Messrs. Werlé and Co., successors to the Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin--
Their Offices and Cellars on the site of a Former Commanderie of the
Templars-- Origin of the Celebrity of Madame Clicquot's Wines--
M. Werlé and his Son-- The Forty-five Cellars of the Clicquot-Werlé
Establishment-- Our Tour of Inspection-- Ingenious Liqueuring
Machine-- An Explosion and its Consequences-- M. Werlé's Gallery of
Paintings-- Madame Clicquot's Renaissance House and its Picturesque
Bas-reliefs-- The Werlé Vineyards and Vendangeoirs-- M. Louis
Roederer's Establishment-- Heidsieck and Co. and their Famous
"Monopole" Brand-- The Firm Founded in the Last Century-- Their
various Establishments Inside and Outside Reims-- The Matured Wines
Shipped by them.
[Illustration]
The cellars of the great champagne manufacturers of Reims are scattered
in all directions over the historical old city. They undermine its
narrowest and most insignificant streets, its broad and handsome
boulevards, and on the eastern side extend to its more distant
outskirts. Messrs. Werlé and Co., the successors of the famous Veuve
Clicquot-Ponsardin, have their offices and cellars on the site of a
former Commanderie of the Templars in an ancient quarter of the city,
and strangers passing by the spot would scarcely imagine that under
their feet hundreds of busy hands are incessantly at work, disgorging,
dosing, shaking, corking, storing, wiring, labelling, capsuling, waxing,
tinfoiling, and packing hundreds of thousands of bottles of champagne
destined for all parts of the civilised world.
The house of Clicquot, established in the year 1798 by the husband of La
Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, who died in 1866, in her 89th year, was
indebted for much of the celebrity of its wine to the lucky accident of
the Russians occupying Reims in 1814 and 1815, and freely requisitioning
the sweet champagne stored in the widow's capacious cellars. Madame
Clicquot's wines were slightly known in Russia prior to this date, but
the officers of the invading army, on their return home, proclaimed
their merits throughout the length and breadth of the Muscovite Empire,
and the fortune of the house was made. Madame Clicquot, as every one
knows, amassed enormous wealth, and succeeded in marrying both her
daughter and granddaughter to counts of the _ancien régime_.
The present head of the firm is M. Werlé, who comes of an old Lorraine
family although born in the ancient free imperial town of Wetzlar on the
Lahn, where Goethe lays the scene of his "Sorrows of Werther," the
leading incidents of which really occurred here. M. Werlé entered the
establishment, which he has done so much to raise to its existing
position, so far back as the year 1821. His care and skill, exercised
over more than half a century, have largely contributed to obtain for
the Clicquot brand that high repute which it enjoys to-day all over the
world. M. Werlé, who has long been naturalised in France, was for many
years Mayor of Reims and President of its Chamber of Commerce, as well
as one of the deputies of the Marne to the Corps Législatif. He enjoys
the reputation of being the richest man in Reims, and, like his late
partner, Madame Clicquot, he has also succeeded in securing brilliant
alliances for his children, his son, M. Alfred Werlé, having married the
daughter of the Duc de Montebello, while his daughter espoused the son
of M. Magne, Minister of Finance under the Second Empire.
[Illustration:
MADAME VEUVE CLICQUOT AT EIGHTY YEARS OF AGE.
(_From the Painting by Léon Coignet_.) (p. 64)]
[Illustration:
THE CLICQUOT-WERLÉ ESTABLISHMENT AT REIMS. (p. 65)]
Half-way down the narrow tortuous Rue du Temple is an ancient gateway,
on which may be traced the half-effaced sculptured heads of Phoebus and
Bacchus. Immediately in front is a green _porte-cochère_ forming the
entrance to the Clicquot-Werlé establishment, and conducting to a
spacious trim-kept courtyard, set off with a few trees, with some
extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the
entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice,
where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower
surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of
Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a
bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remish Commanderie
of the Knights Templars existed until the epoch of the Great Revolution,
and to-day a few fragments of the ancient buildings remain adjacent to
the "celliers" of the establishment, which are reached through a pair of
folding-doors and down a flight of stone steps, and whence, after being
furnished with lighted candles, we set out on our tour of inspection,
entering first of all the vast cellar of St. Paul, where the thousands
of bottles requiring to be daily shaken are reposing necks downwards on
the large perforated tables which crowd the apartment. It is a
peculiarity of the Clicquot-Werlé establishment that each of the
cellars--forty-five in number, and the smallest a vast apartment--has
its special name. In the adjoining cellar of St. Matthew other bottles
are similarly arranged, and here wine in cask is likewise stored. We
pass rows of huge tuns, each holding its twelve or thirteen hundred
gallons of fine reserved wine designed for blending with more youthful
growths; next are threading our way between seemingly endless piles of
hogsheads filled with later vintages, and anon are passing smaller casks
containing the syrup with which the _vin préparé_ is dosed. At intervals
we come upon some square opening in the floor through which bottles of
wine are being hauled up from the cellars beneath in readiness to
receive their requisite adornment before being packed in baskets or
cases according to the country to which they are destined to be
despatched. To Russia the Clicquot champagne is sent in cases containing
sixty bottles, while the cases for China contain as many as double that
number.
[Illustration:
REMAINS OF THE COMMANDERIE AT REIMS.]
The ample cellarage which the house possesses has enabled M. Werlé to
make many experiments which firms with less space at their command would
find it difficult to carry out on the same satisfactory scale. Such, for
instance, is the system of racks in which the bottles repose while the
wine undergoes its diurnal shaking. Instead of these racks being, as
they commonly are, at almost upright angles, they are perfectly
horizontal, which, in M. Werlé's opinion, offers a material advantage,
inasmuch as the bottles are all in readiness for disgorging at the same
time instead of the lower ones being ready before those above, as is the
case when the ancient system is followed, owing to the uppermost bottles
getting less shaken than the others.
After performing the round of the celliers we descend into the _caves_,
a complete labyrinth of gloomy underground corridors excavated in the
bed of chalk which underlies the city, and roofed and walled with solid
masonry, more or less blackened by age. In one of these cellars we catch
sight of rows of work-people engaged in the operation of dosing,
corking, securing, and shaking the bottles of wine which have just left
the hands of the _dégorgeur_ by the dim light of half-a-dozen tallow
candles. The latest invention for liqueuring the wine is being employed.
Formerly, to prevent the carbonic acid gas escaping from the bottles
while the process of liqueuring was going on, it was necessary to press
a gutta-percha ball connected with the machine, in order to force the
escaping gas back. The new machine, however, renders this unnecessary,
the gas by its own power and composition forcing itself back into the
wine.
In the adjoining cellar of St. Charles are stacks of bottles awaiting
the manipulation of the _dégorgeur_, while in that of St. Ferdinand men
are engaged in examining other bottles before lighted candles to make
certain that the sediment is thoroughly dislodged and the wine perfectly
clear before the disgorgement is effected. Here, too, the corking,
wiring, and stringing of the newly-disgorged wine are going on. Another
flight of steps leads to the second tier of cellars, where the moisture
trickles down the dank dingy walls, and save the dim light thrown out by
the candles we carried, and by some other far-off flickering taper stuck
in a cleft stick to direct the workmen, who with dexterous turns of
their wrists give a twist to the bottles, all is darkness. On every side
bottles are reposing in various attitudes, the majority in huge square
piles on their sides, others in racks slightly tilted, others, again,
almost standing on their heads, while some, which through over-inflation
have come to grief, litter the floor and crunch beneath our feet.
