1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

Oha1npagne and Other Sparlcling Wines.

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firm has its counti~g-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remish Commanderie of the Knights Templars existed until the epoch of the Great Revolution, and to-clay a few fragments of the ancient buildings remain adjacent to the " celliers" of the establishment, which are reached through a pair of folding-doors and down a flight of stone steps, and whence, after being furnished with lighted candles, we set out on our tour of inspection, entering first of all the vast cellar of St. Paul, where the thousands of bottles requiring to be 'daily shaken are reposing necks down– wards on the large perforated tables which crowd the·apartment. It is a peculiarity of the Clicquot-Werle establishment that each of the cellars- forty-five in number, and the smallest a vast apartment-has its speci~l name. In the adjoining cellar of St. Matthew other bottles are similarly arranged, and here wine in cask is likewise stored. We pass rowi;i o,f huge tuns, each holding its twelve or thirteen hundred gallons of fine reserved wine designed for blending with more youthful growths ; next are threading our way between seemingly endless piles of hogsheads filled with later vintages, and anon are passing smaller casks containing the syrup with which the vin prepare is dosed. At intervals we come upon some square opening in the floor through which bottles of wine acre being hauled up from the cellars beneath in readiness to receive their requisite adornment before being packed in baskets or cases accordi~g to the country to which they are destined to be despatched. To Russia the Clicquot champagne is sent in cases containing sixty bottles, while the cases for China contain as many as double that number. The ample cellarage which the house possesses has enabled M. Werle to make many experiments which firms with less space 11t their command would find it difficult to carry out on the same satisfactory scale. Such, for instance, is the system of racks in which the bottles repose while the wine undergoes its diurnal