1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Oluumpagne and Othur Spm·kling Wines.

includes the vinelands of Cramant, Avize, Oger, Le Mesnil, and Vertus. The entire vineyard area is upwards of 40,000 acres. The Champagne vineyards most widely celebrated abroad are those of Ay and Sillery, although the last-named are really the smallest in the Champagne district. Ay, distant only a few minutes by rail from Epernay, is in the immediate centre of the vinelands of the river, having Mareuil and Avenay on the east, and Dizy, Hautvillers, and Cumieres on the west. S,illery, on the ·other hand, lies at the foot of the so-called Mountain of Reims, and within an hour's drive of the old cathedral city. The pleasantest season of the year to visit the Champagne ·is certainly during the vintage. When this is about to commence, the vintagers-some of whom come from Sainte Menehould, forty miles distant, while others hail from as far as Lorraine– are summoned at daybreak by beat of drum in the market-places of the villages adjacent to the vineyards, and then and there a price is made for the day's labour. This is generally either a franc and a half, with food consisting of three meals, or two francs and a half without food, children being paid a franc and a half. The rate of wage satisfactorily arranged, the gangs start off to the vineyards, headed by their overseers. It was on one of those occasional sunshiny days in the early part of October (1871) when I :first visited Ay, the vineyard of golden plants, the unique premier cr11 of the Wines of the River. The road lay between two rows of closely-planted poplar-trees reaching almost to the village of Dizy, whose quaint grey church tower, with its gabled roof, is dominated by the neighbouring vine-clad slopes, which extend from Avenay to Venteuil, some few miles beyond Hautvillers, the cradle, so to speak, of the vin mousse~ix of the Champagne. Everywhere was bustle and excitement ; every one was big with the business in hand. In these ordinarily quiet little villages the majority of the inhabitants were afoot, the feeble feminine half with the juveniles threading their way through the rows ~f vines half-way up the mountain, basket on arm, while the sturdy masculine portion were mostly passing to an~ fro between