Tablets are hung against each stack of wine indicating its age, and from
time to time a bottle is held up before the light to show us how the
sediment commences to form, or explain how it eventually works its way
down the neck of the bottle, and finally settles on the cork. Suddenly
we are startled by a loud report resembling a pistol-shot, which
reverberates through the vaulted chamber, as a bottle close at hand
explodes, dashing out its heavy bottom as neatly as though it had been
cut by a diamond, and dislocating the necks and pounding in the sides of
its immediate neighbours. The wine trickles down, and eventually finds
its way along the sloping sides of the slippery floor to the narrow
gutter in the centre.
Ventilating shafts pass from one tier of cellars to the other, enabling
the temperature in a certain measure to be regulated, and thereby
obviate an excess of breakage. M. Werlé estimates that the loss in this
respect during the first eighteen months of a _cuvée_ amounts to 7 per
cent., but subsequently is considerably less. In 1862 one champagne
manufacturer lost as much as 45 per cent. of his wine by breakages. The
Clicquot _cuvée_ is made in the cave of St. William, where 120 hogsheads
of wine are hauled up by means of a crane and discharged into the vat
daily as long as the operation lasts. The _tirage_ or bottling of the
wine ordinarily commences in the middle of May, and occupies fully a
month.
[Illustration:
RENAISSANCE HOUSE AT REIMS, IN WHICH MADAME CLICQUOT RESIDED. (p. 69)]
M. Werlé's private residence is close to the establishment in the Rue du
Temple, and here he has collected a small gallery of high-class modern
paintings by French and other artists, including Meissonnier's
"Card-players," Delaroche's "Beatrice Cenci on her way to Execution,"
Fleury's "Charles V. picking up the brush of Titian," various works by
the brothers Scheffer, Knaus's highly-characteristic _genre_ picture,
"His Highness on a Journey," and several fine portraits, among which is
one of Madame Clicquot, painted by Léon Coignet, when she was eighty
years of age, and another of M. Werlé by the same artist, regarded as a
_chef-d'oeuvre_. Before her father's death Madame Clicquot used to reside
in the Rue de Marc, some short distance from the cellars in which her
whole existence centered, in a handsome Renaissance house, said to have
had some connection with the row of palaces that at one time lined the
neighbouring and then fashionable Rue du Tambour. This, however, is
extremely doubtful. A number of interesting and well-preserved
bas-reliefs decorate one of the façades of the house looking on to the
court. The figures are of the period of François Premier and his son
Henri II., who inaugurated his reign with a comforting edict for the
Protestants, ordaining that blasphemers were to have their tongues
pierced with red-hot irons, and heretics to be burnt alive, and who had
the ill-luck to lose his eye and life through a lance-thrust of the
Comte de Montgomerie, captain of his Scotch guards, whilst jousting with
him at a tournament held in honour of the marriage of his daughter
Isabelle with the gloomy widower of Queen Mary of England, of sanguinary
fame.
[Illustration]
The first of these bas-reliefs represents two soldiers of the Swiss
guard, the next a Turk and a Slav tilting at each other, and then comes
a scroll entwined round a thistle, and inscribed with this enigmatical
motto: "Giane le sur ou rien." In the third bas-relief a couple of
passionate Italians are winding up a gambling dispute with a
hand-to-hand combat, in the course of which table, cards, and dice have
got cantered over; the fourth presenting us with two French knights,
armed _cap-à-pie_, engaged in a tourney; while in the fifth and last a
couple of German lansquenets essay their gladiatorial skill with their
long and dangerous weapons. Several years back a tablet was discovered
in one of the cellars of the house, inscribed "Ci-gist vénérable
religieux maîstre Pierre Derclé, docteur en théologie, jadis prieur de
céans. Priez Dieu pour luy. 1486," which would almost indicate that the
house had originally a religious character, although the warlike spirit
of the bas-reliefs decorating it renders any such supposition with
regard to the existing building untenable.
The Messrs. Werlé own numerous acres of vineyards, comprising the very
finest situations in the well-known districts of Verzenay, Bouzy, Le
Mesnil, and Oger, at all of which places they have vendangeoirs or
pressing-houses of their own. Their establishment at Verzenay contains
seven presses, that at Bouzy eight, at Le Mesnil six, and at Oger two,
in addition to which grapes are pressed under their own supervision at
Ay, Avize, and Cramant in vendangeoirs belonging to their friends.
Since the death of Madame Clicquot the legal style of the firm has been
Werlé and Co., successors to Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, the mark, of
which M. Werlé and his son are the sole proprietors, still remaining
"Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin," while the corks of the bottles are branded
with the words "V. Clicquot-P. Werlé," encircling the figure of a comet.
The style of the wine--light, delicate, elegant, and fragrant--is
familiar to all connoisseurs of champagne. What, however, is not equally
well known is that within the last few years the firm, in obedience to
the prevailing taste, have introduced a perfectly dry wine of
corresponding quality to the richer wine which made the fortune of the
house.
The house of M. Louis Roederer, founded by a plodding German named
Schreider, pursued the sleepy tenor of its way for years, until all at
once it felt prompted to lay siege to the Muscovite connection of La
Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin and secure a market for its wine at Moscow and
St. Petersburg. It next opened up the United States, and finally
introduced its brand into England. The house possesses cellars in
various parts of Reims, and has its offices in one of the oldest
quarters of the city--namely, the Rue des Élus, or ancient Rue des
Juifs, records of which date as far back as 1103. These offices are at
the farther end of a courtyard beyond which is a second court, where
carts being laden with cases of champagne seemed to indicate that some
portion of the shipping business of the house is here carried on.
M. Louis Roederer refused our request for permission to visit his
establishments, so that it is only of their external appearance that
we are able to speak. One of them--the façade of which is rather
imposing, and which has a carved head of Bacchus surmounting the
_porte-cochère_--is situated in the Boulevard du Temple, while the
principal establishment, a picturesque range of buildings of
considerable extent, is in the neighbouring Rue de la Justice.
The old-established firm of Heidsieck and Co., which has secured a
reputation in both hemispheres for its famous Monopole and Dry Monopole
brands, has its cellars scattered about Reims, the central ones, where
the wine is prepared and packed, being situated in the narrow winding
Rue Sedan, at no great distance from the Clicquot-Werlé establishment.
The original firm dates back to 1785, when France was struggling with
those financial difficulties that a few years later culminated in that
great social upheaving which kept Europe in a state of turmoil for more
than a quarter of a century. Among the archives of the firm is a patent,
bearing the signature of the Minister of the Prussian Royal Household,
appointing Heidsieck and Co. purveyors of champagne to Friedrich William
III. The champagne-drinking Hohenzollern _par excellence_, however, was
the son and successor of the preceding, who, from habitual
over-indulgence in the exhilarating sparkling beverage during the last
few years of his reign, acquired the _sobriquet_ of King Clicquot.
On passing through the large _porte-cochère_ giving entrance to Messrs.
Heidsieck's principal establishment, one finds oneself in a small
courtyard with the surrounding buildings overgrown with ivy and
venerable vines. On the left is a dwelling-house enriched with elaborate
mouldings and cornices, and at the farther end of the court is the
entrance to the cellars, surmounted by a sun-dial bearing the date 1829.
