1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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The Bparlcling W ines of the South of France.

n either to smoke nor run, and were soon skirting the base of a lofty, bare, precipitous rock, with the " horns of Crussol," as the peasants term two tall pointed gables of a ruined feudat chateau, perched at the dizzy edge, and having a perpendicular fall of some five or six hundred feet below. The chi'ttea.u, which formerly belonged to the Dukes of Uzes, r ecognised by virtue– of the extent of their domains as premiers pairs de France, was not. originally erected in close proximity t"o any such formidable– prec1p1ce. The crag on which it stands had, it seems, been blasted from time to tiIQ.e for the sake ·i:>f the stone, until on one– unlucky occasion when too heavy a charge of powder was em– ployed, the entire side of the rock, together with a considerable– portion of the chateau itself, were sent flying into the air. The authorities, professing to r egard what remained of the edifice as an historical monument of the Middle Age,~, hereupon st epped! in and prohibited the quarry being worked for the future. Passing beneath the cliff, one wound round to the left and dived into a picturesque wooded dell at the ent rance to a mountain pass, then crossed the rocky bed of a dried-up stream and drove along an avenue of mulberry-trees, which in a few minutes conducted us to Saint-Peray, where one found the vin– tage in full operation. Carts laden with tubs filled with white and purple grapes, around which wasps without number swarmed, were arriving from all points of the environs and I I crowding the narrow streets. Any quantity of grapes were· seemingly to be had for the asking, for all the pretty girls in the· plf!.ce were gorging themselves with the luscious-looking fruit. In the coopers' yards bran-new casks were ranged in rows in. re~diness for the newly-made wine, and through open doorways,. and in all manner of dim r ecesses, one caught sight of sturdy men .energetically trampling the gushing grapes under their bare– feet, and of huge cret1.king wine-presses r eeking wit h the purple, JU1Ce. It was chiefly common red wine, of an excellent flavour,. however, that was being made in these nooks a~d corners, the· sparkling white wine, known as Saint-Peray, being manufacturecl in lar ger establishments, and on more scientific principles. I t.