1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

Ch(l/]npagne and Other SparkVing Wines.

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Wars of Religion in which the Protest::tnt army was cut to pieces when about to cross the Garonne; at Nerac, where frail Marguerite de Valois kept her dissolute Court, and Catherine de Medicis brought her flying squadro~ of fascinating maids of honour to gain over the Huguenot leaders to the Catholic cause ; and at Cahors, the Divina, or divine fountain of the Celts, and the birthplace of Pope John XXII., of Clement Marot, the early French poet, and of Leon Gambetta ; in Dauphinc, at Die, Saint– Chef, Saint-Peray, and Largentiere, so named after some aban– doned silver mines, and where the vines are cultivated against lo>v walls rising in n, series of t erraces from the base to the summit of the lofty hills ; and in Languedoc, at Brioude, where St. Vincent, the patron saint of the vim~dressers, suffered mar– tyrdom, and where it is the practice to expose the must of the ·future sparkling wine for several nights to the dew in order to rid it of its reddish colour; also at Linardie, and, more south– ward still, at Limoux, whence comes the well-known effervescing Blanquette. Principal among the foregoing is the excellent wine of Saint– Peray, commonly characterised as the champ::tgne of the South of France. The Saint-Pcray vineyards border the RhOne some ten miles below the Hermit::ige coteau-the vines of which are to-day well-nigh destroyed by the phylloxera-but are on the opposite bank of the river. Our visit to Saint-Peray was made from Valence, inwhich dull southern city we had loitered in order to glance at the vast Hotel du Gouvernement-where octogena– rian Pius VI., "after being spirited away a . prisoner from Rome and hurried over the Alps in a litter by order of the French Directory, drew his last breath while silently gazing across the rushing river at the view he so much admired-and to discover the house in the Grande Rue, numbered 4, in an attic of which hist ory records tliat Napoleon I., when a sub-lieutenant of artillery in garrison at Valence, resided, and which he quitted owing three and a-half francs to his pastrycouk. We crossed the Rhone over one of its hundred flimsy sus– p ension bridges, on the majority of which a notice warns you