1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Chanipagne ancl Othe?· Sparkling Wines.

is from a white species of grape known as the petite and grosse rousette-the same- which yields the white Hermitage- that the ·champagne of the south is produced, and the vineyards where ·they are cultivated occupy all the more favourable slopes imme– diately outside the village, the most noted being the Coteau– ·Gaillard, Solignaes, Thioulet , and Hungary. Although there is a close similarity between the manufacture -of champagne and the effervescing wine of Saint-Peray, there are .still one or two noteworthy variations. For a wine to be spark– ling it is r equisite that it should ferment in the bottle, a r esult obtained by bottling it while it contains a. certain undeveloped p roportion of alcohol and carbonic acid, r epresented by so much sugar, of which they are the component parts. This ingredient h:1s frequentlyto be added to the Champagnewines to render them .sparkling, but the wine of Saint-P eray in its natural state con– tains so much sugar that a.ny addition would be deleterious. 'This excess of saccharine enables the manufacturer to dispense with some of the operations necessary to the fabrication of ~hampagne, which, after fermenting in the cask, r equires a. .second fermentation to be provoked in the bottle, whereas the Saint -Pfray wine, ferments only once, being bottled immediately it comes from the wine-press . The deposit in the wine after being impelled towards the neck of the bottle is got rid of by followin g the same system as is pursued in the Champagne, but no liqueur whatever is subse– ·quently added to the wine. On the other hand, it is a common ·practice to r educe the over-sweetness of sparkling Saint-Beray in years when the grapes are more than usually ripe by mixing ·with it some old dry ·white wine. At Saint-Peray we visited the cellars of M. de Saint-Prix, ·one of the principal wine-growers of the district. The samples ·of effervescing wine which he produced for us to taste were ·of a pale golden colour, of a slightly nutty :flavour, and with :a decided suggestion of .the spirituous essence 1.Jlown to be concentrated in the wine, one glass of which will go quite as far towards elevating a person as three glasses of cha,mpagne.