Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines Part 2

The Vines chiefly of the Pineau Variety-- The Plant dore of Ay, the Plant vert dore, the Plant gris, and the Epinette-- The Soil of the Vineyards-- Close Mode of Plantation-- The Operation of Provinage-- The Stems of the Vines never more than Three Years Old-- Fixing the Stakes to the Vines-- Manuring and General Cultivation-- Spring Frosts in the Champagne-- Various Modes of Protecting the Vines against them-- Dr. Guyot's System-- The Parasites that Prey upon the Vines.

In the Champagne the old rule holds good--poor soil, rich product; grand wine in moderate quant.i.ty. Four descriptions of vines are chiefly cultivated, three of them yielding black grapes, and all belonging to the Pineau variety, from which the grand Burgundy wines are produced, and so styled from the cl.u.s.ters taking the conical form of the pine. The first is the franc pineau, the plant dore of Ay, producing small round grapes, with thickish skins of a bluish black tint, and sweet and refined in flavour. The next is the plant vert dore, more robust and more productive than the former, but yielding a less generous wine, and the berries of which are dark and oval, very thin skinned and remarkably sweet and juicy. The third variety is the plant gris, or burot, as it is styled in the Cote d'Or, a somewhat delicate vine, whose fruit has a brownish tinge, and yields a light and perfumed wine. The remaining species is a white grape known as the epinette, a variety of the pineau blanc, and supposed by some to be identical with the chardonnet of Burgundy, which yields the famous wine of Montrachet. It is met with all along the Cote d'Avize, notably at Cramant, the delicate and elegant wine of which ranks immediately after that of Ay and Verzenay. The epinette is a prolific bearer, and its round transparent golden berries, which hang in no very compact cl.u.s.ters, are both juicy and sweet. It ripens, however, much later than either of the black varieties.

There are several other species of vines cultivated in the Champagne vineyards, notably the common meunier, or miller, bearing black grapes, and prevalent in the valley of Epernay, and which takes its name from the circ.u.mstance of the young leaves appearing to have been sprinkled with flour. There are also the black and white gouais, the meslier, a prolific white variety yielding a wine of fair quality, the black and white gamais, the leading grape in the Maconnais, and chiefly found in the Vertus vineyards, together with the tourlon, the marmot, and half a score of others.

The soil of the Champagne vineyards is chalk, with a mixture of silica and light clay, combined with a varying proportion of oxide of iron. The vines are almost invariably planted on rising ground, the lower slopes which usually escape the spring frosts producing the best wines. The new vines are placed very close together, there often being as many as six within a square yard. When two or three years old they are ready for the operation of provinage universally practised in the Champagne, and which consists in burying in a trench, from 6 to 8 inches deep, dug on one side of the plant, the two lowest buds of the two princ.i.p.al shoots, left when the vine was pruned for this especial purpose. The shoots thus laid underground are dressed with a light manure, and in course of time take root and form new vines, which bear during their second year. This operation is performed in the spring, and is annually repeated until the vine is five years old, the plants thus being in a state of continual progression, a system which accounts for the juvenescent aspect of the Champagne vineyards, where none of the wood of the vines showing aboveground is more than three years old. When the vine has attained its fifth year it is allowed to rest for a couple of years, and then the pruning is resumed, the shoots being dispersed in any direction throughout the vineyard. The plants remain in this condition henceforward, merely requiring to be renewed from time to time by judicious provining.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The vines are supported by stakes, when of oak costing sixty francs the thousand; and as in the Champagne a close system of plantation is followed, no less than 24,000 stakes are required on every acre of land, making the cost per acre of propping up the vines upwards of 57, or double what it is in the Medoc and quadruple what it is in Burgundy.