The latter, however, is no criterion of the age of the buildings
themselves, as these were occupied by the firm at its foundation,
towards the close of the last century. We are first conducted into an
antiquated-looking low cellier, the roof of which is sustained with rude
timber supports, and here bottles of wine are being labelled and packed,
although this is but a mere adjunct to the adjacent spacious
packing-room provided with its loading platform and communicating
directly with the public road. At the time of our visit this hall was
gaily decorated with flags and inscriptions, the day before having been
the fête of St. Jean, when the firm entertain the people in their employ
with a banquet and a ball, at which the choicest wine of the house
liberally flows. From the packing-room we descend into the cellars,
which, like all the more ancient vaults in Reims, have been constructed
on no regular plan. Here we thread our way between piles after piles of
bottles, many of which having passed through the hands of the disgorger
are awaiting their customary adornment. The lower tier of cellars is
mostly stored with _vin sur pointe_, and bottles with their necks
downwards are encountered in endless monotony along a score or more of
long galleries. The only variation in our lengthened promenade is when
we come upon some solitary workman engaged in his monotonous task of
shaking his 30,000 or 40,000 bottles per diem.
The disgorging at Messrs. Heidsieck's takes place, in accordance with
the good old rule, in the cellars underground, where we noticed large
stocks of wine three and five years old, the former in the first stage
of _sur-pointe_, and the latter awaiting shipment. It is a speciality of
the house to ship only matured wine, which is necessarily of a higher
character than the ordinary youthful growths, for a few years have a
wonderful influence in developing the finer qualities of champagne. At
the time of our visit, in the spring of 1877, when the English market
was being glutted with the crude, full-bodied wine of 1874, Messrs.
Heidsieck were continuing to ship wines of 1870 and 1872, beautifully
rounded by keeping and of fine flavour and great delicacy of perfume,
and of which the firm estimated they had fully a year's consumption
still on hand.
Messrs. Heidsieck and Co. have a handsome modern establishment in the
Rue Coquebert--a comparatively new quarter of the city where champagne
establishments are the rule--the courtyard of which, alive with workmen
at the time of our visit, is broad and spacious, while the surrounding
buildings are light and airy, and the cellars lofty, regular, and well
ventilated. In a large cellier here, where the tuns are ranged side by
side between the rows of iron columns supporting the roof, the firm make
their _cuvée_; here too the bottling of their wine takes place, and
considerable stocks of high-class reserve wines and more youthful
growths are stored ready for removal when required by the central
establishment. The bulk of Messrs. Heidsieck's reserve wines, however,
repose in the outskirts of Reims, near the Porte Dieu-Lumière, in one of
the numerous abandoned chalk quarries, which of late years the champagne
manufacturers have discovered are capable of being transformed into
admirable cellars.
In addition to shipping a rich and a dry variety of the Monopole brand,
of which they are sole proprietors, Messrs. Heidsieck export to this
country a rich and a dry Grand Vin Royal. It is, however, to their
famous Monopole wine, and especially to the dry variety, which must
necessarily comprise the finest growths, that the firm owe their
principal celebrity.
[Illustration:
STATUE OF LOUIS XIII. ON THE REIMS HÔTEL DE VILLE]
VII.--THE REIMS ESTABLISHMENTS (_continued_).
The Firm of G. H. Mumm and Co.-- Their Large Shipments to the United
States-- Their Establishments in the Rue Andrieux and the Rue
Coquebert-- Bottle-Washing with Glass Beads-- The Cuvée and the
Tirage-- G. H. Mumm and Co.'s Vendangeoirs at Verzenay-- Their
Various Wines-- The Gate of Mars-- The Establishment of M. Gustave
Gibert on the Site of the Château des Archevêques-- His Cellars in
the Vaults of St. Peter's Abbey and beneath the old Hôtel des Fermes
in the Place Royale-- Louis XV. and Jean Baptiste Colbert--
M. Gibert's Wines-- Jules Mumm and Co., and Ruinart père et fils--
House of the Musicians-- The Counts de la Marck-- The Brotherhood of
Minstrels of Reims-- Establishment of Périnet et fils-- Their
Cellars of Three Stories in Solid Masonry-- Their Soft, Light, and
Delicate Wines-- A Rare Still Verzenay-- M. Duchâtel-Ohaus's
Establishment and Renaissance House-- His Cellars in the Cour St.
Jacques and Outside the Porte Dieu-Lumière.
Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. have their chief establishment in the Rue
Andrieux, in an open quarter of the city, facing the garden attached to
the premises of M. Werlé, and only a short distance from the grand
triumphal arch known as the Gate of Mars, by far the most important
Roman remain of which the Champagne can boast. The head of the firm,
Mr. G. H. Mumm, is the grandson of the well-known P. A. Mumm, the large
shipper of hocks and moselles, and is the only surviving partner in the
champagne house of Mumm and Co., established at Reims in 1825, and
joined by Mr. G. H. Mumm so far back as the year 1838. The firm not only
ship their wine largely to England, but head the list of shipments to
the United States, where their brand is held in high repute, with nearly
half a million bottles, being more than twice the quantity shipped by
M. Louis Roederer--who comes third on the list in question--and a fourth
of the entire shipments of champagne to the United States.
The establishment of Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co., in the Rue Andrieux, is
of comparatively modern construction. A large _porte-cochère_ conducts
to a spacious courtyard, bordered with sheds, beneath which huge stacks
of new bottles are piled and having a pleasant garden lying beyond. On
the left is a large vaulted cellier, where the operations of disgorging,
liqueuring, and corking the wine are performed, and which communicates
with the vast adjoining packing department. From this cellier entrance
is gained to the cellars beneath, containing a million bottles of _vin
brut_ in various stages of development. This forms, however, merely a
portion of the firm's stock, they having another three millions of
bottles stored in the cellars of their establishment in the Rue
Coquebert, where a scene of great animation presented itself at the time
of our visit, several scores of women being engaged in washing bottles
for the _tirage_, which, although it was early in May, had already
commenced. The bottles, filled with water, and containing a certain
quantity of glass beads in lieu of the customary shot, which frequently
leave minute particles of lead--deleterious alike to health and the
flavour of the wine--adhering to the inside surface of the glass, are
placed horizontally in a frame, and by means of four turns of a handle
are made to perform sixty-four rapid revolutions. The beads are then
transferred to other bottles, which are subjected in their turn to the
same revolving process.
The _cuvée_, commonly composed of from two to three thousand casks of
wine from various vineyards, with a due proportion of high-class
vintages, is made in a vat holding 4,400 gallons. The _tirage_ or
bottling is effected by means of two large tuns placed side by side, and
holding twelve hogsheads of wine each. Pipes from these tuns communicate
with a couple of small reservoirs, each of them provided with
half-a-dozen self-acting syphon taps, by means of which a like number of
bottles are simultaneously filled. Only one set of these taps are set
running at a time, as while the wine is being drawn off from one tun the
other is being refilled from the casks containing the _cuvée_ by means
of a pump and leathern hose, which empties a cask in little more than a
couple of minutes. Three gangs of eight men each can fill, cork, and
secure with _agrafes_ from 35,000 to 40,000 bottles during the day. The
labour is performed partly by men regularly employed by the house and
partly by hands engaged for the purpose, who work, however, under the
constant inspection of overseers appointed by the firm.
At Messrs. G. H. Mumm's the champagne destined for shipment has the
heads of the corks submerged in a kind of varnish, with the object of
protecting them from the ravages of insects, and preventing the string
and wire from becoming mouldy for several years. In damp weather, when
this varnish takes a long time to dry, after the bottles have been
placed in a rack with their heads downwards to allow of any superfluous
varnish draining from the corks, the latter are subjected to a moderate
heat in a machine pierced with sufficient holes to contain 500 bottles,
and provided with a warming apparatus in the centre. Here the bottles
remain for about twenty minutes.
[Illustration:
THE TIRAGE OR BOTTLING OF CHAMPAGNE
AT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MESSRS. G. H. MUMM & CO. (p. 76.)]
