1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

The Spcil'lcling Wines of B iirgundy ancl the Jura. 159

wines that expressed at the second squeezing of the fruit is mingled with the other. The must is at once run off into casks which have been pre– viously sulphured to check, in a~measure, the ardour of the first fer– mentation ~nd lighten the colour of the newly-made wine. Towards the end of October, when this first

..________ fermentation is over, the wine is r emoved to the cellars, or to some other cool lllace, and in December it is racked into other casks. In the April following it is again racked to insure its being perfectly clear at the -epoch of bottling in the month of May. The sulphuring of the -0riginal casks having had the effect of slightly chec1.."ing tbe iermentation and r etaining a certain amount of saccharine in tbe wine, it is only on exceptional occasions that the latter is a.rti– -ficially sweetened pre~ious to being bottled. A fortnight after the tirage the wine commonly attains the stage known as grand mousseu.-c, and by the end of September -the breakage will have amounted to between 5 ancl 8 per cent., which necessitates the taking down the stacks of bottles and ·piling them up anew. The wine as a rule r emains in the cellars ior fully a couple of years from the time of bottling until it is shipped. Posing the bottles sur pointe, agitating them daily, -together with the disgorging and liqueuring of the wine, is .accomplished precisely as in the Champagne. Among the principal manufacturers of sparkling burgundies -are Messrs. Andre and Voillot, of Beaune, whose sparkling white Romanee, Nu.its, and Volnay are well and favourably known in England; M. Louis Latour, also of Beaune, and equally noted for :his sparkling r eel Volnay, Nuits, and Chambertin, as for his