These stakes are set up in the spring of the year by men or women, the former of whom force them into the ground by pressing against them with their chest, which is protected with a s.h.i.+eld of stout leather. The women use a mallet, or have recourse to a special appliance, in working which the foot plays the princ.i.p.al part. The latter method is the least fatiguing, and in some localities is practised by the men. An expert labourer will set up as many as 5,000 of these stakes in the course of the day. After the vines have been hoed around their roots they are secured to the stakes, and the tops are broken off at a shoot to prevent them from growing above the regulation height, which is ordinarily from 30 to 33 inches. They are liberally manured with a kind of compost formed of the loose friable soil dug out from the sides of the mountain, and of supposed volcanic origin, mixed with animal and vegetable refuse.

The vines are shortened back while in flower, and in the course of the summer the ground is hoed a second and a third time, the object being, first, to destroy the superficial roots of the vines and force the plants to live solely on their deep roots; and, secondly, to remove all pernicious weeds from round about them. After the third hoeing, which takes place in the middle of August, the vines are left to themselves until the period of the vintage. When this is over the stakes supporting the vines are pulled up and stacked in compact ma.s.ses, with their ends out of the ground, the vine, which is left curled up in a heap, remaining undisturbed until the winter, when the earth around it is loosened. In the month of February it is pruned and sunk into the earth, as already described, so as to leave only the new wood aboveground.

Owing to the vines being planted so closely together they starve one another, and numbers of them perish. When this is the case, or the stems get broken during the vintage, their places are filled up by provining.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The vignerons of the Champagne regard the numerous stakes which support the vines as affording some protection against the white frosts of the spring. To guard against the dreaded effects of these frosts, which invariably occur between early dawn and sunrise, and the loss arising from which is estimated to amount annually to 25 per cent. some of the cultivators place heaps of hay, f.a.ggots, dead leaves, &c., about twenty yards apart, taking care to keep them moderately damp. When a frost is feared the heaps on the side of the vineyard whence the wind blows are set light to, whereupon the dense smoke which rises spreads horizontally over the vines, producing the same result as an actual cloud, intercepting the rays of the sun, warming the atmosphere, and converting the frost into dew. Among other methods adopted to s.h.i.+eld the vines from frosts is the joining of branches of broom together in the form of a fan, and afterwards fastening them to the end of a pole, which is placed obliquely in the ground, so that the fan may incline over the vine and protect it from the sun's rays. A single labourer can plant, it is said, as many as eight thousand of these fans in the ground in the course of a long day.

Dr. Guyot's system of roofing the vines with straw matting, to protect them alike against frost and hailstorms, is very generally followed in low situations in the Champagne, the value of the wine admitting of so considerable an expense being incurred. This matting, which is about a foot and a half in width, and in rolls of great length, is fastened either with twine or wire to the vine stakes, and it is estimated that half-a-dozen men can fix nearly 11,000 yards of it, or sufficient to roof over 2 acres of vines, during an ordinary day.

Owing to the system of cultivation by rejuvenescence, and the constant replenis.h.i.+ng of the soil by well-compounded manures, the Champenois winegrowers entertain great hopes that their vineyards will escape the ravages of the phylloxera vastatrix. According to Dr. Plonquet of Ay they are already the prey of no less than fifteen varieties of insects, which feed upon the leaves, stalks, roots, or fruit of the vines.

Between 1850 and 1860 the vineyards of Ay were devastated by the pyrale, a species of caterpillar, which feeds on the young leaves and shoots until the vine is left completely bare. The insect eventually becomes transformed into a small white b.u.t.terfly, and deposits its eggs either in the crevices of the stakes or in the stalks of the vine. All the efforts made to rid the vineyards of this scourge proved ineffectual until the wet and cold weather of 1860 put a stop to the insect's ravages. More recently it has been discovered that its attacks can be checked by sulphurous acid.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

V.--PREPARATION OF CHAMPAGNE.

Treatment of Champagne after it comes from the Wine-Press-- Racking and Blending of the Wine-- Deficiency and Excess of Effervescence-- Strength and Form of Champagne Bottles-- The "Tirage" or Bottling of the Wine-- The Process of Gas-making commences-- Inevitable Breakage follows-- Wine Stacked in Piles-- Formation of Sediment-- Bottles placed "sur pointe" and Daily Shaken-- Effect of this occupation on those incessantly engaged in it-- "Claws" and "Masks"-- Champagne Cellars-- Their Construction and Aspect-- Transforming the "vin brut" into Champagne-- Disgorging and Liqueuring the Wine-- The Corking, Stringing, Wiring, and Amalgamating-- The Wine's Agitated Existence comes to an End-- The Bottles have their Toilettes made-- Champagne sets out on its beneficial Pilgrimage.