[Illustration:
MESSRS. G. H. MUMM & CO.'S VENDANGEOIR AT VERZENAY. (p. 77)]
Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. have a capacious vendangeoir at Verzenay,
near the entrance to the village when approaching it from Reims. The
building contains four presses, three of which are worked with large
fly-wheels requiring several men to turn them, while the fourth acts
with a screw applied by means of a long pole. At the vintage 3,600
kilogrammes, or nearly 8,000lbs., of grapes are put under each press,
a quantity sufficient to yield eight to ten hogsheads of wine of
forty-four gallons each, suitable for sparkling wine, besides three or
four hogsheads of inferior wine given to the workmen to drink. The
pressing commences daily at six in the morning, and lasts until
midnight; yet the firm are often constrained to keep their grapes in the
baskets under a cool shed for a period of two days. This cannot,
however, be done when they are very ripe, as the colouring matter from
the skins would become extracted and give a dark and objectionable tint
to the wine.
Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. ship four descriptions of champagne--Carte
Blanche, a pale, delicate, fragrant wine of great softness and refined
flavour; a perfectly dry variety of the foregoing, known as their Extra
Dry; also an Extra Quality and a First Quality--both high-class wines,
though somewhat lower in price than the two preceding.
Within a few minutes' walk of Messrs. G. H. Mumm's--past the imposing
Gate of Mars, in the midst of lawns, parterres, and gravel-walks, where
coquettish nursemaids and their charges stroll, accompanied by the
proverbial _piou-piou_--is the principal establishment of M. Gustave
Gibert, whose house claims to-day half a century of existence. On this
spot formerly stood the feudal castle of the Archbishops of Reims,
demolished nearly three centuries ago. By whom this stronghold was
erected is somewhat uncertain. The local chronicles state that a château
was built at Reims by Suelf, son of Hincmar, in 922, and restored by
Archbishop Henri de France two and a half centuries later. War or other
causes, however, seems to have rendered the speedy rebuilding of this
castle necessary, as a new Château des Archevêques appears to have been
erected at Reims by Henri de Braine between 1228 and 1230. The
circumstance of the Archbishops of Reims being dukes and peers as well
as primates of the capital of the Champagne accounts for their
preference for a fortified place of residence at this turbulent epoch.
On the investiture of a new archbishop it was the custom for him to
proceed in great pomp from the château to the church of Saint Remi, with
a large armed guard and a splendid retinue of ecclesiastical, civil, and
military dignitaries escorting him. The pride of the newly-created "duke
and peer" having been thus gratified, the "prelate" had to humble
himself, and on the morrow walked barefooted from the church of St. Remi
to the cathedral. After the religious wars the château was surrendered
to Henri IV., and in 1595 the Remois, anxious to be rid of so formidable
a fortress, which, whether held by king or archbishop, was calculated to
enforce a state of passive obedience galling to their pride, purchased
from the king the privilege to demolish it for the sum of 8,000 crowns.
Tradition asserts that the Remish Bastille was destroyed in a single
day, but this is exceedingly improbable. Its ruins certainly were not
cleared away until the close of the century.
When the old fortress was razed to the ground its extensive vaults were
not interfered with, but many long years afterwards were transformed
into admirable cellars for the storage of champagne. Above them are two
stories of capacious celliers where the wine is blended, bottled, and
packed, the vaults themselves comprising two tiers of cellars which
contain wine both in cask and bottle. M. Gibert's remaining stocks are
stored in the ancient vaults of the abbey of St. Peter, in the heart of
the city, and in the roomy cellars which underlie the old Hôtel des
Fermes in the Place Royale, where in the days of the _ancien régime_ the
farmers-general of the province used to receive its revenues. On the
pediment of this edifice is a bas-relief with Mercury, the god of
commerce, seated beside a nymph and surrounded by children engaged with
the vintage and with bales of wool, and evidently intended to symbolise
the staple trades of the capital of the Champagne. A bronze statue rises
in the centre of the Place which from its Roman costume and martial
bearing might be taken for some hero of antiquity did not the
inscription on the pedestal apprise us that it is intended for the
"wise, virtuous, and magnanimous Louis XV.," a misuse of terms which has
caused a transatlantic Republican to characterise the monument as a
brazen lie. Leading out of the Place Royale is the Rue de Cérès, in
which there is a modernised 16th-century house claiming to be the
birthplace of Jean Baptiste Colbert, son of a Reims wool-merchant, and
the famous minister who did so much to consolidate the finances which
the royal voluptuary, masquerading at Reims in Roman garb, afterwards
made such dreadful havoc of.
[Illustration:
THE CELLIERS AND CELLARS OF M. GUSTAVE GIBERT.
(_Near the Porte de Mars, Reims_.) (p. 78.)]
[Illustration:
THE PLACE ROYALE AT REIMS,
SHOWING THE ENTRANCE TO THE CELLARS OF M. GUSTAVE GIBERT. (p. 79)]
M. Gustave Gibert possesses pressing-houses at Ay and Bouzy, and has
moreover at both these places accommodation for large reserve stocks of
wine in wood. As all the wines which he sends into the market are
vintaged by himself, he can ensure their being of uniform high quality.
His _Vin du Roi_ is notable for perfume, delicacy, perfect
effervescence, and that fine flavour of the grape which characterises
the grand wines of the Champagne. It is a great favourite with the King
of Sweden and Norway, and the labels on the bottles bear his name and
arms. M. Gibert's brand has acquired a high reputation in the North of
Europe, and having of late years been introduced into England, is
rapidly making its way there. The merits of the wines have been again
and again publicly recognised, no less than ten medals having been
successively awarded M. Gibert at the Exhibitions of Toulouse in 1858,
Bordeaux in 1859, Besançon in 1860, Metz and Nantes in 1861, London in
1862, Bayonne and Linz in 1864, and Oporto and Dublin in 1865. This long
list of awards has led to the wines being placed "_hors concours_,"
nevertheless M. Gibert continues to submit them to competition whenever
any Exhibition of importance takes place. The wines are shipped to
England, Germany, Russia, and Northern Europe, Spain and Portugal,
Calcutta, Java, Melbourne, and Hong-Kong, besides being largely in
request for the Paris market.
On quitting M. Gibert's central establishment we proceed along the
winding, ill-paved Rue de Mars, past the premises of Messrs. Jules Mumm
and Co., an offshoot from the once famous firm of P. A. Mumm and Co., to
the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, in one corner of which stands a massive
and somewhat pretentious-looking house, dating back to the time of Louis
Quatorze. Here are the offices of Ruinart père et fils, who claim to
rank as the oldest existing house in the Champagne. The head of the
firm, the Vicomte de Brimont, is a collateral descendant of the Dom
Ruinart, whose remains repose nigh to those of the illustrious Dom
Perignon in the abbey church of Hautvillers. From the Place de l'Hôtel
de Ville we proceed through the narrow Rue du Tambour, originally a
Roman thoroughfare, and during the Middle Ages the locality where the
nobility of Reims principally had their abodes. Half-way up this street,
in the direction of the Place des Marchés, stands the famous House of
the Musicians, one of the most interesting architectural relics of which
the capital of the Champagne can boast. It evidently dates from the
early part of the fourteenth century, but by whom it was erected is
unknown. Some ascribe it to the Knights Templars, others to the Counts
of Champagne, while others suppose it to have been the residence of the
famous Counts de la Marck, who in later times diverged into three
separate branches, the first furnishing Dukes of Cleves and Julich to
Germany and Dukes of Nevers and Counts of Eu to France, while the second
became Dukes of Bouillon and Princes of Sedan, titles which passed to
the Turennes when Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne,
married the surviving heiress of the house. The third branch comprised
the Barons of Lumain, allied to the Hohenzollerns. Their most famous
member slew Louis de Bourbon, Archbishop of Liège, and flung his body
into the Meuse, and subsequently became celebrated as the Wild Boar of
the Ardennes, of whom all readers of _Quentin Durward_ will retain a
lively recollection.
