Dry and Sweet Champagnes-- Their Sparkling Properties-- Form of
Champagne Glasses-- Style of Sparkling Wines Consumed in Different
Countries-- The Colour and Alcoholic Strength of Champagne--
Champagne Approved of by the Faculty-- Its Use in Nervous
Derangements-- The Icing of Champagne-- Scarcity of Grand Vintages
in the Champagne-- The Quality of the Wine has little influence on
the Price-- Prices realised by the Ay and Verzenay Crûs in Grand
Years-- Suggestions for Laying down Champagnes of Grand Vintages--
The Improvement they Develop after a few Years-- The Wine of 1874--
The proper kind of Cellar to lay down Champagne in-- Advantages of
Burrow's Patent Slider Wine Bins-- Increase in the Consumption of
Champagne-- Tabular Statement of Stocks, Exports, and Home
Consumption from 1844-5 to 1877-8-- When to Serve Champagne at a
Dinner Party-- Charles Dickens's dictum that its proper place is at
a Ball-- Advantageous Effect of Champagne at an ordinary British
Dinner Party-- Sparkling Wine Cups.
When selecting a sparkling wine one fact should be borne in mind--that
just as, according to Sam Weller, it is the seasoning which makes the
pie mutton, beef, or veal, so it is the liqueur which renders the wine
dry or sweet, light or strong. A really palatable dry champagne,
emitting the fragrant bouquet which distinguishes all wines of fine
quality, free from added spirit, is obliged to be made of the very best
_vin brut_, to which necessarily an exceedingly small percentage of
liqueur will be added. On the other hand, a sweet champagne can be
produced from the most ordinary raw wine--the Yankees even claim to have
evolved it from petroleum--as the amount of liqueur it receives
completely masks its original character and flavour. This excess of
syrup, it should be remarked, contributes materially to the wine's
explosive force and temporary effervescence, but shortly after the
bottle has been uncorked the wine becomes disagreeably flat. A fine dry
wine, indebted as it is for its sparkling properties to the natural
sweetness of the grape, does not exhibit the same sudden turbulent
effervescence. It continues to sparkle, however, for a long time after
being poured into the glass owing to the carbonic acid having been
absorbed by the wine itself instead of being accumulated in the vacant
space between the liquid and the cork, as is the case with wines that
have been highly liqueured. Even when its carbonic acid gas is exhausted
a good champagne will preserve its fine flavour, which the effervescence
will have assisted to conceal. Champagne, it should be noted, sparkles
best in tall tapering glasses; still these have their disadvantages,
promoting as they do an excess of froth when the wine is poured into
them, and almost preventing any bouquet which the wine possesses from
being recognised.
Manufacturers of champagne and other sparkling wines prepare them dry or
sweet, light or strong, according to the markets for which they are
designed. The sweet wines go to Russia and Germany, the sweet-toothed
Muscovite regarding M. Louis Roederer's syrupy product as the
_beau-idéal_ of champagne, and the Germans demanding wines with 20 or
more per cent. of liqueur, or nearly quadruple the quantity that is
contained in the average champagnes shipped to England. France consumes
light and moderately sweet wines; the United States gives a preference
to the intermediate qualities; China, India, and other hot countries
stipulate for light dry wines; while the very strong ones go to
Australia, the Cape, and other places where gold and diamonds and
such-like trifles are from time to time "prospected." Not merely the
driest but the very best wines of the best manufacturers, and commanding
of course the highest prices, are invariably reserved for the English
market. Foreigners cannot understand the marked preference shown in
England for exceedingly dry sparkling wines. They do not consider that
as a rule they are drunk during dinner with the _plats_, and not at
dessert, with all kinds of sweets, fruits, and ices, as is almost
invariably the case abroad.
Good champagne is usually of a pale straw colour, but with nothing of a
yellow tinge about it. When its tint is pinkish this is owing to a
portion of the colouring matter having been extracted from the skins of
the grapes--a contingency which every pains are taken to avoid,
although, since the success achieved by the wine of 1874, slightly pink
wines are likely to be the fashion. The positive pink or rose-coloured
champagnes, such as were in fashion some thirty years ago, are simply
tinted with a small quantity of deep red wine. The alcoholic strength of
the drier wines ranges from 18° of proof spirit upwards, or slightly
above the ordinary Bordeaux, and under all the better-class Rhine wines.
