1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Champagne and Othe1· Sparkling Wines.

length, and proportioriably stocked; also the extensive new · vaults, excavated some five or six years back, in the rear of the· then-existing cellarage, and a considerable number of smaller vaults. · The different depths and varying degrees of moisture afford a choice of temperature of which the experienced owners. know how to take advantage! The original vaults, wherein more· than a century ago the first bottles of champagne made by the infant firm were stowed away, bear the name of Siberia, on_ account of their exceeding coldness. This section consists. of several rough~y-excavated low winding galleries, resem– bling natural caverns, a,nd affording. a striking contrast to the broad, lofty, and regular-shaped corridors of more recent. elate. When the proper period arrives for the bottles to emerge once more into the upper air they are conveyed to the packing-· room, a spacious hall 180 feet long and 60 feet broad. In front of ·its three large double doors waggons are dmwn up ready to. receive their loads. The seventy men and women employed here easily foil, label, wrap, and pack up some 10,000 bottles. a day. Cases and baskets are stacked in different parts of this vast hall, at one end of which numerous trusses of straw used in the packing are piled. Seated at tables ranged along one· side of the apartment women are hqsily occupied in pasting on labels or encasing the necks of bottles in gold or silver foil,. whilst elsewhere men, seated on three-legged stools in front of· smoking caldrons of molten sealing-wax of a deep green hue, are coating the necks of other bottles by plunging them into the boiling fluid. When labelled and decorated with either wax or· foil the bottles pass on to other women/who swathe them in pink tissue-paper and set them aside for the packers, by whom,. after being deftly wrapped round with straw, they are con-– signed to baskets or cases, to secure which last no less than 10,000lbs. of nails are annually used. England and Russia are partial to gold foil, pink paper, and wooden cases holding a . dozen or a couple of dozen bottles of the exhilarating fluid, whereas other nations prefer waxed necks, disdain pink paper,.