To return, however, to the House of the Musicians. A probable conjecture
ascribes the origin of the quaint mediæval structure to the Brotherhood
of Minstrels of Reims, who in the thirteenth century enjoyed a
considerable reputation, not merely in the Champagne, but throughout the
North of France. The house takes its present name from five seated
statues of musicians, larger than life-size, occupying the Gothic niches
between the first-floor windows, and resting upon brackets ornamented
with grotesque heads. It is thought that the partially-damaged figure on
the left-hand side was originally playing a drum and a species of
clarionet. The next one evidently has the remnants of a harp in his
raised hands. The third or central figure is supposed merely to have
held a hawk upon his wrist; whilst the fourth seeks to extract harmony
from a dilapidated bagpipe; and the fifth, with crossed legs, strums
complacently away upon the fiddle. The ground floor of the quaint old
tenement is to-day an oil and colour shop, the front of which is covered
with chequers in all the tints of the rainbow.
[Illustration]
Leading from the Rue du Tambour is the Rue de la Belle Image, thus named
from a handsome statuette of the Virgin which formerly decorated a
corner niche; and beyond is the Rue St. Hilaire, where Messrs. Barnett
et fils, trading under the designation of Périnet et fils, and the only
English house engaged in the manufacture of champagne, have an
establishment which is certainly as perfect as any to be found in Reims.
Aboveground are several large store-rooms, where vintage casks and the
various utensils common to a champagne establishment are kept, and a
capacious cellier, upwards of 150 feet in length, with its roof resting
on huge timber supports. Here new wine is stored preparatory to being
blended and bottled, and in the huge tun, holding nearly 3,000 gallons,
standing at the further end, the firm make their _cuvée_, while adjacent
is a room where stocks of corks and labels, metal foil, and the like are
kept.
There are three stories of cellars--an exceedingly rare thing anywhere
in the Champagne--all constructed in solid masonry on a uniform
plan--namely, two wide galleries running parallel with each other and
connected by means of transverse passages. Spite of the great depth to
which these cellars descend they are perfectly dry; the ventilation,
too, is excellent, and their different temperatures render them
especially suitable for the storage of champagne, the temperature of the
lowest cellar being 6° Centigrade (43° Fahrenheit), or one degree
Centigrade below the cellar immediately above, which, in its turn is two
degrees below the uppermost one of all. The advantage of this is that
when the wine develops an excess of effervescence any undue proportion
of breakages can be checked by removing the bottles to a lower cellar
and consequently into a lower temperature.
[Illustration:
THE CELLIER AND CELLARS OF PÉRINET ET FILS AT REIMS. (p. 82)]
The first cellars we enter are closely stacked with wine in bottle,
which is gradually clearing itself by the formation of a deposit, while
in an adjoining cellar on the same level the operations of disgorging,
liqueuring, and corking are going on. In the cellars immediately beneath
bottles of wine repose in solid stacks ready for the _dégorgeur_, while
others rest in racks in order that they may undergo their daily shaking.
In the lowest cellars reserved wine in cask is stored, as it best
retains its natural freshness and purity in a very cool place. All air
is carefully excluded from the casks, any ullage is immediately checked,
and as evaporation is continually going on the casks are examined every
fortnight, when any deficiency is at once replenished. At Messrs.
Périnet et fils', as at all the first-class establishments, the _vin
brut_ is a _mélange_ comprising the produce of some of the best
vineyards, and has every possible attention paid to it during its
progressive stages of development.
Champagnes of different years were here shown to us, all of them soft,
light, and delicate, and with that fine flavour and full perfume which
the best growths of the Marne alone exhibit. Among several curiosities
submitted to us was a still Verzenay of the year 1857, one of the most
delicate red wines it was ever our fortune to taste. Light in body, rich
in colour, of a singularly novel and refined flavour, and with a
magnificent yet indefinable bouquet, the wine was in every respect
perfect. Not only was the year of the vintage a grand one, but the wine
must have been made with the greatest possible care and from the most
perfect grapes for so delicate a growth to have retained its flavour in
such perfection, and preserved its brilliant ruby colour for such a
length of time.
From the samples shown to us of Périnet et fils' champagne, we were
prepared to find that at some recent tastings in London, the particulars
of which have been made public, their Extra Sec took the first place at
each of the three severe competitions to which it was subjected.
M. Duchâtel-Ohaus's central establishment is in the Rue des Deux Anges,
one of the most ancient streets of Reims, running from the Rue des Élus
to the Rue de Vesle, and having every window secured by iron gratings,
and every door thickly studded with huge nails. These prison-like
façades succeed each other in gloomy monotony along either side of the
way, the portion of M. Duchâtel-Ohaus's residence which faces the street
being no exception to the general rule. Once within its court, however,
and quite a different scene presents itself. Before us is a pleasant
little flower-garden with a small but charming Renaissance house looking
on to it, the windows ornamented with elaborate mouldings, and
surmounted by graceful sculptured heads, while at one corner rises a
tower with a sun-dial displayed on its front. Here and in an adjoining
house the canons of the Cathedral were accustomed to reside in the days
when four-fifths of Reims belonged to the Church.
[Illustration]
From the garden we enter a capacious cellier where the blending and
bottling of the wine takes place, and in the neighbouring packing-room
encounter a score of workpeople filling, securing, and branding a number
of cases about to be despatched by rail. From the cellier we pass to the
cellars situated immediately underneath, and which, capacious though
they are, do not suffice for M. Duchâtel's stock, portions of which are
stored in some ancient vaults near the market-place, and in the Rue de
Vesle behind the church of St. Jacques. This church, originally built at
the close of the twelfth century, is hemmed in on all sides by old
houses, above which rises its tapering steeple surmounted by a medieval
weathercock in the form of an angel. A life-size statue of the patron
saint decorates the Gothic gateway leading to the church, from which a
troop of Remish urchins in the charge of some Frères de la Doctrine
Chrétienne emerge as we pass by.
The Cour St. Jacques, where M. Duchâtel's cellars are situated, may be
reached by passing through the church, the interior of which presents a
curious jumble of architectural styles from early Gothic to late
Renaissance. One noteworthy object of art which it contains is a
life-size crucifix carved by Pierre Jacques, a Remish sculptor of the
days of the Good King Henri, and from an anatomical point of view a
perfect _chef-d'oeuvre_. The cellars we have come to inspect are two
stories deep, and comprise numerous ancient cavernous compartments, such
as are found in all the older quarters of Reims, and usually in the
vicinity of some church, convent, or clerical abode. It has been
suggested that they were either crypts for sacred retirement and prayer,
dungeons for the punishment of recreant brethren, or tombs for the dead;
but it is far more probable that in the majority of instances they
served then as now simply for the storage of the choice vintages of the
Marne, for we all know the monks of old were tipplers of no ordinary
capacity, who usually contrived to secure the best that the district
provided. These vaults of M. Duchâtel's, in which a considerable stock
of the fine wine of 1874 is stored, are from two to three centuries old,
and probably belonged to the curés of St. Jacques. They are of
considerable extent, are well ventilated, and are walled and roofed with
stone. M. Duchâtel's remaining stock reposes in some new
cellars--certain transformed chalk quarries outside the Porte
Dieu-Lumière, comprising broad lofty galleries and vast circular
chambers--fifty feet or so in height and well lighted from above.
At M. Duchâtel-Ohaus's we tasted a variety of fine samples of his brand,
including a beautiful wine of 1868 and an almost equally good one of
1870, with some of the excellent vintage of 1874, which was then being
prepared for shipment.
