1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

The Epernay E stablishments.

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branded by being pressed against steel dies heated by gas, by ·women who can turn out 3,000 per day apiece, the quantity of ·string used to secure them amounting to nearly ten tons in the ·course of the year. 'Ihere is anoth er and a lower depth of cellars to b e explored to which access is gained by t rapholes in the floor-through which the barrels and baskets of wine are raised and lowered– ' and by flights of steps. From t h e foot of th~ latter there extends .an endless vista of lofty and spacious passages hewn out of the chalk, the walls of which, smooth as finish ed masonry, are lined ·with thou sands of casks of raw wine, yaried at intervals by ·gigantic vats. Miles of long, dark-brown, dampish-looking galleries stretch away to the right and left, and though devoid ·of the picturesque festoons of fungi which decorate the London Dock vaults, exhibit a sufficient degree of mouldiness to give ·them au air of r espect able antiquity. These multitudinous gal– ·l eries, lit up by petroleum-lamps, are mostly lined with wine in -bottles stacked in compact masses to a h eight of six or seven feet , only room enough for a single person to pass being left. Millions of bottles are thus arran ged, the majority on their sides, . in huge piles, with tablets hung up against each stack to note :its age and quality ; and the rest, which are undergoing daily evolutions at the hands of the twist er, at various angles of incli– n ation. In t hese cellars there are n early 11,000 racks in which ·the bottles of vin brut rest sitr pointe, as many as 600,000 bottles being commonly twisted daily. The way runs on between r egiments of bottles of the same :size and shape, save where at intervals pints take the place of .quarts ; and the visitor, gazing into the black depths 0f the · .transverse passages to the right and left, becomes conscious of a feeling that if his guide were suddenly to desert him he would .feel as h opelessly lost as in the catacombs of Rome. Ther e are -two galleries, each 650 feet in length, containing about 650,000 .-bottles, and connect ed by 32 transverse galleries, with an aggre– .gate length of 4,000 feet, in which nearly 1,500,000 bottles are •.st ored. There a re, further, eight galleries, each 500 feet in