Champagnes when loaded with a highly alcoholized liqueur will, however,
at times mark 30 degrees of proof spirit. The lighter and drier the
sparkling wine the more wholesome it is, the saccharine element in
conjunction with alcohol being not only difficult of digestion, but
generally detrimental to health.
The faculty are agreed that fine dry champagnes are among the safest
wines that can be partaken of. Any intoxicating effects are rapid but
exceedingly transient, and arise from the alcohol suspended in the
carbonic acid being applied rapidly and extensively to the surface of
the stomach. "Champagne," said Curran, "simply gives a runaway rap at a
man's head." Dr. Druitt, equally distinguished by his studies upon wine
and his standing as a physician, pronounces good champagne to be "a true
stimulant to body and mind alike, rapid, volatile, transitory, and
harmless. Amongst the maladies which are benefited by it," remarks he,
"is the true neuralgia, intermitting fits of excruciating pain running
along certain nerves, without inflammation of the affected part, often a
consequence of malaria, or of some other low and exhausting causes. To
enumerate the cases in which champagne is of service would be to give a
whole nosology. Who does not know the misery, the helplessness of that
abominable ailment, influenza, whether a severe cold or the genuine
epidemic? Let the faculty dispute about the best remedy if they please;
but a sensible man with a bottle of champagne will beat them all.
Moreover, whenever there is pain, with exhaustion and lowness, then
Dr. Champagne should be had up. There is something excitant in the wine;
doubly so in the sparkling wine, which the moment it touches the lips
sends an electric telegram of comfort to every remote nerve. Nothing
comforts and rests the stomach better, or is a greater antidote to
nausea."
Champagne of fine quality should never be mixed with ice or iced water;
neither should it be iced to the extent champagnes ordinarily are, for,
in the first place, the natural lightness of the wine is such as not to
admit of its being diluted without utterly spoiling it, and in the next,
excessive cold destroys alike the fragrant bouquet of the wine and its
delicate vinous flavour. Really good champagne should not be iced below
a temperature of 50° Fahr., whereas exceedingly sweet wines will bear
icing down almost to freezing point, and be rendered more palatable by
the process. The above remarks apply to all kinds of sparkling wine.
In the Champagne what may be termed a really grand vintage commonly
occurs only once, and never more than twice, in ten years. During the
same period, however, there will generally be one or two other tolerably
good vintages. In grand years the crop, besides being of superior
quality, is usually abundant, and as a consequence the price of the raw
wine is scarcely higher than usual. Apparently from this circumstance
the sparkling wine of grand vintages does not command an enhanced value,
as is the case with other fine wines. It is only when speculators
recklessly outbid each other for the grapes or the _vin brut_, or when
stocks are low and the _vin brut_ is really scarce, that the price of
champagne appears to rise.
That superior quality does not involve enhanced price is proved by the
amounts paid for the Ay and Verzenay crûs in years of grand vintages.
During the present century these appear to have been 1802, '06, '11,
'18, '22, '25, '34, '42, '46, '57, '65, '68, and '74--that is, thirteen
grand vintages in nearly eighty years. Other good vintages, although not
equal to the foregoing, occurred in the years 1815, '32, '39, '52, '54,
'58, '62, '64, and '70. Confining ourselves to the grand years, we find
that the Ay wine of 1834, owing to the crop being plentiful as well as
good, only realised from 110 to 140 francs the pièce of 44 gallons,
although for two years previously this had fetched from 150 to 200
francs. In 1842 the price ranged from 120 to 150 francs, whereas the
vastly inferior wine of the year before had commanded from 210 to 275
francs. In 1846, the crop being a small one, the price of the wine rose,
and in 1857 the pièce fetched as much as from 480 to 500 francs, still
this was merely a trifle higher than it had realised the two preceding
years. In 1865 the price was 380 to 400 francs, and in 1868 about the
same, whereas the indifferent vintages of 1871, '72, and '73 realised
from 500 to 1,000 francs the pièce. It was very similar with the wine of
Verzenay. In 1834 the price of the pièce ranged from 280 to 325 francs,
or about the average of the three preceding years. In 1846, the crop
being scarce, the price rose considerably, while in 1857, when the crop
was plentiful, it fell to 500 francs, or from 5 to 20 per cent. below
that of the two previous years, when the yield was both inferior and
less abundant. In 1865 the price rose 33 per cent. above that of the
year before; still, although Verzenay wine of 1865 and 1868 fetched from
420 to 450 francs the pièce, and that of 1874 as much as 900 francs, the
greatly inferior vintages of 1872-73 commanded 900 and 1,030 francs the
pièce.