[Illustration]
VIII.--THE REIMS ESTABLISHMENTS (_continued_).
M. Ernest Irroy's Cellars, Vineyards, and Vendangeoirs-- Recognition
by the Reims Agricultural Association of his Plantations of Vines--
His Wines and their Popularity at the best London Clubs-- Messrs.
Binet fils and Co.'s Establishment-- Wines Sold by the Firm to
Shippers-- Their Cellars-- Samples of Fine Still Ay and Bouzy--
Their Still Sillery, Vintage 1857, and their Creaming Vin Brut,
Vintage 1865-- The Offices and Cellars of Messrs. Charles Farre and
Co.-- Testing the Wine before Bottling-- A Promenade between Bottles
in Piles and Racks-- Repute in which these Wines are held in England
and on the Continent-- The New Establishment of Fisse, Thirion, and
Co. in the Place de Betheny-- Its Construction exclusively in Stone,
Brick, and Iron-- The Vast Celliers of Two Stories-- Bottling the
Wine by the Aid of Machinery-- The Cool and Lofty Cellars--
Ingenious Method of Securing the Corks, rendering the Uncorking
exceedingly simple-- The Wines Shipped by the Firm.
Few large manufacturing towns like Reims--one of the most important of
those engaged in the woollen manufacture in France--can boast of such
fine promenades and such handsome boulevards as the capital of the
Champagne. As the ancient fortifications of the city were from time to
time razed, their site was levelled and generally planted with trees,
so that the older quarters of Reims are almost encircled by broad and
handsome thoroughfares, separating the city, as it were, from its
outlying suburbs. In or close to the broad Boulevard du Temple, which
takes its name from its proximity to the site of the ancient Commanderie
of the Templars, various champagne manufacturers, including M. Louis
Roederer, M. Ernest Irroy, and M. Charles Heidsieck, have their
establishments, while but a few paces off, in the neighbouring Rue
Coquebert, are the large and handsome premises of Messrs. Krug and Co.
[Illustration:
M. ERNEST IRROY'S ESTABLISHMENT AT REIMS. (p. 87)]
The offices of M. Ernest Irroy, who is known in Reims not merely as a
large champagne grower and shipper, but also as a distinguished amateur
of the fine arts, taking a leading part in originating local exhibitions
and the like, are attached to his private residence, a handsome mansion
flanked by a large and charming garden in the Boulevard du Temple. The
laying out of this sylvan oasis is due to M. Vadré, the head gardener of
the city of Paris, who contributed so largely to the picturesque
embellishment of the Bois de Boulogne. M. Irroy's establishment, which
comprises a considerable range of buildings grouped around two
courtyards, is immediately adjacent, although its principal entrance is
in the Rue de la Justice. The vast celliers, covering an area of upwards
of 3,000 square yards, and either stocked with wine in cask or used for
packing and similar purposes, afford the requisite space for carrying on
a most extensive business. The cellars beneath comprise three stories,
two of which are solidly roofed and lined with masonry, while the
lowermost one is excavated in the chalk. They are admirably constructed
on a symmetrical plan, and their total surface is very little short of
7,000 square yards. Spite of the great depth to which these cellars
descend they are perfectly dry, the ventilation is good, and their
temperature moreover is remarkably cool, one result of which is that
M. Irroy's loss from breakage never exceeds four per cent. per annum.
M. Irroy holds a high position as a vineyard-proprietor in the
Champagne, his vines covering an area of nearly 86 acres. At Mareuil and
Avenay he owns some twenty-five acres, at Verzenay and Verzy about
fifteen, and at Ambonnay and Bouzy forty-six acres. His father and his
uncle, whose properties he inherited or purchased, commenced some thirty
years ago to plant vines on certain slopes of Bouzy possessing a
southern aspect, and he has followed their example with such success
both at Bouzy and Ambonnay that in 1873 the Reims Agricultural
Association conferred upon him a silver-gilt medal for his plantations
of vines. M. Irroy owns _vendangeoirs_ at Verzenay, Avenay, and
Ambonnay; and at Bouzy, where his largest vineyards are, he has built
some excellent cottages for his labourers. He has also constructed a
substantial bridge over the ravine which, formed by winter torrents from
the hills, intersects the principal vineyard slopes of Bouzy.
M. Ernest Irroy's wines, prepared with scrupulous care and rare
intelligence, have been known in England for some years past, and are
steadily increasing in popularity. They are emphatically connoisseurs'
wines. The best West-end clubs, such as White's, Arthur's, the old
Carlton, and the like, lay down the _cuvées_ of this house in good years
as they lay down their vintage ports and finer clarets, and drink them,
not in a crude state, but when they are in perfection--that is, in five
to ten years' time. M. Irroy exports to the British colonies and to the
United States the same fine wines which he ships to England.
[Illustration:
LABOURERS AT WORK IN M. ERNEST IRROY'S BOUZY VINEYARDS. (p. 88.)]
From M. Irroy's we proceeded to Messrs. Binet fils and Co., whose
establishment in the Rue de la Justice is separated from that of
M. Irroy merely by a narrow path, and occupies the opposite side of the
way to the principal establishment of M. Louis Roederer. The firm of
Binet fils and Co. was founded many years ago, but for a long time they
sold their wines principally to other shippers on the Reims and Epernay
markets, where their cuvées were held in high repute, and only of recent
years have they applied themselves to the shipping trade. Their
establishment has two entrances, one in the Rue de la Justice, and the
other in the Boulevard du Champ de Mars. On passing through the former
we find ourselves in a courtyard of considerable area, with a range of
celliers in the rear and a low building on the left, in which the
offices are installed. In the first cellier we encounter cases and
baskets of champagne all ready to be despatched by rail, with women and
men busily engaged in labelling and packing other bottles which continue
to arrive from the cellars below in baskets secured to an endless chain.
Beyond this range of celliers is another courtyard of smaller dimensions
where there are additional celliers in which wines of recent vintages in
casks are stored.
The vaults, which are reached by a winding stone staircase, are
spacious, and consist of a series of parallel and uniform galleries hewn
in the chalk without either masonry supports or facings. Among the solid
piles of bottles which here hem us in on all sides are a considerable
number of magnums and imperial pints reserved for particular
customers--the former more especially for certain military messes, at
which the brand of Binet fils and Co. is held in deserved esteem. We
tasted here--in addition to several choice sparkling wines, including a
grand _vin brut_, vintage 1865--a still Ay of the year 1870, and some
still Bouzy of 1874. The former, a remarkably light and elegant wine,
was already in fine condition for drinking, while the latter, which was
altogether more vinous, deeper in colour, and fuller in body needed the
ripening influence of time to bring it to perfection. Through their
agents, Rutherford, Drury, and Co., Messrs. Binet fils and Co. achieved
a great success in England with their still Sillery, vintage 1857, and
subsequently with their superb creaming _vin brut_, vintage 1865, of
which we have just spoken, and which is still to be met with at London
clubs of repute.
Some short distance from and parallel with the Rue de la Justice is the
Rue Jacquart, where Messrs. Charles Farre and Co., of whose
establishment at Hautvillers we have already spoken, have their offices
and cellars. We enter a large courtyard, where several railway vans are
being laden with cases of wine from the packing-hall beyond, and in the
tasting-room adjoining find wine being tested prior to bottling, to
ascertain the amount of saccharine it contains. This was accomplished by
reducing a certain quantity of wine by boiling down to one-sixth, when
the saccharometer should indicate 13° of sugar to ensure each bottle
containing the requisite quantity of compressed carbonic acid gas.
