1895 Mixed Drinks by Herbert W Green

I06

MIXED DRINKS.

and supported by a daily magnum or two of good red —wine, he has not much to complain about. But after wards he is apt to fall to pieces. Fifty-five is reckoned a good age for him to attain. "Of the various details of the making of good champagne, none is more interesting than the final stage, immediately precedent to the second and last corking. This occurs when the wine has been in bottle long enough to have had all the sediment brought toward the cork by the systematic turning and the general inclination of the bottle itself. If you look at the sediment in such a bottle you may well be surprised at its bulk and apparent solidity. It shows itself as a substance by the cork from half an inch to an inch in length. The contrast of its whiteness with the pellucid gold of the nether wine is curious. i^nd it is from this stratum of fine white particles, the crystalized tartar of the wine, that each bottle has successively to be freed by the process known as' degagement,'though more often called' disgorgement.' / "Much depends upon the skill of the' disgorger,' as we will call the man who sits at his work,and takes bottle after bottle to operate upon. Unless he can time his movements to the second,he is more than likely to spill an unnecessary amount of the pure wine in expel-