The special characteristic of champagne is that its manufacture only just commences where that of other wines ordinarily ends. The must flows direct from the press into capacious reservoirs, whence it is drawn off into large vats, and after being allowed to clear, is transferred to casks holding some forty-four gallons each. Although the bulk of the new-made wine is left to repose at the vendangeoirs until the commencement of the following year, still when the vintage is over numbers of long narrow carts laden with casks of it are to be seen rolling along the dusty highways leading to those towns and villages in the Marne where the manufacture of champagne is carried on. Chief amongst these is the cathedral city of Reims, after which comes the rising town of Epernay, stretching to the very verge of the river, then Ay, nestled between the vine-clad slopes and the Marne ca.n.a.l, with the neighbouring village of Mareuil, and finally Avize, in the centre of the white grape district southwards of Epernay. Chalons, owing to its distance from the vineyards, would scarcely draw its supply of wine until the new year. The first fermentation lasts from a fortnight to a month, according as to whether the wine be _mou_--that is, rich in sugar--or the reverse. In the former case fermentation naturally lasts much longer than when the wine is _vert_ or green. This active fermentation is converted into latent fermentation by transferring the wine to a cooler cellar, as it is essential it should retain a large proportion of its natural saccharine to ensure its future effervescence.

The casks have previously been completely filled, and their bungholes tightly stopped, a necessary precaution to guard the wine from absorbing oxygen, the effect of which would be to turn it yellow and cause it to lose some of its lightness and perfume. After being racked and fined, the produce of the different vineyards is now ready for mixing together in accordance with the traditional theories of the various manufacturers, and should the vintage have been an indifferent one a certain proportion of old reserved wine of a good year enters into the blend.

The mixing is usually effected in gigantic vats holding at times as many as 12,000 gallons each, and having fan-shaped appliances inside, which, on being worked by handles, ensure a complete amalgamation of the wine.

This process of marrying wine on a gigantic scale is technically known as making the _cuvee_. Usually four-fifths of wine from black grapes are tempered by one-fifth of the juice of white ones. It is necessary that the first should comprise a more or less powerful dash of the finer growths both of the Mountain of Reims and of the River, while, as regards the latter, one or other of the delicate vintages of the Cote d'Avize is essential to the perfect _cuvee_. The aim is to combine and develop the special qualities of the respective crus, body and vinosity being secured by the red vintages of Bouzy and Verzenay, softness and roundness by those of Ay and Dizy, and lightness, delicacy, and effervescence by the white growths of Avize and Cramant. The proportions are never absolute, but vary according to the manufacturer's style of wine and the taste of the countries which form his princ.i.p.al markets.

The wine at this period being imperfectly fermented and crude, the reader may imagine the delicacy and discrimination of palate requisite to judge of the flavour, finesse, and bouquet which the _cuvee_ is likely eventually to develop.

These, however, are not the only matters to be considered. There is, above everything, the effervescence, which depends upon the quant.i.ty of carbonic acid gas the wine contains, and this, in turn, upon the amount of its natural saccharine. If the gas be present in excess, there will be a shattering of bottles and a flooding of cellars; and if there be a paucity the corks will refuse to pop, and the wine to sparkle aright in the gla.s.s. Therefore the amount of saccharine in the _cuvee_ has to be accurately ascertained by means of a glucometer; and if it fails to reach the required standard, the deficiency is made up by the addition of the purest sugar-candy. If, on the other hand, there be an excess of saccharine, the only thing to be done is to defer the final blending and bottling until the superfluous saccharine matter has been absorbed by fermentation in the cask.