Messrs. Farre's cellars, comprising eighteen parallel galleries disposed
in two stories, are both lofty and commodious, and are mainly of recent
construction, the upper ones being solidly walled with masonry, while
those below are simply excavated in the chalk. Here, as elsewhere, one
performed a lengthened promenade between piles after piles of bottles of
the finer vintages and a seemingly endless succession of racks, at which
workmen were engaged in dislodging the sediment in the wine by the dim
light of a tallow candle. It was here that we were assured the more
experienced of these men were capable, when working with both hands, of
shaking the enormous number of 50,000 bottles a day, or at the rate of
seventy to the minute.
The fine wines of Messrs. Charles Farre and Co. have long enjoyed a
well-deserved celebrity, and at the Paris Exhibition of 1855 the firm
secured the highest medal awarded to champagnes. The high repute in
which the brand is held on the Continent is evidenced by the fact that
the Prussian and other courts are consumers of Messrs. Farre's wines.
The firm not only number England, Germany, Austria, Russia, and Northern
Europe, and, as a matter of course, France, among their customers, but
also several of the British colonies and North and South America as
well.
The new establishment of Messrs. Fisse, Thirion, and Co., in the
erection of which they have largely profited by their experience and the
various resources of modern science, is situated in the Place de
Betheny, in the vicinity of the railway goods station and the local
shooting range, largely resorted to at certain seasons of the year, when
the crack shots of the Champagne capital compete with distinguished
amateurs from different parts of France and the other side of the
Channel.
[Illustration:
MESSRS. FISSE, THIRION & CO.'S ESTABLISHMENT AT REIMS. (p. 91)]
On entering the courtyard through the iron gate to the right of the
dwelling-houses of the resident partners--flanked by gardens brilliant
with flowers and foliage--we first reach the offices and tasting-rooms,
and then the entrance to the cellars. A speciality of this important
pile of building is that everything employed in its construction is of
stone, brick, or iron, wood having been rigorously excluded from it.
In the rear of the courtyard, which presents that aspect of animation
common to flourishing establishments in the Champagne, is the principal
cellier, with a small building in front, where a steam-pump for pumping
up water from the chalk is installed, while at right angles with the
cellier are the stables and bottle-sheds. The large cellier, which is 20
feet high and 80 feet broad, will be no less than 260 feet in length
when completed. It contains two stories, the floors of both of which are
cemented, the lower story being roofed with small brick arches connected
by iron girders, and the upper one with tiles resting on iron supports.
The cement keeps the temperature remarkably cool in the lower cellier
where wine in cask is stored, the upper cellier being appropriated to
wine in racks _sur pointe_, bales of corks, and the wicker-baskets and
cases in which the wine is packed.
The preparation of the wines in cask and the bottling take place in the
lower of the two celliers, a mere lad being enabled, by the aid of the
mechanism provided, to bottle from six to eight thousand bottles a day.
A single workman can cork about 4,500 bottles, which a second workman
secures with metal agrafes before they are lowered into the cellars. The
latter are of two stories, each being divided into three long parallel
galleries 20 feet high and 23 feet wide, vaulted with stone and floored
with cement. Bordering the endless stacks of bottles are small gutters,
into which the wine flows from the exploded bottles. Lofty, well
ventilated, and beautifully cool, the temperature invariably ranging
from 45° to 47° Fahrenheit, these capitally-constructed cellars combine
all that is required for a champagne establishment of the first class.
The breakage has never exceeded 3 per cent., whereas in some old cellars
which the firm formerly occupied in the centre of the city, their
breakage on one occasion amounted to ten times this quantity.
At Fisse, Thirion, and Co.'s, after the wine has been disgorged and
liqueured, the corks are secured neither with string nor wire, but a
special metal fastener is employed for the purpose. This consists of a
triple-branched agrafe, provided with a kind of hinge. A tiny toy
needle-gun suspended to the agrafe is pulled outwards and turned over
the top of the bottle, whereupon the fastening becomes instantly
disengaged, and anything like trouble, uncleanliness, or annoyance is
entirely avoided. The operation is so easy that a mere child can open a
bottle of champagne, secured by this patent fastener, as easily and
rapidly as a grown-up man.
The firm of Fisse, Thirion, and Co. succeeded that of Fisse, Fraiquin,
and Co.--established originally at Reims in 1821--in 1864, when the
brand of the house was already well known on the Continent, more
especially in Belgium and Holland. Since that time the wines have been
largely introduced into England and the United States, and the firm, who
have secured medals at many of the recent exhibitions, to-day have
agents in the English and Dutch Indies and the various European
settlements in China. Several descriptions of wine are shipped by the
house, the finest being their dry Cuvée Reservèe and their fragrant
soft-tasting Cachet d'Or.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
OLD HOUSE IN THE RUE DES ANGLAIS, REIMS.]
IX.--THE REIMS ESTABLISHMENTS (_concluded_).
La Prison de Bonne Semaine-- Mary Queen of Scots at Reims-- Messrs.
Pommery and Greno's Offices-- A Fine Collection of Faïence-- The Rue
des Anglais a former Refuge of English Catholics-- Remains of the
Old University of Reims-- Ancient Roman Tower and Curious Grotto--
The handsome Castellated Pommery Establishment-- The Spacious
Cellier and Huge Carved Cuvée Tun-- The Descent to the Cellars--
Their Great Extent-- These Lofty Subterranean Chambers Originally
Quarries-- Ancient Places of Refuge of the Early Christians and the
Protestants-- Madame Pommery's Splendid Cuvée of 1868-- Messrs. de
St. Marceaux and Co.'s New Establishment in the Avenue de Sillery--
Its Garden-Court and Circular Shaft-- Animated Scene in the Large
Packing Hall-- Lowering Bottled Wine to the Cellars-- Great Depth
and Extent of these Cellars-- Messrs. de St. Marceaux and Co.'s
Various Wines.
Nigh the cathedral of Reims and in the rear of the archiepiscopal palace
there runs a short narrow street known as the Rue Vauthier le Noir, and
frequently mentioned in old works relating to the capital of the
Champagne. The discovery of various pillars and statues, together with a
handsome Gallo-Roman altar, whilst digging some foundations in 1837,
points to the fact that a Pagan temple formerly occupied the site. The
street is supposed to have taken its name, however, from some celebrated
gaoler, for in mediæval times here stood "la prison de bonne semaine."
On the site of this prison a château was subsequently built where Mary
Queen of Scots is said to have resided in the days when her uncle,
Cardinal Charles de Lorraine, was Lord Archbishop of Reims. Temple,
prison, and palace have alike disappeared, and where they stood there
now rises midway between court and garden a handsome mansion, the
residence of Madame Pommery, head of the well-known firm of Pommery and
Greno. To the left of the courtyard, which is entered through a
monumental gateway, are some old buildings bearing the sculptured
escutcheon of the beautiful and luckless Stuart Queen, while to the
right are the offices, with the manager's sanctum, replete with artistic
curiosities, the walls being completely covered with remarkable
specimens of faïence, including Rouen, Gien, Palissy, Delft, and
majolica, collected in the majority of instances by Madame Pommery in
the villages around Reims. Here we were received by M. Vasnier, who at
once volunteered to accompany us to the cellars of the firm outside the
city. Messrs. Pommery and Greno originally carried on business in the
Rue Vauthier le Noir, where there are extensive cellars, but their
rapidly-increasing connection long since compelled them to emigrate
beyond the walls of Reims.