Consumers of champagne, if wise, would profit by the circumstance that
quality has not the effect of causing a rise in prices, and if they were
bent upon drinking their favourite wine in perfection, as one meets with
it at the dinner-tables of the principal manufacturers, who only put old
wine of grand vintages before their guests, they would lay down
champagnes of good years in the same way as the choicer vintages of
port, burgundy, and bordeaux are laid down. Champagne of 1874 was a wine
of this description, with all its finer vinous qualities well developed,
and consequently needing age to attain not merely the roundness but the
refinement of flavour pertaining to a high-class sparkling wine. Instead
of being drunk a few months after it was shipped in the spring and
summer of 1877, as was the fate of much of the wine in question, it
needed being kept for three years at the very least to become even
moderately round and perfect. In the Champagne one had many
opportunities of tasting the grander vintages that had arrived at ten,
twelve, or fifteen years of age, and had thereby attained supreme
excellence. It is true their effervescence had moderated materially, but
their bouquet and flavour were perfect, and their softness and delicacy
something marvellous.
A great wine like that of 1874 will go on improving for ten years,
providing it is only laid down under proper conditions. These are,
first, an exceedingly cool but perfectly dry cellar, the temperature of
which should be as low as from 50° to 55° Fahr., or even lower if this
is practicable. The cellar, too, should be neither over dark nor light,
scrupulously clean, and sufficiently well ventilated for the air to be
continuously pure. It is requisite that the bottles should rest on their
sides to prevent the corks shrinking, and thus allowing both the
carbonic acid and the wine itself to escape. For laying down champagne
or any kind of sparkling wine an iron wine-bin is by far the best.
I much prefer the patent "slider" bins made by Messrs. W. and J. Burrow,
of Malvern, they being better adapted to the purpose than any other I am
acquainted with. In these the bottles rest on horizontal parallel bars
of wrought-iron, securely riveted into strong wrought-iron uprights,
both at the back and in front. The bins can be obtained of any
size--that is, to hold as few as two or as many as forty dozen--and they
can be had furnished with lattice doors, secured by a lock. One great
advantage is that with them there is no waste of space, for individual
compartments can be at once refilled with fresh bottles after the other
bottles have been removed. These "slider" bins are especially adapted
for laying down champagne, as they admit of the air circulating freely
around the bottles, thus conducing to the preservation of the metal foil
round their necks, and keeping the temperature of the wine both cool and
equable.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
WINE-CELLAR FITTED WITH BURROW'S PATENT SLIDER BINS.]
When binning the wine the bottles are held by their necks and slid into
their places with such ease and safety that a child might be entrusted
with the work. The bottles can be withdrawn from the bin with equal or
even greater facility. Breakage is avoided from each bottle having an
independent bearing, which prevents the upper bottles from either
falling or weighing down upon those below, and thereby crashing
together. The larger engraving shows a wine-cellar fitted up entirely
with. Burrow's patent "slider" wine-bins, while the smaller represents a
bin adapted to laying down twenty dozens of champagne, and the
dimensions of which are merely 5 feet 8 inches by 3 feet.
Official Return by the Chamber of Commerce at Reims of The Trade in
Champagne Wines From April, 1844, To April, 1878.
Number of Number of Total number
Years, from Manufacturers' Bottles Bottles sold of Bottles
April to April. Stocks. Exported. in France. Sold.
