1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

The Vintage in the Vineywrds of the Rive;r.

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the press-houses and the wine-shops. Carts piled up with bas– kets, or crowded with peasants from a distance on their way to the vineyards, jostled the low r ailway trucks laden with bran-new casks, and the somewhat rickety cabriolets of the agents of t he big champagne houses, reduced to clinch their final bargain for a hundred or more pieces._ of the peerless wine of Ay, beside the reeking wine-press. There was a pleasant air of jollitY-. over all, for in the wine– producing districts every OI!e participates in the interest excited by the vintage, which influences the -takings of all the artificers and all the tradespeople, bringing grist to the mill ofthe baker and the bootmaker, as well as to the cafc and the cabaret. The various contending interests were singularly satisfied, t he vintagers getting their two francs and a half a day, and the men at the pressoirs their three francs and their food. The plethoric com– rnissionaires-en-vins wiped their perspiring forehea.ds with satis– faction at having at last secured the full number of hogsheads they had been instructed to buy- at a high figure it was true, still this was no disadvantage to them, as their commission mounted up all the higher. And, as regarded the small vine pro– prieto:cs, even the thickest-skulled among them,who make all their calculations on their fingers, could see at a glance that they were gainers, for, although the crop was no more than half an average one, yet, thanks to the ill-disguised anxiety of the agents to secure all the wine they rnquired, prices had gradually crept up until they doubled those of ordinary years, and this with only half the work in the viney ard and at the wine-press to be done. On leaving Dizy the road runs immediately at the base of the vine-clad slopes, broken up by an occasional conical peak detaching itself from the mass, and tinted from base to summit with richly-variegated hues, in which deep purple, yellow, green, grey, and crimson by turns predominate. Dotting these slopes like a swarm of huge ants are a crowd of men, women, and children, intent on stripping the vines of their luscious-looking fruit. The men are mostly in blue blouses, and the women · in closely-fitting neat white caps, or wearing old-fashioned