If you mount the Belvedere of the Jardin des Plantes, at Paris, there
is one particular segment of the panorama which forms a very complete
and singular picture. The right-hand wing (theatrically speaking) is
formed by Jussieu’s famous cedar of Lebanon, planted by his own hands
in seventeen hundred and thirty-five; that on the left hand is a clump
of yews, firs, and miscellaneous evergreens. The heights of Montmartre
crown the horizon; the middle distance is formed by the line of houses
that constitute the quays on the right bank of the Seine, broken in
the midst by the cupolas of St. Pol, and a little to the left by the
barn-like roof of St. Louis dans l’Île. But the whole central space
of the landscape is overspread with what might be a lake of brown mud
in a half-dried and crumpled state, but which, after a second look,
proves a vast expanse of tiled roofs running in parallel rows, and
slightly diversified by the tops of trees and by scarcely visible
skylights which break up the gray-brown uniformity. That petrified
mud-lake consists entirely of the roofs which cover the famous Entrepôt
or Halle-aux-Vins, which Napoleon the First propounded (by imperial
decree) in eighteen hundred and eight, on the site of the Abbey of
St. Victor, where Abelard had listened to the lessons of Guillaume de
Champeaux, and where many good bottles of ecclesiastical wine had made
their disappearance down monkish throats.
If your curiosity is sufficiently awakened to pay the Entrepôt a nearer
visit, you will meet with much to interest. Suppose you walk down Rue
Cuvier,--perhaps one of these days we shall have Owen Street, and
Faraday Street, in London,--you will reach the Quai Saint Bernard, with
the Seine rushing rapidly to the left and in front. You will encounter
an eddying stream of pleasure and of business combined, as if the whole
population of Paris were dancing a grand Sir Roger de Coverly together;
omnibuses flitting backwards and forwards,--Hirondelles, Favorites,
Gazelles, Parisiennes; holiday parties laden with eatables, to be
washed down, outside the Barrière, by wine untaxed by octroi duty;
students and savans bent on taking notes on botany and comparative
anatomy; wine merchants and their customers with mouths in tasting
trim, bound either for the Halle itself or for Bercy beyond it; troops
of children with their nurses and grandmothers, about to spend the
afternoon in watching the monkeys; artisans’ cousins from the interior,
with hearts palpitating at the hope of beholding living lions, tigers
and boa-constrictors, for the first time in their life; not to mention
the man who cuts your portrait in black paper, with the Arab who jumps
into the air like a goat and lights on his forefeet like a sportive
tomcat, on their way to compete with the giantess, the learned pig, and
the fortune-telling pony at the foot of the bridge of Austerlitz. From
all these mundane follies the Halle-aux-Vins is secluded, in monastic
style, by a light railing covered with stout iron network, which allows
it to gaze at the Vanity Fair, while it separates it from too familiar
contact with the world. It is in the crowd--without being of it--a
convenient, friar-like, differenceless distinction. Exclusiveness,
however, of whatever kind, is more apparent than real. At the bottom of
Rue Cuvier, turn to your right, and you may enter at once, unless you
prefer walking along the Quai to the principal entrance, where there
is a letter-box, in case you have a billet-doux to post. The principal
restriction imposed upon a stranger is, that he is forbidden to smoke
amongst the eaux-de-vie.
Well, now that you are inside it, what do you think of it? Is the
wine-market of Paris like any thing else? The name of the establishment
puts the London Docks into your head; but, beyond their commercial use
and distinction, there is no more analogy between the London Docks, and
this little bit of fairy-land, than there was between the caverns of
Ætna, where Vulcan made pokers and tongs, and the slopes of Parnassus
where the Muses danced. The Halle-aux-Vins is not a building, nor a
labyrinthine cellar; it is a complete town, as perfect and unique
in its way as Pompeii itself. Once a week, indeed, it resembles the
city of the dead; it is silent, solitary, and closed. No business is
transacted there on Sundays, save only by the restless spirits which
will work unseen, and which contrive to make their escape invisibly,
however fast they may be imprisoned.
The Halle is the very concentration and impersonation of French vinous
hilarity. It would not do for port and sherry, which require a more
solid and stately residence; nor is it sufficiently whimsical and
mediæval to serve as a rendezvous for Rhenish, Austrian, and Hungarian
volunteers in the grand army of Jean Raisin. Rudesheimer, Voeslan,
Gumpoldskirchen, or Luttenberg, could not well sojourn comfortably in
any place that had not a touch of a ruined castle in its architecture.