The _cuvee_ completed, the blended wine, now resembling in taste and colour an ordinary acrid white wine, and giving to the uninitiated palate no promise of the exquisite delicacy and aroma it is destined to develop, is drawn off again into casks for further treatment. This comprises fining with some gelatinous substance, and, as a precaution against ropiness and other maladies, liquid tannin is at the same time frequently added to supply the place of the natural tannin which has departed from the wine with its reddish hue at the epoch of its first fermentation.

The operation of bottling the wine next ensues, when the Scriptural advice not to put new wine into old bottles is rigorously followed. For the tremendous pressure of the gas engendered during the subsequent fermentation of the wine is such that the bottle becomes weakened and can never be safely trusted again. It is because of this pressure that the champagne bottle is one of the strongest made, as indicated by its weight, which is almost a couple of pounds. To ensure this unusual strength it is necessary that its sides should be of equal thickness and the bottom of a uniform solidity throughout, in order that no particular expansion may ensue from sudden changes of temperature. The neck must, moreover, be perfectly round and widen gradually towards the shoulder.

In addition--and this is of the utmost consequence--the inside ought to be perfectly smooth, as a rough interior causes the gas to make efforts to escape, and thus renders an explosion imminent. The composition of the gla.s.s, too, is not without its importance, as a manufactory established for the production of gla.s.s by a new process turned out champagne bottles charged with alkaline sulphurets, and the consequence was that an entire _cuvee_ was ruined by their use, through the reciprocal action of the wine and these sulphurets. The acids of the former disengaged hydrosulphuric acid, and instead of champagne the result was a new species of mineral water.

Most of the bottles used for champagnes come from the factories of Loivre (which supplies the largest quant.i.ty), Folembray, Vauxrot, and Quiquengrogne, and cost on the average from 28 to 30 francs the hundred.

They are generally tested by a practised hand, who, by knocking them sharply together, professes to be able to tell from the sound that they give the substance of the gla.s.s and its temper. The was.h.i.+ng of the bottles is invariably performed by women, who at the larger establishments accomplish it with the aid of machines, sometimes provided with a revolving brush, although small gla.s.s beads are more generally used by preference. After being washed every bottle is minutely examined to make certain of its perfect purity.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

With the different champagne houses the mode of bottling the wine, which may take place any time between April and August, varies in some measure, still the _tirage_, as this operation is called, is ordinarily effected as follows:--The wine is emptied from the casks into vats or tuns of varying capacity, whence it flows through pipes into oblong reservoirs, each provided with a row of syphon taps, on to which the bottles are slipped, and from which the wine ceases to flow directly the bottles become filled. Men or lads remove the full bottles, replacing them by empty ones, while other hands convey them to the corkers, whose guillotine machines are incessantly in motion; next the _agrafeurs_ secure the corks by means of an iron staple, termed an agrafe; and then the bottles are conveyed either to a capacious apartment aboveground, known as a cellier, or to a cool cellar, according to the number of atmospheres the wine may indicate. It should be explained that air compressed to half its volume acquires twice its ordinary force, and to a quarter of its volume quadruple this force--hence the phrase of two, four, or more atmospheres. The exact degree of pressure is readily ascertained by means of a manometer, an instrument resembling a pressure gauge, with a hollow screw at the base which is driven through the cork of the bottle. A pressure of 5 atmospheres const.i.tutes what is styled a "grand mousseux," and the wine exhibiting it may be safely conveyed to the coolest subterranean depths, for no doubt need be entertained as to its future effervescent properties. Should the pressure, however, scarcely exceed 4 atmospheres, it is advisable to keep the wine in a cellier aboveground that it may more rapidly acquire the requisite sparkling qualities. If fewer than 4 atmospheres are indicated it would be necessary to pour the wine back into the casks again, and add a certain amount of cane sugar to it, but such an eventuality very rarely happens, thanks to the scientific formulas and apparatus which enable the degree of pressure the wine will show to be determined beforehand to a nicety. Still mistakes are sometimes made, and there are instances where charcoal fires have had to be lighted in the cellars to encourage the effervescence to develop itself.

