1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

55

Preparation of Champagne.

side of the bottle, and to get rid of which is a delicate and tedious task. The bottles are placed sur pointe, as it is termed-that is to say, slantingly in racks with their necks downwards, t he in– clination being increased froi;n time to t ime to one more abrupt. The obj ect of this change in their position is t o cause t he sedi– ment t o leave the side of _the bottle where it has gat hered; it afterwards becomes necessary t o twist and turn it, and coagulate it, as it were, unt il it forms a kind of muddy ball, and event ually t o get it well down int o t he neck of the bot tle, so t hat it may be finally expelled with a bang when the t emporary cork is r e-. moved and the proper one adjusted. To accomplish t his the · bottles are sharply turned in one direction every day for at least a month or six weeks, the time being indefinitely extended until the sediment shows a disposition t o set tle neai.:: the cork . The younger the wine the longer the period necessary for t he bottles t o be shaken, new wine often r equiring as much as three months. Only a thoroughly practised hand cap. give t he right amount of revolu~ion and the requisite degree of slope ; and in some of the cellars that we visited men wer e pointed out to us who had acquired such dexterity as to be able at a pinch t o shake with their two hands as many as 50,000 bottles in a · single day. Some of these men have spent thirty or forty years of their' lives engaged in this perpetual t ask. F ancy being entombed all alone day after day in vaults which are invariably dark and gloomy, and often cold and dank, and being obliged t o twist sixty to seventy of these bottles every minute throughout the day of t welve hours. Why the treadmill and the crank with their periodical respites must be pastime compar ed t o this maddeningly monotonous occupation, which combines hard labour, with the wrist at any rat e, with next to solitary confine– ment . One can understand these men becoming gloomy and t acitmn, and affirming that they sometimes see devils hovering over the bot tle-racks and frantically shaking the bottles beside them, or else grinning at them as they pursue their humdrum t ask. Still it m~y be t aken for granted that t he meu who reach