1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Sparlding Saumiw ancl Sparkling Sau ternes.

broad and regularly-proportioned galleries are reached, h aving bottles stacked in their tens of thousands on either side. Over– head the roof is perforated at r egular intervals with circular shafts, affording both light and ventilation, and enabling the temperature to be r egulated to a nicety. In these lateral and transverse galleries millions of bottles of wine in various stages of preparation are stacked. _ We have explained that in the Champagne it is the custom for the manufacturers of sparkling wine to purchase considerable quantities of grapes from the•surrounding gf"owers, and to press these themselve;;;, or have them pressed under their own super– intendence. At Saumur only those firms possessing vine– yards make their own vin brut, the bulk of the wine u sed for conversion into sparkling wine being purch ased from the neighbouring growers. On the n ewly-expressed must arriving a t M. Ackerman-Laurance's cellars it is allowed to r est until the commencement of the ensuing year, when half of it is mixed with wine in stock belonging to last year's vintage, and the r emaining half is reserved for mingling with the must of the ensuing vintage. The blending is accomplished in a couple of colossal vats hewn out of the rock, and coated on the inside with cement. Each of these vats is provided with 200 paddles for thoroughly mixing the wine, and with five pipes for drawing it off when the amalgamation is complete. Usually the ciivee will embrace 1,600 hogsheads, or 80,000 gallons of wine, almost sufficient for half a million bottles. A fourth of this quantity can be mixed in each vat at a single operation, and this mixing is repeat ed again and again until the last gallon run off is of precisely the same type as the first. For the finer qualities of sparkling saumur the proportion of wine from the black grapes to that from white js generally at the rate of t hree or four to one. For the inferior qualities more wine from white than from blac~ grapes is invariably used. Only in the wine from white grapes is the effervescent principle retained to any par– ticular extent; but, on the other hand, the wine from black grapes imparts both quality ana vinous character to the blend.