But the Entrepôt, whose first stone was laid little more than forty
years back, no more pretends to an elderly and dignified mien than
does the Bal Mabille (by daylight) or the Château des Fleurs. It is
as tasteful and as elegant as if intended to serve as a suburban
luncheon-place, where you might call for any known wine in the world,
to be sipped under the shade of flowering shrubs, to the accompaniment
of sandwiches, sausage-rolls, and ices, handed to you by white-aproned
waiters or rosy-cheeked and smart-capped damsels.
Great part of this town consists of houses--summer-houses,
dolls-houses,--of one story, with one door, one window, and one
chimney; with room in each, for exactly one more than one inmate.
An extra apartment is sometimes contrived, by means of a bower,
which serves instead of a garden--there is none--though a great
deal of gardening is done in the Halle, in tubs, flower-pots, and
mignonette-boxes, wherein luxuriant specimens of the culture are
observable; myrtles, oleanders, lilacs, orange-trees, bay-trees, and
pomegranates, all a-growing and a-blowing. Favoured mansions possess
a garden--sometimes as much as three or four mètres square--bedecked
with roses, dwarf and standard, lilies of the valley, violets double
and single, irises displaying some of the colours of the rainbow,
hollyhocks, gilliflowers, blue-bells, and oyster-shells all in a row.
There is an abundant supply of excellent water; of course to serve no
other purpose whatever than the refreshment of the aforesaid favourites
of Flora, though people say more wine is drunk in Paris than ever comes
or came into it.
The Halle-aux-Vins houses, which put you in mind of Gulliver’s box in
Brobdingnag, are raised from the ground on separate blocks of stone,
to keep them dry, which suggests the further idea of the possibility
of their being flown away with by an eagle or roc, if they had only
a convenient ring in the roof. Of course, the houselings,--detached
and separate; no quarrelling with next-door neighbours, nor listening
to secrets through thin partition walls,--are ranged in streets,
the perusal of whose simple names is sufficient to create a vinous
thirst. What do you say to walking out of Rue de Bordeaux into Rue
de Champagne, thence traversing Rue de Bourgogne, to reach Rue de la
Côte-d’Or, and Rue de Languedoc, before arriving at Rue de Touraine!
The Barmecide’s guest would have been in ecstacies, in defiance of the
koran, at such a feast.
Moreover, to make things still more pleasant, every one of the
euphonious alleys and streets is planted with trees of different
ornamental species,--the lime, the horse-chesnut, and other arboreal
luxuries. It is a pity that the climate does not permit the growth of
cork-trees, bearing crops of ready-cut corks, including bungs, long
clarets, and champagne-stoppers. The happy mortal to whom each little
lodge belongs, is indicated by a legible inscription giving not only
the number of his isolated square counting-house, according to its
place in the alley which it lines, whether in single or in double row,
but also bearing the town-address of its tenant, and specifying the
special liquors in which he deals; thus:--“21, Mossenet, Senior, &
Cie.; Quai d’Anjou, 25. Fine wines of the Côte-d’Or cellar, Rue de
Champagne, 17.” Similar biographical sketches are given of other lords
of other summer-houses which wink at you with their Venetian blinds
behind their fences of trelliswork covered with creeping plants.
The ground-plan of the Halle-aux-Vins is formed of square blocks,
consisting of magazins, divided at right angles by the streets we have
traversed. The magazins are appropriately named after the rivers of
France along whose banks are the most famous vineyards. The Magazin du
Rhone, Magazin de L’Yonne, Magazin de la Marne, Magazin de la Seine,
and Magazin de la Loire, will serve as guides to the nomenclature of
the rest of the establishment. Five principal masses of building are
thus divided by clean-swept streets, whose most conspicuous ornaments,
besides the little thrifty fir-trees, arbor-vitæ, and junipers in
tubs, are groups of all sorts of casks lying about in picturesque
attitudes, as if they had purposely arranged themselves in tableaux
for the sake of having their portraits drawn; and drays, which are
simply long-inclined planes balancing on the axle of the wheel, on
which the casks are held by a rope tightened by a four-handled capstan.
The elevation of the Halle-aux-Vins is pyramidal in principle. The
ground-floor of the blocks is crossed by galleries from which you enter
cobwebby rather than mouldy cellars, whose more apt denomination would
be the Bordeaux word chais. Each gallery, a sort of rectangular tunnel
some three hundred and fifty metres long, is lighted by the sunshine
from a grating above, and is traversed by a wooden railway for tubs to
roll on straight and soberly. Great precautions are taken against fire.
The galleries are closed at each end by double doors of iron grating.
The sapeurs pompiers, in various ways, make their vicinity if not their
presence felt.