The bottles are placed in a horizontal position and stacked in rows of varying length and depth, one above the other, to about the height of a man, and with narrow laths between them. Thus they will spend the summer providing all goes well, but in about three weeks' time the process of gas-making inside the bottles is at its height, and may cause an undue number of them to burst. The glucometer notwithstanding, it is impossible to check a certain amount of breakage, especially when a hot season has caused the grapes, and consequently the raw wine, to be sweeter than usual. Moreover when once _ca.s.se_ or breakage sets in on a large scale, the temperature of the cellar is raised by the volume of carbonic acid gas let loose, which is not without its effect on the remaining bottles. The only remedy is at once to remove the wine to a lower temperature when this is practicable. A manufacturer of the pre-scientific days of the last century relates how one year, when the wine was rich and strong, he only preserved 120 out of 6,000 bottles; and it is not long since that 120,000 out of 200,000 were destroyed in the cellars of a well-known champagne firm. Over-knowing purchasers still affect to select a wine which has exploded in the largest proportion as being well up to the mark as regards its effervescence, and profess to make inquiries as to its performances in this direction.

It is evident that in spite of the teachings of science the bursting of champagne bottles has not yet been reduced to a minimum, for whereas in some cellars it averages 7 and 8 per cent., in others it rarely exceeds 2 or 3. In the month of October, the first and severest breakage being over, the newly-bottled wine is definitively stacked in the cellars in piles from two to half-a-dozen bottles deep, from six to seven feet high, and frequently a hundred feet or upwards in length. Usually the bottles remain in their horizontal position for about eighteen or twenty months, though some firms, who pride themselves upon s.h.i.+pping perfectly matured wines, leave them thus for double this s.p.a.ce of time. All this while the temperature to which the wine is exposed is, as far as practicable, carefully regulated; for the risk of breakage, though greatly diminished, is never entirely at an end.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

By this time the fermentation is over, but in the interval, commencing from a few days after the bottling of the wine, a loose dark-brown sediment has been forming which has now settled on the lower side of the bottle, and to get rid of which is a delicate and tedious task. The bottles are placed _sur pointe_, as it is termed--that is to say, slantingly in racks with their necks downwards, the inclination being increased from time to time to one more abrupt. The object of this change in their position is to cause the sediment to leave the side of the bottle where it has gathered; it afterwards becomes necessary to twist and turn it, and coagulate it, as it were, until it forms a kind of muddy ball, and eventually to get it well down into the neck of the bottle, so that it may be finally expelled with a bang when the temporary cork is removed and the proper one adjusted. To accomplish this the bottles are sharply turned in one direction every day for at least a month or six weeks, the time being indefinitely extended until the sediment shows a disposition to settle near the cork. The younger the wine the longer the period necessary for the bottles to be shaken, new wine often requiring as much as three months. Only a thoroughly practised hand can give the right amount of revolution and the requisite degree of slope; and in some of the cellars that we visited men were pointed out to us who had acquired such dexterity as to be able at a pinch to shake with their two hands as many as 50,000 bottles in a single day.

Some of these men have spent thirty or forty years of their lives engaged in this perpetual task. Fancy being entombed all alone day after day in vaults which are invariably dark and gloomy, and often cold and dank, and being obliged to twist sixty to seventy of these bottles every minute throughout the day of twelve hours. Why the treadmill and the crank with their periodical respites must be pastime compared to this maddeningly monotonous occupation, which combines hard labour, with the wrist at any rate, with next to solitary confinement. One can understand these men becoming gloomy and taciturn, and affirming that they sometimes see devils hovering over the bottle-racks and frantically shaking the bottles beside them, or else grinning at them as they pursue their humdrum task. Still it may be taken for granted that the men who reach this stage are accustomed to drink freely of raw spirits, and merely pay the penalty resulting from over-indulgence.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

In former times the bottles used to be placed with their heads downwards on tables pierced with holes, from which they had to be removed and agitated. In 1818, however, a man named Muller, in the employment of Madame Clicquot, suggested that the bottles should remain in the tables whilst being shaken, and further that the holes should be cut obliquely so that the bottles might recline at varying angles. His suggestions were privately adopted by Madame Clicquot, but eventually the improved plan got wind, and the system now prevails throughout the Champagne.

