1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Chcumpagne ancl Other Sparlding Wines.

M. Ackerman-Laurance, the extent of whose business ranks him as second among the sparkling wine manufacturers of the world, stores something like 10,000 casks and several million bottles of wine. At "the commencement of the present century, in the days when, as Balzac r elates in his E ugenie G•ranclet, the Belgians bought up entire vintages of Saumur wine, then largely in demand with them for sacramental purpose~, the founder of the Saint-Florent house commenced to deal in the ordinary still wines of the district. Nearly half a century ago h e was led to attempt the manufacture of sparkling wines, but his efforts to bring them into notice failed, and he was on the point of abandoning his enterprise when an order for one hundred cases revived his hopes, and led to the foundation of the present vast establishment. A s already mentioned, for many miles all the h eigh t s along the L oire h ave been more or less excavated for stone for building puxposes, so that every one hereabouts who grows wine or deals in it has any amount of cellar accommodation r eady to h and. It was the vast extent of the galleries which M. Ackerman p ere dis– covered already excavated at Saint -Florent that induced him t o settle there in preference to Saumur. Extensive, however, as the original vaults were, considerable additional excavations have from t ime to time been found necessary; and to-day the firm is still furt her increasing the area of its cellars, which already comprise three principal avenues, each the third of a mile long, and no fewer than sixty transverse galleries, the total length of which is several miles. One great advant age is that the whole are on the ordinary leveJ. Ranged against the black uneve'n. walls of the more t ortuous ancient vaults which give access t o these labyrinthine corridors are thou sands of casks of wine-some in single rows, others in triple tier s- forming the r eserve stock of the est ablishment. As may b e supposed, a powerful vinous odour permeates these vaults, in which the fumes of wine have been accumulating for the b est part of a century. After passing beneath a massive stone arch which separates t h e old cellars from t he new, a series of