Other storehouses, built over the ground-floor so as to form a second
story, are tastefully surrounded with terraces, on which you are
strictly forbidden to smoke. These upper magazins are approached
from the streets by inclined planes of road-way for the use of
vehicles; pedestrians, by stepping up light iron staircases, may more
readily breathe the air of the terrace, while sounds of tapping and
wine-coopering mingle with the hum of the adjacent city, with the
passing music of some military band, or with the roar and the scream of
the captive creatures which are stared at by the crowd in the Jardin
des Plantes. Vinous and spirituous smells float in the atmosphere from
the full casks which lie about, in spite of the coating of plaster with
which their ends are covered; and we draw nigh to the vaulted magazins
of eau de vie, where every brandy-seller has his own proper numbered
store, lighted from above by little square skylights, and where roam
groups of inquisitive tasters, or spirit-rappers, anxious to pry into
secrets that are closely veiled from the vulgar herd. The sanctum
of the shrine is the Depotoir Public, or public gauging and mixing
apparatus of cylindrical receivers, and glass-graduated brandyometers,
and cranes for raising the barrels to the top of the cylinders. In
this presence-chamber of alcoholic majesty, etiquette is strictly
observed. Conformably with the rules and regulations of the Entrepôt,
the conservator apprises Messieurs the merchants that they are required
to mind their P’s and Q’s. It is no more allowable to meddle with the
machinery, or to intrude behind the mystic cylinders, than it is to
make playthings of the furniture which adorns the altar of a cathedral.
There are paradoxical facts connected with the Halle-aux-Vins which
none but the thoroughly initiated can solve. Perhaps it may afford a
clue to know that there are two emporia of wine and spirit at Paris;
one, the Halle within the barrière, and, therefore subject to the
octroi tax, and more immediately connected with the supply of the city
itself--the other, Bercy, close by, but outside the barrière, and
consequently filled with the goods yet untouched by the troublesome
impost. Large as it is, the Entrepôt is not large enough; were it
twice as big, it would all be hired. For, of all trades in Paris,
the wine-trade is the most considerable. There are now nearly seven
hundred wholesale merchants, and about three thousand five hundred
retail dealers, without reckoning the épiciers, or grocers, who usually
sell wines, spirits, and liqueurs in bottle; taking no account of the
innumerable houses where they give to eat, and also give to drink. Not
only is it the mission of Parisian commerce to moisten the throats of
the metropolis, but it is the natural intermediary of the alcoholic
beverages that are consumed in the vineyardless districts of France.
The twentieth part of the produce of the empire travels to Paris. But,
as the imposts on their arrival are very heavy and moreover press
only on the local consumption, means have been taken to store the
merchandise in such a way as not to pay the duty till the moment of its
sale to the consumer. Hence, there is established on the bank of the
Seine where Bercy stands, an assemblage of a thousand or twelve hundred
cellars and warehouses--a sort of inland bonding-place--outside the
limits of the octroi tax. These are hired by the merchants of the city
as receptacles for their stock in hand.
The buildings of the Halle-aux-Vins, within the fiscal boundary, cost
altogether thirty millions of francs, estimating the value of the site
at one third of that sum. The speculation, however, has not hitherto
responded to the hopes that were entertained at the time when it was
founded. Whether the rentals (which vary from two francs and a half to
five francs the superficial mètre), are fixed at too low a figure,
or whether the wine-merchants, disliking to be watched and hindered
in the performance of their trade manipulations, prefer their private
magazins at Bercy, the Entrepôt brings in to the city of Paris no more
than three hundred thousand francs clear a year, that is, about one per
cent for the capital employed. That Jean Raisin is somewhere made the
subject of certain mystic rites which are scrupulously screened from
public observation may be proved by the simple rules of addition and
subtraction.
The wine-trade of Paris amounts to two million two hundred thousand
hectolitres; four hundred thousand are consumed in the banlieue,
outside the barrière, and seven hundred thousand are sent away, to
supply the northern departments. What then becomes of the one million
one hundred thousand which are left at Paris? It is made into one
million four hundred thousand hectolitres! It may be calculated
from the price at the vineyard, the carriage, the taxes, and other
etceteras, that unadulterated wine, of however inferior a quality,
cannot be sold in Paris for less than half a franc, or fifty centimes,
the litre. Now, for considerable quantities retailed in cabarets, the
price is as low as forty centimes. The equilibrium is reestablished by
clandestine and fraudulent manufacture. On ordinary common wines it
is practised to the extent of increasing them on the average as much
as three-tenths. Various sweet ingredients are fermented in water.
