1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Concluding Facts and Hints.

fection, as one meets with it at the dinner-tables of the principal manufacturers, who only put old wine of grand vintages before their guests, they would lay down champagnes of good years in the same way as the choicer vintages of port, burgundy, and bordeaux are laid down. Champagne of 1874 was a wine of this description, with all its finer vinous qualities well developed, and consequently needing age to attain not merely the roundnes8 but the refinement of flavour pertaining to a high-class sparkling wine. Instead of being drunk a few months after it was shipped in the spring and summer of 1877, as was the fate of much of the wine in question, it needed being kept for three years .at the very least to become even moderately round and perfect. In the Champagne one had many opportunities of tasting the grander vintages that had arrived at ten, twelve, or fifteen years of age, and had thereby attained supreme excellence. It is true their effervescence had moderated materially, but their bouquet and flavour were perfect, and their softness and delicacy something marvellous. A great wine like that of 1874 will go on improving for ten years, providing it is only laid down under proper conditions. These are, first, an exceedingly co~l but perfectly dry cellai', the temperature of which should be as low as from 50° to 55° Fahr., or even lower if this is practicable. The cella1·, too, should be neither over dark nor light, scrnpulously clean, and sufficiently well ventilated for the air to be continuously pure. It is r equisite that the bottles should rest on their sides to prevent the corks shrinking, and thus allowing both the carbonic acid and the wine itself to escape. For laying down champagne or any kind of sparkling wine an iron wine-bin is by far the best. I much prefer the patent "slider" bins made by Messrs. W. and J. Burrow, of Malvern, they being better adapted to the purpose than any other I am acquainted with. In these the bottles r est on horizontal parallel bars of wrought-iron, securely riveted into strong wrought-iron uprights, both at the back and in front. The bins can be obtained of any size-that is, to hold as few as two or as many as forty dozen-and they p