1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Champagne ancl Other Sparkling Wines.

on your right suddenly develops into a charming girl, with becoming appreciation of your pet topics and an astounding aptness for repartee. The Gorgon thaws, and implores Mr. Snapshot, whose j ests are popping as briskly as the corks, not to be so dreadfully funny, or he will positively kill her. Belle– Breloques can alwa.ys talk, and now her tongue rattles faster than ever, till t he languid one arouses himself like a giant i•e– freshed, and gives her as good as he gets. The City men expatiate in cabalistic language on the merits of some mysterious speculation, the prospective r eturns from which increase with each fresh bottle. One of t heir wives is discussing the E. C. U. and the S. S. C. with a hitherto silent cur at e, and the other is jabbering botany to a red-faced warrior. The juniors are in full swing, and ripples of silvery laughter rise in accompaniment to. the beaded bubbles all round the table. And all this is due to champagne, that great unloosener not merely of tongues but of purse-strings, as is well known to the secretaries of those cha.i-i– t able institutions which set the wine flowing earliest .at ~heiJ.~ anniversary dinn ers. A few recipes for sparkling wine .cups gathered from various -sources will conclude our work. Not having personally t ested. these we l eave t he- responsibility of them to their r espective authors-Soyer, Tovey, Terrington (" Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks"), &c.-premising that it is the merest folly to u se a high– class champagne or a fine sparkling hock for a beverage of this description. Sparkling saumur, or the newly-int roduced sparkling· sauternes, and t he cheaper hocks and moselles, will do equally well at a greatly reduced cost. In all cases, too, the kind of liqueur, the amount of sugar, and the flavouring with borage, verbena, pine-apple, or cucumber, may be varied to suit incli– vidual tastes. For soda or seltzer water we have invariably substituted Apollinaris, which is far better adapt ed for effer– vescent drinks of this description by reason of its purity and softness, its freedom from any distinct flavour, and above all its. powerful natural effer vescence.

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