1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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The Sparlcling Wines of Burgimcly and the Jura.

Red and white sparkling wines are made to a small extent at. Saint-Lager, in the Beaujolais, from wine vintaged in the Mont-Brouilly vineyards, one of the best known of the Bea.u– jola.is crt1s. Mont-Brouilly is a lofty hill near the village or Cercie, and is covered from base to summit on all its sides with vines of the gamay species, rarely trained at all, but l eft to trail along the ground at their own sweet will. At the vintage, as. we witnessed it, men and women-young, middle-aged, and old -ac0ompanied by troops of children, were roaming all over the– slopes dexterously nipping off the bunches of gxapes with their thumb and finger nails and flinging them into the little wooden tubs with which they were provided. The- pressing of the– grapes and the after-treatment of the wine _destined to become sparkling are the same in the Beaujolais as in Upper and L ower Burgundy. The r ed, straw, and yellow wines of the Jura have long had a high r eputation in the East of France, and the vin j aune of· .A.rbois, an ancient fortified town on the banks of the Cuisance, besieged and sacked in turn by Charles of Amboise, H enri IV.,. and Louis XIV., was one of the favourite beverages of the tippling· Bearnais who styled himself Seigneur of Ay and Gonesse, and who acquired his liking for it while sojourning during the siege· of Arbois at the old Chateau des Al'Sures. In one of H enri Quatre's. letters to his minist er Sully we find him observing, "I send you two bottles of Vin d'Arbois, for I know you do not det es t it." A coupl e of other bottles of the same wine are said to h ave cemented the king's r econciliation ·with Mayenne, the leader of · the League, and the lover of La Belle Gabrielle is moreover credited with having composed at his mistress's table som&. doggrel rhymes in honour of the famous Jura cru :-

" Come, little page, serve us aright, The crown is often heavy to bem· ; So fill up my goblet large and light Whenever you find a vacancy there. This wine is surely no Christian wight, And yet you never complaint will hear That it's not baptised with water clear.