1948 Shaking with Eddie by Eddie Clarke

About your favourite Wines

CHAMPAGNE

C H AM P A G N E is a sparkling white wine made from grapes grown within the former boundaries of the ancient province of Champagne. The quantity available each year is limited, and no wine may be sold under the name of Champagne other than the produce of a limited number of particularly favoured vineyards, the best Champagne being that which is blended best. There are two reasons why it should be blended, the first being that the wines from different vineyards, although similar in type, are different in style and it is only by judicious blending thai individual wines are improved, their individual qualities being merged into a more harmonious whole. The second reason is that the quantity of wine made each year from individual vineyards is so small that shippers must blend the wine of a number of vineyards in order to have " Cuve e s , " Champagne Cuvee being a blend of wines from different vineyards within the officially delimited Champagne area and made either in any one year or mostly in one year and partly in previous years. A " Vintage '- Champagne is one bearing on both its cork and label the date of the particular year when the grapes were gathered, from which most, if not the whole, of the Cuvee was made. There are two sorts of sparkling wines—wines with carbonic acid gas pumped into them and the others. The first cost less but are worthless, the " others " produce their own carbonic acid gas through the natural process of fermentation. An y and every natural wine that is bottled before its power of fermentation is over, that is whilst it contains sugar and ferments and not t oo much alcohol, will become sparkling; its sugar will be transformed into alcohol and carbonic gas by fermentation and the 1926 and 1928 were good vintage years, also 1929 and 1933.

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