1844-45 23,285,218 4,380,214 2,255,438 6,635,652
1845-46 22,847,971 4,505,308 2,510,605 7,015,913
1846-47 18,815,367 4,711,915 2,355,366 7,067,281
1847-48 23,122,994 4,859,625 2,092,571 6,952,196
1848-49 21,290,185 5,686,484 1,473,966 7,160,450
1849-50 20,499,192 5,001,044 1,705,735 6,706,779
1850-51 20,444,915 5,866,971 2,122,569 7,989,540
1851-52 21,905,479 5,957,552 2,162,880 8,120,432
1852-53 19,376,967 6,355,574 2,385,217 8,740,790
1853-54 17,757,769 7,878,320 2,528,719 10,407,039
1854-55 20,922,959 6,895,773 2,452,743 9,348,516
1855-56 15,957,141 7,137,001 2,562,039 9,699,040
1856-57 15,228,294 8,490,198 2,468,818 10,959,016
1857-58 21,628,778 7,368,310 2,421,454 9,789,764
1858-59 28,328,251 7,666,633 2,805,416 10,472,049
1859-60 35,648,124 8,265,395 3,039,621 11,305,016
1860-61 30,235,260 8,488,223 2,697,508 11,185,731
1861-62 30,254,291 6,904,915 2,592,875 9,497,790
1862-63 28,013,189 7,937,836 2,767,371 10,705,207
1863-64 28,466,975 9,851,138 2,934,996 12,786,134
1864-65 33,298,672 9,101,441 2,801,626 11,903,067
1865-66 34,175,429 10,413,455 2,782,777 13,196,132
1866-67 37,608,716 10,283,886 3,218,343 13,502,229
1867-68 37,969,219 10,876,585 2,924,268 13,800,853
1868-69 32,490,881 12,810,194 3,104,496 15,914,690
1869-70 39,272,562 13,858,839 3,628,461 17,487,300
1870-71 39,984,003 7,544,323 1,633,941 9,178,264
1871-72 40,099,243 17,001,124 3,367,537 20,368,661
1872-73 45,329,490 18,917,779 3,464,059 22,381,838
1873-74 46,573,974 18,106,310 2,491,759 20,598,069
1874-75 52,733,674 15,318,345 3,517,182 18,835,527
1875-76 64,658,767 16,705,719 2,439,762 19,145,481
1876-77 71,398,726 15,882,964 3,127,991 19,010,955
1877-78 70,183,863 15,711,651 2,450,983 18,162,634
From the subjoined table it will be seen that the consumption of
champagne has almost trebled since the year 1844-5, a period of little
more than thirty years. Another curious fact to note is the immense
increase in the exports of the wine during the three years following the
Franco-German war, when naturally both the exports and home consumption
of champagne fell off very considerably. No reliable information is
available as to the actual quantity of champagne consumed yearly in
England, but this may be taken in round numbers at about four millions
of bottles. The consumption of the wine in the United States varies from
rather more than a million and a half to nearly two million bottles
annually.
Distinguished gourmets are scarcely agreed as to the proper moment
when champagne should be introduced at the dinner-table. Dyspeptic
Mr. Walker, of "The Original," laid it down that champagne ought to be
introduced very early at the banquet, without any regard whatever to the
viands it may chance to accompany. "Give champagne," he says, "at the
beginning of dinner, as its exhilarating qualities serve to start the
guests, after which they will seldom flag. No other wine produces an
equal effect in increasing the success of a party--it invariably turns
the balance to the favourable side. When champagne goes rightly nothing
can well go wrong." These precepts are sound enough, still all
dinner-parties are not necessarily glacial, and the guests are not
invariably mutes. Before champagne can be properly introduced at a
formal dinner the conventional glass of sherry or madeira should
supplement the soup, a white French or a Rhine wine accompany the fish,
and a single glass of bordeaux prepare the way with the first _entrée_
for the sparkling wine, which, for the first round or two, should be
served, briskly and liberally. A wine introduced thus early at the
repast should of course be dry, or, at any rate, moderately so.
We certainly do not approve of Mr. Charles Dickens's dictum that
champagne's proper place is not at the dinner-table, but solely at a
ball. "A cavalier," he said, "may appropriately offer at propitious
intervals a glass now and then to his danceress. There it takes its
fitting rank and position amongst feathers, gauzes, lace, embroidery,
ribbons, white satin, shoes, and eau-de-Cologne, for champagne is simply
one of the elegant extras of life." This is all very well, still the
advantageous effect of sparkling wine at an ordinary British
dinner-party, composed as it frequently is of people pitchforked
together in accordance with the exigencies of the hostess's
visiting-list, cannot be gainsayed. After the preliminary glowering at
each other, _more Britannico_, in the drawing-room, everybody regards it
as a relief to be summoned to the repast, which, however, commences as
chillily as the soup and as stolidly as the salmon. The soul of the
hostess is heavy with the anxiety of prospective dishes, the brow of the
host is clouded with the reflection that our rulers are bent upon
dragging us into war. Placed between a young lady just out and a dowager
of grimly Gorgonesque aspect, you hesitate how to open a conversation.