In close proximity to the Rue Vauthier le Noir is the Rue des Anglais,
so named from the English Catholic refugees who, flying from the
persecutions of our so-called Good Queen Bess, here took up their abode
and established a college and a seminary. They rapidly acquired great
influence in Reims, and one of their number, William Gifford, was even
elected archbishop. At the end of this street, nigh to Madame Pommery's,
there stands an old house with a corner tower and rather handsome
Renaissance window, which formerly belonged to some of the clergy of the
cathedral, and subsequently became the "Bureau Général de la Loterie de
France," abolished by the National Convention in 1793.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The Rue des Anglais conducts into the Rue de l'Université, where a few
remnants of the old University, founded by Cardinal Charles de Lorraine
(1538-74), attract attention, notably a conical-capped corner tower, the
sculptured ornaments at the base of which have crumbled into dust
beneath the corroding tooth of Time. From the Rue de l'Université our
way lies along the Boulevard du Temple to the Porte Gerbert, about a
mile beyond which there rises up the curious castellated structure in
which the Pommery establishment is installed, and whose tall towers
command a view of the whole of Reims and its environs. As we drive up
the Avenue Gerbert we espy on the right an isolated crumbling Roman
tower, a remnant of the days when Reims disputed with Trèves the honour
of being the capital of Belgic Gaul. Close at hand, and almost under the
walls of the old fortifications, is a grotto to which an ancient origin
is likewise ascribed. In another minute we reach the open iron gates of
Messrs. Pommery's establishment, flanked by a picturesque porter's
lodge, and proceeding up a broad drive alight under a Gothic portico at
the entrance to the spacious and lofty cellier. Iron columns support the
roof of this vast hall, at one end of which is the office and
tasting-room, provided with a telegraphic apparatus by means of which
communication is carried on with the Reims bureaux. Stacked up on every
side of the cellier, and when empty often in eight tiers, are rows upon
rows of casks, 4,000 of which contain wine of the last vintage,
sufficient for a million bottles of champagne. The temperature of this
hall is carefully regulated; the windows are high up near the roof, the
sun's rays are rigidly excluded, so that a pleasant coolness pervades
the apartment. On the left-hand side stands the huge tun, capable of
containing 5,500 gallons of wine, in which the firm make their _cuvée_,
with the monogram P and G, surmounting the arms of Reims, carved on its
head. A platform, access to which is gained by a staircase in a side
aisle, runs round this tonneau; and boys stand here when the wine is
being blended, and by means of a handle protruding above the cask work
the paddle-wheels placed inside, thereby securing the complete
amalgamation of the wine, which has been hoisted up in casks and poured
through a metal trough into the tonneau. Adjoining are the chains and
lifts worked by steam by means of which wine is raised and lowered from
and to the cellars beneath, one lift raising or lowering eight casks,
whether full or empty, in the space of a minute.
[Illustration:
THE POMMERY ESTABLISHMENT, IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF REIMS. (p. 96)]
[Illustration:
HEAD OVERSEER AT POMMERY AND GRENO'S.]
At the farther end of the hall a Gothic door, decorated with ornamental
ironwork, leads to the long broad flight of steps 116 in number and
nearly twelve feet in width, conducting to the suite of lofty
subterranean chambers where bottles of _vin brut_ repose in their
hundreds of thousands in slanting racks or solid piles, passing
leisurely through those stages of development necessary to fit them for
the _dégorgeur_. Altogether there are thirty large shafts, which were
originally quarries, and are now connected by spacious galleries. This
side of Reims abounds with similar quarries, which are believed to have
served as places of refuge for the Protestants at the time of the League
and after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and it is even
conjectured that the early Christians, the followers of St. Sixtus and
St. Sinicus, here hid themselves from their persecutors. Since the
cellars within the city have no longer sufficed for the storage of the
immense stocks required through the development of the champagne trade,
these vast subterranean galleries have been successfully utilised by
various firms. Messrs. Pommery, after pumping out the water with which
the chambers were filled, proceeded to excavate the intersecting
tunnels, shore up the cracking arches, and repair the flaws in the chalk
with masonry, finally converting these abandoned quarries into
magnificent cellars for the storage of champagne. No less than £60,000
was spent upon them and the castellated structure aboveground. The
underground area is almost 240,000 square feet, and a million bottles of
champagne can be stored in these capacious vaults.
Madame Pommery made a great mark with her splendid _cuvée_ of 1868, and
since this time her brand has become widely popular, the Pommery Sec
especially being highly appreciated by connoisseurs.
[Illustration:
THE PACKING HALL OF MESSRS. DE SAINT-MARCEAUX AT REIMS. (p. 99)]
On leaving Messrs. Pommery's we retrace our steps down the Avenue
Gerbert, bordered on either side with rows of plane-trees, until we
reach the treeless Avenue de Sillery, where Messrs. de Saint Marceaux
and Co.'s new and capacious establishment is installed. The principal
block of building is flanked by two advanced wings inclosing a
garden-court, set off with flowers and shrubs, and from the centre of
which rises a circular shaft, covered in with glass, admitting light and
air to the cellars below. In the building to the left the wine is
received on its arrival from the vineyard, and here are ranged hundreds
of casks replete with the choice _crûs_ of Verzenay, Ay, Cramant, and
Bouzy, while some thousands of bottles ready for labelling are stocked
in massive piles at the end of the packing-hall in the corresponding
wing of the establishment. Here, too, a tribe of workpeople are arraying
the bottles with gold and silver headdresses and robing them in pink
paper, while others are filling, securing, marking, and addressing the
cases or baskets to Hong-Kong, San Francisco, Yokohama, Bombay, London,
New York, St. Petersburg, Berlin, or Paris.
The wine in cask, stored in the left-hand wing, after having been duly
blended in a vast vat holding over 2,400 gallons, is drawn off into
bottles, which are then lowered down a shaft to the second tier of
cellars by means of an endless chain, on to which the baskets of bottles
are swiftly hooked. The workman engaged in this duty, in order to
prevent his falling down the shaft, has a leather belt strapped round
his waist, by means of which he is secured to an adjoining iron column.
We descend into the lower cellars down a flight of ninety-three broad
steps--a depth equal to the height of an ordinary six-storied house--and
find no less than four-and-twenty galleries excavated in the chalk,
without any masonry supports, and containing upwards of a million
bottles of champagne. The length of these galleries varies, but they are
of a uniform breadth, allowing either a couple of racks with wine _sur
pointe_, or stacks of bottles, in four rows on either side, with an
ample passage down the centre.
The upper range of cellars comprises two large arched galleries of
considerable breadth, one of which contains wine in wood and wine _sur
pointe_, while the other is stocked with bottles of wine heads downward,
ready to be delivered into the hands of the _dégorgeur_.
MM. de St. Marceaux and Co. have the honour of supplying the King of the
Belgians, the President of the French Republic, and several German
potentates, with an exceedingly delicate champagne known as the Royal
St. Marceaux. The same wine is popular in Russia and other parts of
Europe, just as the Dry Royal of the firm is much esteemed in the United
States. The brand of the house most appreciated in this country is its
Carte d'Or, a very dry wine which, in conjunction with the firm's Extra
Quality, secured the first place at a recent champagne competition in
England.
In the neighbourhood of the Pommery and de St. Marceaux establishments
numerous other champagne manufacturers have their cellars formed from
the abandoned quarries so numerous on this side of the city. Of some of
these firms we have already spoken, but there remain to be mentioned
Messrs. Kunklemann and Co., Ruinart père et fils, George Goulet, Jules
Champion, Théophile Roederer, &c. The cellars of the three last-named
are immediately outside the Porte Dieu-Lumière, near which is a house
with a curious bas-relief on its face, the subject of which has been a
source of much perplexity to local antiquaries.
[Illustration:
BAS-RELIEF NEAR THE PORTE DIEU-LUMIÈRE.]
[Illustration:
JEAN REMI MOET.]