1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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The Rei'l'li.s Estahlislvments.

gardens brilliant with flowers and foliage-we first reach the offices and tasting-rooms, and then the entrance to the cellars. A speciality of this important pile of building is that everything employed in its construction is of stone, brick, or iron, wood having been- rigorously excluded from it. In the rear of the courtyard, which presents that aspect of animation common to flourishing establishments in the Champagne, is the principal cellier, with a sn;iall building in front, where· a steam.pump for pumping up water from the chalk is installed, while at right angles with the cellier are the stables and 0 bottle-sheds. The large cellier, which is 20 feet high and 80 ~eet broad, will be no less than 260 feet in length when completed. It contains two stories, the floors of both of which are cemented, the lower story being roofed with small brick arches connecte·d by iron girders, and the upper one with tiles resting on iron supports. The cement keeps the temperature remarkably cool in the lower cellier where wine in cask is stored, the upper cellier being appropriated to' wine in racks sur pointe, bales of corks, and the wicker-baskets and cases in which the wine is packed. The preparation of the wines in cask and the bottling take place in the lower of the two celliers, a mere lad being enabled, by the aid of the mechanism provided, to bottle from six to eight thousand bottles a day. A single workman can cork about 4,500 bottles, which a second workman secures with metal agrafes before they are lowered into the cellars. The latter are of two stories, each being divided into three long parallel galleries 20 feet high and 23 feet wide, vaulted with stone and floored with cement. Bordering the endless stacks of bottles are small gutters, into which the wine flows from the eA}Jloded bottles. Lofty, well ventilated, and beautifully cool, the temperature in– variably ranging from 45° to 47° Fahrenheit, these capitally-con– structed cellars combine all that is r equi.J:ed for a champagne establishment of the first class. The breakage has never ex– ceeded 3 per cent., whereas in some old cellars which the firm formerly occupied in the centre of the city, their breakage on one occasion amounted to ten times this quantity.