1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

Cha1npagne and Other Sparlcling Wines.

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cuuple of year s, unless it has been treat ed in the same manner as champagn , which is rarely the case. The wine enjoys a r eputation altogether beyond its merits. In addition to the well-known Olair ette, some of the wine– growers of Die make sparkling white and rose-coloured muscatels. of superior quality, which retain their effervescent properties for several years. A sparkling wine is also made some ten miles from Die, on the road to Saillans, in a district bounded on the one side by the waters of the Drome, and on the other by strange mountains with h elmet-shaped crests . 'l'he centre of production is a locality called Vercheny, composed of several h amlets, one of which, named L e Temple, was the original home of the family ofBarnave. The impressionable young deputy to the Na tional Assembly formed one of the trio sent to bring back the French royal family from Varennes after their flight from P aris. It will be remembered h ow, under the influence of Marie Antoinette and Madame Elizabeth, Barnave became t rans– formed during the journey into a faithful partisan of their un– happy cau se, and that h e eventually paid the penalty of his devotion with his life. In the extreme south of Fran ce, and almost under the shadow of the Pyrenees, a sparkling wine of some r epute is made at a place called Lagrasse, about five-and-twenty miles westwa.rd of Na rbonne, the once-famous Mediterranean city, the maritime rival of Marseilles, and in its palmy days, prior to the Christian era, a miniature Rome, with its capitol, its curia, its decemvirs, its consuls, its prretors, its questors, its censors, and its ediles, and which boasted of being the birthplace of three Roman Emperors. To-day Narbonne has to content itself with the'bymble r enown derived from its delicious honey and its characterless full– bodied r ed wines. Limoux, so celebrated for its Blanquette, lies a long way farther to the west, behind the Oorbieres range of mountains that join on to the Pyrenees, and the j agged peaks, deep barren gorges, and scarred sideti of which have been witness of many a desperate struggle during the century and a. half when they formed the boundary b etween France and Spain.