1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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The Spar/cling Wines of the United States.

skins, and admits of the juice running the more r eadily out when.. the fruit is placed beneath the press. The latter is worked with a metal screw, and the must is conducted through pipes or hose to casks holding from two to four thousand gallons each, in.. which it ferments. During the following May the wine is carefully blended, and the operation of bottling commences and lasts for about two or three months. The newly-bottled wine is at first stored in a warm' place in order to start the fermentation again, and when the bottles commence to burst it is removed to– the subterranean vaults, where it r emains stacked in a horizontal fashion until the time arrives to force the sediment down upon the corks. This is accomplished precisely as in t he Champagne, the subsequent disgorging and liqueuring •being also effected according to the orthodox French system. Altogether a couple of yeaTS elapse between the epoch of bottling and shipment, and during this interval each bottle is handled upwards of two. hundred times. The Pleasant Valley Wine Company, established in 1860 for· the commer ce of still wines, in which it continues to do an extensive business, commenced five years later to make sparkling wines. It grows its own grapes and consumes annually about 1,500 tons of fruit, bottling from 200,000 to 300,000 bottles of sparkling wine in the course of the year. Its brands are the Great W est ern, of which there is a dry and an extra dry variety, the Carte Blanche, and the Pleasant Valley. Even the extra dry variety of the first-named wine tastes sweet in comparison with a moderately dry champagne, in addition to which its flavour, though agreeable, is certainly too pronolmced for a.– sparkling wine of high quality. The wines, which secured a medal for progress at the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, am sold in every city in the United States, and the company also– does a small but increasing trade with England and South America. The Urbana Wine Company, also established at H ammonds– port at the same epoch as its rival, deals, like the latter, in still wines as well. It has three brands-the Gold Seal, of which