1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Champagne ancl Other Sparkling Wines.

only a few of its ancient carved timuer houses, quaint over– h anging corner turrets, and fantastically-studded massive oak doors have escaped demolition. . The vineyards of the Coteau de Saumur, yielding the finest wines, are reached by the road skirting the river, the opposite low banks of which are fringed with willows and endless r ows of poplars, which at the time of our visit were already golden with the fading tints of autumn. Numerous fantastic windmills crown the h eights, the summit of which is covered with vines, varied by dense patches of woodland. Here, as elsewhere along the banks of the Loire, the many abandoned quarries along the face of the hill have been turned by the peasants into cosy dwellings by simply walling-up the entrances while l eaving, of course, the necessary apertures for doors and windows. Dampierre, the first village reached, has many of these cave-dwellings, and numbers of it s houses are picturesquely perched up the sides of the slope. The holiday costumes of the peasant women en– countered in the neighbourhood 'of Saumur are exceedingly quaint, their elaborate and varied bead-dresses being counter– p arts of coiffures in vogue so far back as three and four centuries ago. Quitting the banks of the river, we ascend a steep tortuous road shut in on either side by high stone walls- for hereabouts all the best vineyards are scrupulously inclosed- and finally r each the summit of the heights, whence a view is gained over what the Saumurois proudly style the grand valley of the Loire. Everywhere around the vintage is going on. The vines are planted r ather mor e than a yard apart, :111d those yielding black grapes are trained ,_ as a rule, up tall st akes, although some few are trained espalier fashion . Women dexterously det ach the bunches with pruning-knives and throw them into the seilles– small squat buckets with wooden handles-the conten ts of which are emptied from time to time into baskets-the counterpart of the chiffonnier's hotte, and coated with pitch inside so as to close all t he crevices of the wickerwork- which the portes-bastes carry slung to their backs. When whit e wine is being made from black

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