1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Chwmpagne anil Othe1· Sparlcling Wines.

of champagne has almost trebled since the year 1844-5, a periocl: of little more than thirty years. Another curious fact to note is the immense increase in the exports of the wine during the three years following the Franco-German war, when naturally both the exports and home consumption of champagne fell off very considerably. No reliable information is available as to the actual quantity of champagne COI!sumed yearly in England, but this may be taken in round numbers at about four millions of bottles. The cons~mption of the wine in the United States varies from rather more than a million and a half to nearly two million bottles annually. Distinguished gourmets are scarcely agreed as to the proper moment when champagne should be introduced at the dinner– table. Dyspeptic Mr. Walker, of" The Original," laid it down that champagne ought to be introduced very early at the ban– quet, without any regard whatever to the viands it may chance to accompany. "Give champagne," he says," at the beginning– of dinner, as its exhilarating qualities serve to start the guests, after which they will seldom flag. No other wine produces an equal effect in increasing the success of a party-it invariably turns the balance to the favomable side. When champagne goes rightly nothing can well go wrong." These precepts are sound enough, -S'till all dinner-parties are not necessarily glacial, and the guests are not invariably mutes. Before champagne can be properly :introduced at a formal dinner the conventional glass of sherry or madeira should supplement the soup, a white French or a Rhine wine accompany the fish, and a single glass of bordeaux prepare the waY. with the :fhst entree for the spark– ling wine, which, for the first round or two, should be served. briskly and liberally. A wine introduced thus early at the 1·epast should of course be dry, or, at any rate, moderately so. We certainly do not approve of Mr. Charles Dickens's dictum that champagne's proper place is not at the dinner-table, but solely at a ball. "A cavalier," he said, " may appropriately offer at propitious intervals a glass now and then to his clanceress. There it takes its fitting rank and position amongst feathers, gauzes•