A farmer travelling from Orleans in the same railway carriage with
myself, showed me without the slightest hesitation, or concealment,
a sample of dried pears which he was taking to Paris to sell to the
Bercy wine-brewers. Very inferior raisins, dried fruits in general, and
coarse brown sugar, enter into the magic broth. To complete the charm,
an addition is made of some high-coloured wine from the south, a little
alcohol, and a dash of vinegar and tartaric acid. Such preparations
as these are harmless enough; they become grateful to the palate that
is habituated to them; and certain adroit manipulators succeed in
producing a beverage which attains considerable reputation amongst a
wide circle of amateurs. Certainly the so-called petit Macon you get at
Paris is a most agreeable drink, when good of its kind. At respectable
restaurants, drinking it from a sealed bottle, you may reckon with
tolerable safety on its genuineness. In wine shops, where wine is drunk
from the cask, its purity is not so certain. The great test is, that
manufactured and even light wines will not keep; they must be consumed,
like a glass of soda water, as soon as they are ready for the lip. It
is said that the lamented Fum the Fourth had a bin of choice wine which
he would allow no one to taste, except on special occasions when he
chose to call for it himself. But a king, however low he may descend,
can hardly go down the cellar-steps with a bunch of keys in one hand
and a tallow candle in the other, to decant his own favourite port
and sherry. One morning, his Majesty decided that the evening’s feast
should be graced by the appearance of some of the treasured nectar. Of
course, the underlings had drunk it all themselves, except a single
bottle, which they had the marvellous modesty to leave. What was to be
done? A panting cupbearer was sent with the final remnant to procure
from a confidential purveyor to the palace something as nearly like
it as possible. “You shall have it by dinner-time,” said the friend
in need; “and by letting me know any morning, you may have more to
any extent you want. But,” said the benevolent wizard, in tones of
warning--“but, remember, it must be all consumed the same night. It
will not keep till next day.”
I hope the impromptu wine-maker was duly careful of the royal health.
But in Paris there are said to be a number of cabaretiers, who, from
the lees of wine mixed with a decoction of prunes doctored with
logwood, sugar of lead, sugar, and eau-de-vie, metamorphose wholesome
fountain-water into an infamous potion, which they shamelessly sell as
the juice of the grape. The French Encyclopédie, in its article “Vin,”
gives a large number of serviceable receipts, which may or may not have
been tested at Bercy. If effectual, their value is beyond all price.
An elixir to improve instantly the most common wine; A mode of giving
to the wine of the worst soil the best quality and the most agreeable
taste; A mode of giving to ordinary wines the flavour of Malmsey,
Muscat, Alicant, and sherry; The manner of knowing whether there be
water in the wine; The means of restoring wine that is changed; Remarks
on bottles which spoil the wine; and, The method of improving and
clarifying all sorts of wines, whether new or old; would alone be quite
sufficient to make the fortune of any man who could scrape a hundred
francs together, and with that immense capital start as Parisian
wine-merchant. The particulars of these prescriptions are unnecessary
for the reader, especially, seeing that I have given him the reference;
but I cannot resist transferring for his edification, from L’Editeur,
an Oran (Algerian) newspaper for the eighth of November last, an
advertisement, giving real names relative to the Liqueur Trasforest, of
Bordeaux:--
“This precious composition, very advantageously known for a long time
past, and recently brought to perfection by its author, gives to
wine of the most inferior crûs a delicious richness, which is easily
confounded with the true richness of the Médoc; consequently, it is
well appreciated by connoisseurs, who give it the preference over all
preparations of this nature. Messieurs the proprietors, merchants, and
consumers, who have not yet employed it, are invited to make a trial
of it; there is no doubt as to their being convinced of its excellent
properties by the advantages they will derive from it, especially to
consignments to beyond the seas. [Much obliged to the philanthropic
House of Trasforest.] A great number of retail dealers owe the
preference which they enjoy, to this aromatic liquor, which is an agent
proper for the preservation of wine, at the same time that it imparts
to it a very superior quality and value by the delicate bouquet which
it communicates.
“To employ the Liqueur Trasforest properly, you ought in the first
place to whip up the wine; let it remain about fifteen days; and not
add the Liqueur until the wine is drawn off, so that its mixture
with the wine may be perfect. After several days of rest it may be
put in bottle; the aroma keeps indefinitely. [That may mean for an
indefinitely short period.] Twenty years’ experience and success prove
that the high reputation of this excellent production is incontestably
merited. A flask suffices to perfume, bonify, and age, a hogshead
(barrique) of wine. Price one franc fifty centimes. An allowance
of twenty per cent. to wholesale dealers. Orders attended to for
ready-money payment. Beware of imitations.
“General entrepôt and special manufacture: Maison Trasforest, Rue
Dauphine, 35, and Rue Saint-Martin, 56, opposite the Cours d’Albrest,
Bordeaux. (Prepay orders and their answers.) Sole depôt in Oran at
the office of the journal L’Editeur. At the same depôt may be had
the Gelatinous Powder, for the complete, absolute, and instantaneous
clarification of white and red wines, vinegars, eaux-de-vie, and
liqueurs.”