1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

105

The Epe;may Establishments.

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came Mayor of Epernay, and between this time and the fall of the Empire received Napoleon several times at his residence, as well as the Empress Josephine and theKing ofWestphalia. The Emperor_, .after recaptming Reims from the Allies, came on to Epernay, on which occasion he presented M. Moet with the cross of the Legion .ofHonom. In 1830 the latter was arbitrarily dismissed from his mayoralty by Charles X., but was speedily reinstat(?d by Louis Philippe, though he did not retain · his office for long, his advanced age compelling him to retire from active life in the comse of 1833. A.t this epoch the firm, which since 1807 had been known as Moet and Co., was remodelled under the style of Moet and Ohandon, the two partners being M. Victor Moet, son of the outgoing partner, and M. P. G. Chandon, the descendant of an old ennobled family of the Maconnais, who had married M. Jean Remi Moet's eldest daughter. The descendants of these gentlemen are to-day at the head of the business, the partners being on the one hand M. Victor Moet-Romont and M. C. J. V. Auban Moet-Romont ; and on the other, MM. Paul and Raoul Chandon de Briailles. Facing Messrs. Moet and Chandon's offices at Epernay is a range of comparatively new buildings, with its white fa11ade -ornamented with the well-known monogram M. and C., sur– mounted by the familiar star. It is here that the business of blending and bottling the wine is carried on. Passing through the arched gateway access is obtained to a spacious courtyard, where carts laden with bottles are being expeditiously lightened of their fragile contents by the busy hands of numerous workmen. Another gateway on the left leads into the spacious bottle-washing room, which from the middle o.f May until the middle of July presents a scene of extraordinary animation. Bottle-washing apparatus, supplied by a steam-engine with 20,0.00 gallons of water per diem, are ranged in fifteen rows down the entire length of this hall, and nearly 200 women strive to ex~el each other · in diligence and celerity in their management, a practised hand washing from 900 to 1,000 bottles in the course of the day. To the right of this salle de rin~age, as it is styled, H I I