When the bottles have gone through their regular course of shaking they are examined before a lighted candle to ascertain whether the deposit has fallen and the wine become perfectly clear. Sometimes it happens that, twist these men never so wisely, the deposit refuses to stir, and takes the shape of a bunch of thread technically called a "claw," or an adherent ma.s.s styled a "mask." When this is the case an attempt is made to start it by tapping the part to which it adheres with a piece of iron, the result being frequently the sudden explosion of the bottle. As a precaution, therefore, the workman protects his face with a wire-mask or gigantic wire spectacles, which give to him a ghoul-like aspect.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The cellars of the champagne manufacturers are very varied in character.

The wine that has been grown on the chalky hills undergoes development in vaults burrowed out of the calcareous strata underlying the entire district. In excavating these cellars the sides and roofs are frequently worked smooth and regular as finished masonry. The larger ones are composed of a number of s.p.a.cious and lofty galleries, sometimes parallel with each other, but often ramifying in various directions, and evidently constructed on no definite plan. They are of one, two, and, in rare instances, of three stories, and now and then consist of a series of parallel galleries communicating with each other, lined with masonry, and with their stone walls and vaulted roofs resembling the crypt of some conventual building. Others of ancient date are less regular in their form, being merely so many narrow low winding corridors, varied, perhaps, by recesses hewn roughly out of the chalk, and resembling the brigands' cave of the melodrama, while a certain number of the larger cellars at Reims are simply abandoned quarries, the broad and lofty arches of which are suggestive of the nave and aisles of some Gothic church. In these varied vaults, lighted by solitary lamps in front of metal reflectors, or by the flickering tallow candles which we carry in our hands, we pa.s.s rows of casks filled with last year's vintage or reserved wine of former years, and piles after piles of bottles of _vin brut_ in seemingly endless sequence--squares, so to speak, of raw champagne recruits awaiting their turn to be thoroughly drilled and disciplined. These are varied by bottles reposing necks downwards in racks at different degrees of inclination according to the progress their education has attained. Reports caused by exploding bottles now and then a.s.sail the ear, and as the echo dies away it becomes mingled with the rush of the escaping wine, cascading down the pile and finding its way across the sloping sides of the floor to the narrow gutter in the centre. The dampness of the floor and the shattered fragments of gla.s.s strewn about show the frequency of this kind of accident. The spilt wine, which flows along the gutter into reservoirs, is usually thrown away, though there is a story current to the effect that the head of one Epernay firm cooks nearly everything consumed in his house in the fluid thus let loose in his cellars.

In these subterranean galleries we frequently come upon parties of workmen engaged in transforming the perfected _vin brut_ into champagne.

Viewed at a distance while occupied in their monotonous task, they present in the semi-obscurity a series of picturesque Rembrandt-like studies. One of the end figures in each group is engaged in the important process of _degorgement_, which is performed when the deposit, of which we have already 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 subsidence of the deposit; brings it, still neck downwards, over a small tub at the bottom of the apparatus already mentioned; and with a jerk of the steel hook 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 gla.s.sful or so of wine, further flow being checked by the workman's finger, which also serves to remove any sediment yet 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 _degorgeur's_ hand, 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 genuine 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 to the market for which the wine is destined: thus the high-cla.s.s 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 modic.u.m dose is added, while the so-called "_brut_" wines receive no more than from one to three per cent. of liqueur.

In some establishments the dose is administered with a tin can or ladle; but more generally an ingenious machine of pure silver and gla.s.s which regulates the percentage of liqueur to a nicety is employed. The _dosage_ accomplished, the bottle pa.s.ses to another workman known as the _egaliseur_, who fills it up with pure wine. Should a pink champagne be required, the wine thus added will be red, although manufacturers of questionable reputation sometimes employ the solution known as _teinte de Fismes_. The _egaliseur_ in turn hands the bottle to the corker, who places it under a machine furnished with a pair of claws, which compress the cork to a size sufficiently small to allow it to enter the neck of the bottle, and a suspended weight, which in falling drives it home.

