1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

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Preparation of Champagne.

figures in each group is engaged in the important process of degorgement, which is performed when the deposit, of which we have aheady spoken, has satisfactorily settled in the neck of the bottle. Baskets full of bottles with their necks downwards are placed beside the operator, who stands before an apparatus resembling a cask divided vertically down the middle. This nimble-figured manipulator seizes a bottle, holds .it for a moment before the light to test the clearness of the wine and the subsi– dence of the deposit; brings it, still neck do'Yfiwards, over a small tub at the bottom of the apparatus aheady mentioned; and with a j erk of the steel book which he holds in his right hand loosens the agrafe securing the cork, Bang goes the latter, and with it flies out the sediment and a small glassful or so of wine, further :flow being checked by the workman's finger, which also serves to remove any sediment yllt remaining in the bottle's neck. Like many other clever tricks, this looks very easy when adroitly performed, though a novice would probably empty the bottle by the time he had discovered that the cork was out. Occasionally a bottle bursts in the degorgewr's ban~, and his face is sometimes scarred from such explosions. The sediment removed, he slips a temporary cork into the bottle, and the wine is ready for the important operation of the dosage, upon the nature and amount of which the character of the perfected wine, whether it be dry or sweet, light or strong, very much depends. Different manufacturers have different recipes, more or less complex in character, and varying with the quality of the wine and the country for which it is intended; but the g3nuine liqueur consists of nothing but old wine of the best quality, to which a certain amount· of sugar-candy and perhaps a dash of the finest cognac spirit .has been added. The saccharine addition varies according io the market for which the wine is destined : thus the high-class English buyer demands a dry champagne, the Russian a wine sweet and strong as " ladies' grog," and the Frenchman and German a sweet light wine. To the extra-dry champagnes a modicum dose is added, while the so-called "brut" wines receive no more than from one to three per cent. of liqueur,