519 [520 blank, 7 [8 blank], mounted original photograph of author, steel-engraved additional frontispiece, plus 19 plates including 4 maps (French wine growing districts), and a folded facsimile sheet of an autograph contract between Lord Bronte Nelson and Woodhouse & Co., original green cloth, gilt spine; slight wear to hinges and binding, but a very good copy, inscribed by the author on the verso of the front free end-paper, "Cl. G. Anderson, Sq[q]/ with the Authors/ compts." Charles Tovey (1812 - 1888) distinguished himself both as wine merchant and author. Born in Bristol, he spent his entire life there, and announced himself as wine merchant in the Bristol Mercury on 29 November 1834 as "already in business as an importer of wines and spirits, with a great variety of stock in bonded cellars. In particular he notes that his white wines are in 'white' (clear) glass bottles with clean white corks, as opposed to the black glass more commonly used at that period." He also added that he claimed the "merit" of importing wines from the eastern Pyrenees and Roussillon and also that increasing demand for these wines were "a surety of its excellence. One fact in regard to these Wines is not to be overlooked, they possess only about 8 to 10 per cent. of spirit, whilst the average of Peninsular Wines contain from 20 to 25 per cent." Tovey amusingly and perhaps slightly ironically observed, "Men can get together sometimes without talking of women, without talking of horses, without talking of politics; but they cannot assemble to eat a meal together without talking of wine; and they cannot talk of wine without assuming to each one of themselves an absolute infallibility in connection with that single subject, which they would shrink from asserting in relation to any other topic under the sun." The first edition was published in 1862 http://westcountrybottles.co.uk/mike4/Companies/Bristol_Companies/Tovey.html