These corks, which are princ.i.p.ally obtained from Catalonia and Andalucia, cost more than twopence each, and are delivered in huge sacks resembling hop-pockets. Before they are used they have been either boiled in wine, soaked in a solution of tartar, or else steamed by the cork merchants, both to prevent their imparting a bad flavour to the wine and to hinder any leakage. They are commonly handed warm to the corker, who dips them into a small vessel of wine before making use of them. Some firms, however, prepare their corks by subjecting them to cold water _douches_ a day or two beforehand. The _ficeleur_ receives the bottle from the corker, and with a twist of the fingers secures the cork with string, at the same time rounding its. .h.i.therto flat top. The _metteur de fil_ next affixes the wire with like celerity; and then the final operation is performed by a workman seizing a couple of bottles by the neck and whirling them round his head, as though engaged in the Indian-club exercise, in order to secure a perfect amalgamation of the wine and the liqueur.

The final manipulation accomplished, the agitated course of existence through which the wine has been pa.s.sing of late comes to an end, and the bottles are conveyed to another part of the establishment, where they repose for several days, or even weeks, in order that the mutual action of the wine and the liqueur upon each other may be complete. When the time arrives for despatching them they are confided to feminine hands to have their dainty toilettes made, and are tastefully labelled and either capsuled, or else have their corks and necks imbedded in sealing-wax, or swathed in gold or silver foil, whereby they are rendered presentable at the best-appointed tables.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Thus completed champagne sets out on its beneficial pilgrimage to promote the spread of mirth and lightheartedness, to drive away dull care and foment good-fellows.h.i.+p, to comfort the sick and cheer the sound. Wherever civilisation penetrates, champagne sooner or later is sure to follow; and if Queen Victoria's morning drum beats round the world, its beat is certain to be echoed before the day is over by the popping of champagne-corks. Now-a-days the exhilarating wine graces not merely princely but middle-cla.s.s dinner-tables, and is the needful adjunct at every _pet.i.t souper_ in all the gayer capitals of the world.

It gives a flush to beauty at garden-parties and picnics, sustains the energies of the votaries of Terpsich.o.r.e until the hour of dawn, and imparts to many a young gallant the necessary courage to declare his pa.s.sion. It enlivens the dullest of _reunions_, brings smiles to the lips of the sternest cynics, softens the most irascible tempers, and loosens the most taciturn tongues. The grim Berliner and the gay Viennese both acknowledge its enlivening influence. It sparkles in crystal goblets in the great capital of the North, and the Moslem wipes its creamy foam from his beard beneath the very shadow of the mosque of St. Sophia; for the Prophet has only forbidden the use of wine, and of a surety--Allah be praised!--this strangely-sparkling delicious liquor, which gives to the true believer a foretaste of the joys of Paradise, cannot be wine. At the diamond-fields of South Africa and the diggings of Australia the brawny miner who has. .h.i.t upon a big bit of crystallised carbon, or a nugget of virgin ore, strolls to the "saloon" and shouts for champagne. The mild Hindoo imbibes it quietly, but approvingly, as he watches the evolutions of the Nautch girls, and his partiality for it has already enriched the Anglo-Bengalee vocabulary and London slang with the word "simkin." It is transported on camel-backs across the deserts of Central Asia, and in frail canoes up the mighty Amazon. The two-sworded Daimio calls for it in the tea-gardens of Yokohama, and the New Yorker, when not rinsing his stomach by libations of iced-water, imbibes it freely at Delmonico's. Wherever civilised man has set his foot--at the base of the Pyramids and at the summit of the Cordilleras, in the mangrove swamps of Ashantee and the gulches of the Great Lone Land, in the wilds of the Amoor and on the desert isles of the Pacific--he has left traces of his presence in the shape of the empty bottles that were once full of the sparkling vintage of the Champagne.

[Ill.u.s.tration]