1872 Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks (Mixellany)

12 Wines. Champagne an expensive wine. Champagne in- tended for the English market is much drier than that intended for the American and Russian. The French take wine excessively iced, and drink Cham- pagne towards the close of dinner. This wine first attained the great celebrity it still enjoys in the seventeenth century, but it was noted as a first- class wine in the thirteenth century (see Bataille des Vine). Adjoining the district of Champagne, in the South (and indeed a continuation of the same wine tract), is the ancient province of the Dukes of Burgundy— lesprinces des bons vins. Its vineyards produce the glorious wine known as Burgundy — " with all its sunlight glow." This wine during the last century provoked a redoubtable controversy between the professors of physic and men of science of the time. The dis- pute, which related to the comparative merits of Burgundy and Champagne, lasted for nearly a cen- tury, when a solemn decree was pronounced by the Faculty of Medicine in favour of Champagne ; a verdict which certainly was not agreed to by the great Napoleon, whose favourite drink was Cham- bertin, a celebrated kind of Burgundy. Some of the vines in the celebrated vineyard of Clos-de- Vougeot, are said to be 300 years old. This wine,