1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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<.Jhampagne and Other Spa1·kling Wines.

each other, but often xamifying in various directions, and evidently ' constructed on no definite plan. They are of one, two, and, in rare instances, of three stories, and now and then consist of a series of parallel galleries communicatµig with each other, lined with masonry, and with their stone walls and vaulted roofs resembling the crypt of some conventual building. Others· of ancient date are less regular in their form, being merely so many narrow low winding con1.d6rs, varied, perhaps, by recesses hewn roughly out of the chalk, and resembling the brigands' cave of the melodrama, while a certain number of the larger cellars at Reims are simply abandoned quarries, the broad and lofty arches of which are suggestive of the nave and aisles of some Gothic church. In these varied vaults, lighted by solitary l amps in front of metal r eflectors, or by the flickering tallow candles which we carry in our bands, we pass rows of casks filled with last year's vintage or reserved wine of former years, and piles after piles of bottles ofvin briit in seemingly endless sequence-squar es, so to speak, of raw champagne r ecruits awaiting their turn to be thoroughly drilled and disciplined. These are varied by bottles reposing necks downwards in racks at different degrne!:' of incli– nation according to the progress their education has attained. Reports caused by exploding bottles now and then assail the ear, and as the echo dies away it becomes mingled with the l'ush of the escaping wine, cascading down the pile and finding its way across the sloping sides of the floor to the narrow gutter in the centre. The dampness of the floor and the shattered fragments of glass strewn about show the frequency of this kind of accident. The spilt wine, which flows along the gutter into reservoirs, is usually thrown away, though there is a story current to the effect that the head of one Epernay firm cooks nearly ever ything consumed in his house in the fluid. thus l et l oose in his cellars. In the~e subterranean galleries we frequently. come l1pon parties of workmen engaged in transforming the perfected vin bmt into champagne. Viewed at a distance while occupied in their monotonous task, they present in the semi-obscurity a series of picturesque Rembrandt-like studies. One of the end