Your first attempts, like those of the Russian batteries on the Danube,
are singularly ineffectual, only eliciting a dropping fire of
monosyllables. You envy the placidly languid young gentleman opposite,
limp as his fast-fading camellia, and seated next to Belle Breloques,
who is certain, in racing parlance, to make the running for him. But
even that damsel seems preoccupied with her fan, and, despite her
_aplomb_, hesitates to break the icy silence. The two City friends of
the host are lost in mute speculation as to the future price of indigo
or Ionian Bank shares, while their wives seem to be mentally summarising
the exact cost of each other's toilettes. Their daughters, or somebody
else's daughters, are desperately jerking out monosyllabic responses to
feeble remarks concerning the weather, lawn tennis, operatic
_débutantes_, the gravel in the Row, the ill-health of the Princess, and
kindred topics from a couple of F.O. men. Little Snapshot, the wit, on
the other side of the Gorgon, has tried to lead up to a story, but has
found himself, as it were, frozen in the bud. When lo! the butler softly
sibillates in your ear the magic word "champagne," and as it flows,
creaming and frothing, into your glass, a change comes over the spirit
of your vision.
The hostess brightens, the host coruscates. The young lady on your right
suddenly develops into a charming girl, with becoming appreciation of
your pet topics and an astounding aptness for repartee. The Gorgon
thaws, and implores Mr. Snapshot, whose jests are popping as briskly as
the corks, not to be so dreadfully funny, or he will positively kill
her. Belle Breloques can always talk, and now her tongue rattles faster
than ever, till the languid one arouses himself like a giant refreshed,
and gives her as good as he gets. The City men expatiate in cabalistic
language on the merits of some mysterious speculation, the prospective
returns from which increase with each fresh bottle. One of their wives
is discussing the E.C.U. and the S.S.C. with a hitherto silent curate,
and the other is jabbering botany to a red-faced warrior. The juniors
are in full swing, and ripples of silvery laughter rise in accompaniment
to the beaded bubbles all round the table. And all this is due to
champagne, that great unloosener not merely of tongues but of
purse-strings, as is well known to the secretaries of those charitable
institutions which set the wine flowing earliest at their anniversary
dinners.
* * * * *
A few recipes for sparkling wine cups gathered from various sources will
conclude our work. Not having personally tested these we leave the
responsibility of them to their respective authors--Soyer, Tovey,
Terrington ("Cooling Cups and Dainty Drinks"), &c.--premising that it is
the merest folly to use a high-class champagne or a fine sparkling hock
for a beverage of this description. Sparkling saumur, or the
newly-introduced sparkling sauternes, and the cheaper hocks and
moselles, will do equally well at a greatly reduced cost. In all cases,
too, the kind of liqueur, the amount of sugar, and the flavouring with
borage, verbena, pine-apple, or cucumber, may be varied to suit
individual tastes. For soda or seltzer water we have invariably
substituted Apollinaris, which is far better adapted for effervescent
drinks of this description by reason of its purity and softness, its
freedom from any distinct flavour, and above all its powerful natural
effervescence.
Soyer's elaborate recipe for champagne cup for a large party is as
follows:--
Prepare three ounces of oleo-saccharine by rubbing some lumps of
sugar against the outside of a lemon or Seville orange and scraping
away the sugar as it absorbs the essential oil contained in the rind
of the fruit. Put the oleo-saccharine with the juice of four lemons
in a vessel, add a quart bottle of Apollinaris water (Soyer says
soda-water, but Apollinaris is certainly preferable), and stir well
together until the sugar is dissolved. Then pour in one quart of
syrup of orgeat and whip the mixture up well with an egg whisk in
order to whiten it. Next add a pint of cognac brandy, a quarter of a
pint of Jamaica rum and half a pint of maraschino; strain the whole
into a bowl, adding plenty of pounded ice if the weather is warm,
and pour in three bottles of champagne, stirring the mixture well
with the ladle while doing so in order to render the cup creamy and
mellow.
A less potent and pretentious beverage, and better suited for a summer
drink, is the subjoined:--
Dissolve two tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar in a quart of
Apollinaris water. Add a wineglass of curaçoa, a sprig of green
borage or a couple of slices of cucumber with the juice and fine
shavings of the outside peel of a lemon, and a pound of bruised ice.
After the whole has been well stirred pour in the champagne and
serve.