1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

Cha1np agne and Other Sparkling Wines.

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towards which seven dimly-lighted galleries converge. On all sides a scene of bustling animation presents itself. From one gallery men keep arriving with baskets of wine ready for the disgorger; while along another bottles of wine duly dosed with syrup are being borne off to be decorat ed with metal foil and their distinctive labels. Groups of workmen are busily -engaged disgorging, dosing, and re-corking the newly-arrived bottles of wine ; corks fly out with a succession of loud reports .suggestive of the irregular fire of a party of skirmishers ; a ·fizzing, spurting, and spluttering of the wine next ensues, .ai:i~ is followed by the incessant clicking of the various apparatus -employed in the corking and wiring of the bottles. Gradual inclines conduct to the two lower tiers of galleries, -for the cellars of M. Duvau consist of as many a,s three stories. Down below there is naturally less light, and the t emperature, t oo, is sensibly colder. Advantage is taken of this fatter circumst ance io remove the newly-bottled wine to these lower vaults whenever .an excessive development of carbonic acid threat ens the bursl.ing -of an undue proportion of bottles, a casualty which among the Saumur sparkling wine manufacturers ranges far higher than with the manufacturers of champagne. For the economy of -time and labour a lift, raised and lower ed by means of a capstan worked by horses, is employed to transfer the bottles of wine from one tier of cellars to another. The demand for sparkling saumur is evidently on the increase, for M. Duvau, at the time of our visit, was excavating ext ensive additional cellarage. The subsoil at Varrains being largely ·composed of marl, whi<:h is much soft er than the tufa of the Saint-Florent coteau, necessitated the roofs of the new galleries b eing worked in a particular form in order to avoid having Tecourse to either brickwork or masonry. Tons of this excavated marl were being spread over the soil of M. Duvau's vineyard in ·the r ear of the chateau, greatly, it was said, to the benefit of the vines, whose grapes were all of the black variety; indeed, ·scar cely any wine is vintaged from white grapes in the commune -0£ Varrains.