The Vines chiefly of the Pineau Variety-- The Plant doré of Ay, the
Plant vert doré, 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 quantity. 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 clusters taking the conical form of the pine. The
first is the franc pineau, the plant doré 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 doré, 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 Côte 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 épinette, 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 Côte d'Avize, notably at Cramant, the delicate and elegant
wine of which ranks immediately after that of Ay and Verzenay. The
épinette is a prolific bearer, and its round transparent golden berries,
which hang in no very compact clusters, 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 circumstance 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 Mâconnais, 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 principal 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.
[Illustration]
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 Médoc 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 shield of stout leather. The
women use a mallet, or have recourse to a special appliance, in working
which the foot plays the principal 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 masses, 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.
[Illustration]
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, faggots, 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 shield 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 2½ acres of vines, during an ordinary day.
Owing to the system of cultivation by rejuvenescence, and the constant
replenishing 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 butterfly, 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]