1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines.

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in compact masses, with their ends out of the ground, the vine, which is left curled up in a heap, remaining undisturbed until the winter, when the earth around it is loosened. In the month of F ebruary it is 'pruned and sunk into the earth, as already described, so as to leave only the new wood aboveground. Owing t o the vines being planted so clos~ly together they starve one another, and numbers of them perish. When this is the case, or the stems get broken during the vintage, their places are filled up by provining . The vignerons of the Champagne regard the numer ous stakes which support the vines as affording some protection against the white frosts of t he spring. To guard against the dreaded effects of these frosts, which invariably occur bet ween early dawn and sunrise, and the loss arising from which is estimated t o amount annually t o 25 per cent. some of the cultivat ors place heaps of hay, faggot s, dead leaves, &c., about t wenty yards apart, t aking care t o keep t hem moderat ely damp. When a frost is feared the heaps on the side of the vineyard ~hence t he wind blows are set light to, whereupon the dense smoke which rises spreads horizontal~y over the vines, producing the same result as an a.ctual cloud, intercepting the rays of the sun, warming the atmosphere, and converting the frost into dew. Among other methods adopted t o shield the vines from fro sts is t he j~inin g of lminches of broom together in the form of a fan, and afterwanls fastenirlg them t o the end of a pole, which is placed obliquely in the ground, so that the fan may incline over t he vine and protect it from the sun's r ays. A single labourer can plant, it is said, as many as eight thousand of these fans in t he ground in the course of a long day. Dr. Guyot' s system of roofin g the vines with straw matting, t o protect them alike against frost and hailstorms, is very generally followed in low sit uations in the Champagne, the value of the wine admitting of so considerable an expense being in– curred. This matting, which is about a foot and a half in width, and in r olls of great length, is fast ened either with twine or wire to the vine sta,kes, and it is estimated that half-a-dozen