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 canal, with the
neighbouring village of Mareuil, and finally Avize, in the centre of the
white grape district southwards of Epernay. Châlons, 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 _cuvée_. 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 Côte
d'Avize is essential to the perfect _cuvée_. The aim is to combine and
develop the special qualities of the respective crûs, 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 principal 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 _cuvée_ 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 quantity 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 glass. Therefore the amount of saccharine in the _cuvée_ 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 _cuvée_ 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 glass, too, is not without its importance, as a manufactory
established for the production of glass by a new process turned out
champagne bottles charged with alkaline sulphurets, and the consequence
was that an entire _cuvée_ 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 quantity), 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 glass and its temper. The washing 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 glass beads are more
generally used by preference. After being washed every bottle is
minutely examined to make certain of its perfect purity.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
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 5¾ atmospheres constitutes 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 _casse_ 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
2½ 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 shipping perfectly
matured wines, leave them thus for double this space 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.
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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 mass 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.
[Illustration]
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 spacious 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 pass 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 assail 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
glass 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 _dégorgement_, 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 glassful 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
_dégorgeur'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-class 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 modicum 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 glass which
regulates the percentage of liqueur to a nicety is employed. The
_dosage_ accomplished, the bottle passes to another workman known as the
_égaliseur_, 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 _égaliseur_ 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 principally 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 hitherto 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 passing 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.
[Illustration]
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-fellowship, 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-class dinner-tables, and is the needful
adjunct at every _petit 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 Terpsichore until the hour of dawn, and
imparts to many a young gallant the necessary courage to declare his
passion. It enlivens the dullest of _réunions_, 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 hit 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.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
DEVICES FROM THE COMMANDERIE AT REIMS.]