1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

The Vintage in the V i1ieyarcls of the R 1:ver.

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believed to yield a fourth more juice. Later on in the day, too, spite of all precautions, it is impossible to prevent some of t he detached g rapes from partially fermenting, which frequent ly suffices to give a slight excess of colour to t he must, a thing especially to be avoided-no matter how rich and ripe t he fruit may be-in a high-class champagne. When t he grapes have t o be transported in opr.n baskets fo r some di stance to t he press– house, jolting along the r oad. eit her in carts or on t he backs of mules, and exposed t o the t orrid rays of a bright autumnal sun, the juice expressed from the fruit, however gent ly t he lH.tter may be squeezed, is occasionally of a posit ive purple t inge, and consequently useless for conversion into cfuampagne. On the right of the r oad leading from Di zy to Ay we pass a vineyard called Le L eon, which t radition asserts t o be the one whence P ope Leo the M~Lgnificent, the patron of Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Da Vinci, drew his supply of Ay wine. The village of Ay lies right before us at the foot of the vine-clad slopes, with the t apering spire of its ancient church rising above the neighbouring hills and cutting sharply against the bright blue sky. The vineyards, which spread themselves over a cal– careous declivity, have . mostly a full southern aspect , and the predominating vines are those known as golden plants, the fruit of which is of a deep purple colour. After these come the plant vert dare, and then a moderat e proport ion of the plant gris, the latter a white variety, as its name implies. A limited quantity of wine from white grapes is likewise made in the neighbouring vineyards of Dizy. We visited the pressoir of the principal producer of vin bt·iit at Ay, who, although the owner of merely five hect ares, or about twelve and a lialf acres of vines, expected to make as many as 1,500 pieces of wine that year, mainly of course from grapes purchased from other growe rs. One peculiarity of the Champagne district is that , contrary to t he prevailing practice in the other wine-producing regions of France, where the owner of even a single acre of vines will crush his grapes himself, only a limited number of vine-proprietors press their own grapes. The c