1879 Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines

75

The R ei1ns E striblish?nents.

Champagne can boast. The head of the firm, Mr. G. H. Mumm, is the grandson of the well-known P . .A.. Mumm, the large shipper of hocks and moselles, and is the only surviving partner in the champagne house of Mumm and Co. , established at Reims in 1825, and joined by l\fr. G. H. ~£i.1mrn so far back as the yea1· 1838. The firm not only ship their wine largely to .England, but head the list of shipments to the United States, where their brand is held in high repute, with nearly half a million bottles, being more than twice the quantity shipped by l\i. Louis · Roederer-who comes third on the list in question-and a fourth of the entire shipments of champagne to the United States. The establishment of Messrs. G. H . Mumm and Co., in the Rue Andrieux, is of comparatively model'n construction. A large porte-cochere conducts to a spacious courtyard, bordered with sheds, beneath which huge stacks of new bottles are piled and having a pleasant garden lying beyond. On the left is a large .vaulted cellier, wh(de the operations of disgor ging, liqueuring, and corking the wine are performed, and which communicates with the vast adjoining pach.-ing department. From t his cellier entrance is gained to the cellars beneath, containing a million pottles of vin b1·ut iri various stages of development. This forms, however, merely a portion of the firm's stock, they having another three millions of bottles stored in the cellars of t heir establishment in the Rue Coquebert, where a scene of great animation presented itself at the time of our visit, several scores of women being engaged in washing bottles for the tirage, which, although it was early in May, had already commenced. The bottles, filled with water, and containing a certain quantity of glass beads in lieu of the customary shot, which frequently leave minute particles of lead-deleterious alike to health and the flavour of the wine-adhering to the l?sicle surface of t he glass~ are placed horizontally in a frame, and by means of four turns of a handle are made to perform sixty-four rapid revolutions. The beads are then transferred to other bottles, which are sub– ject ed in their turn to the same revolving process. The cuvee, commonly composed of from two to three thousand