1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

Ohannpagne 'and Othe1· Sparlcling Wines.

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charine it contains. This was accomplished by reducing a certain quantity of wine by: boiling down to one-sixth, when t he saccharometer should indicate 13° of sugar to ensure each bottle containing the requisite quantity of compressed carbonic acid gas. Messrs. F aITe's cellars, comprising eighteen parallel galleries disposed in two stories, are both lofty and commodious, and are mainly of recent construction, the upper ones being solidly walled with masonry, while those below are simply excavated in t he chalk. H ere, as elsewhere, one performed a lengthened pro– menade between piles after piles of bottles of the finer vintages and a seemingly endless succession of racks, at which workmen were engaged in dislodging the sediment in the wine by the dim light of a tallow candle. It was here that we were assured the more experienced of these men were capable, when working with both hands, of shaking the enormous number of 50,000 bottles a day, or at the rate of seventy to the minute. The fine wines of Messrs. Charles F arre and Co. have long enj oyed a well-deserved celebrity, and at the P aris Exhibition of 1855 the firm secured the highest medal awarded to champagnes. The high repute in which the brand is held on the Continent is evidenced by the fact that the Prussian and other courts are consumers of Messrs. Farre's wines. The firm not. only number England, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Northern Europe, and, as a matter of course, France, among their customers, but also several of the British colonies and North and South America as well. The new establishment of Messrs. Fisse, Thirion, and Co., in the erection of which they have largely profited by their ex– perience and the various resources~of modern science, is situated in the Place de Betheny, in the vicinity of the railway goods station and the local shooting range, largely resorted to at certain seasons of the year, when the crack shots of the Champagne capital compete with distinguished amateurs from · different ,. parts of France and the other side of the Channel. On entering the courtyard through the iron gate to the right of the dwelling-houses of the resident partners-flanked by