Henry Vizetelly

“ If in the Champagne the picturesque rejoicings immortalised in the Italian vintage scenes of Léopold Robert are lacking, and if the grapes, instead of being trodden to the blithe accompaniment of flute and fiddle, as in some parts of France, are pressed in more quiet fashion, a pleasant air of jollity nevertheless pervades the district at the season of the vintage. Every one participates in the interest which this excites. It influences the takings of all the artificers and all the tradespeople, and brings grist to the mill of the baker and the bootmaker, as well as to the café and cabaret. ”

“ In the seventeenth century the still wine of the province of Champagne was destined, like the setting sun, to gleam with well-nigh unparalleled radiance up to the moment of its almost total eclipse. Continual care and untiring industry had resulted in the production of a wine which seems to have been renowned beyond all others for a delicate yet well-developed flavour peculiarly its own, but of which the wonderful revolution effected by the invention of sparkling wine has left but few traces. ”

“ A short drive along the high-road leading from Epernay to Orleans brings us to the village of Pierry, cosily nestling amongst groves of poplars in the valley of the Cubry, with some half-score of châteaux of the last century, belonging to well-to-do wine-growers of the neighbourhood, screened from the road by umbrageous gardens. Vines mount the slopes that rise around, the higher summits being crowned with forest, while here and there some pleasant village shelters itself under the brow of a lofty hill. ”

“ Wherever the Romans died they left traces behind them in their quaint funeral urns; wherever the civilised man of the nineteenth century has set his foot—at the base of the Pyramids and at the summit of the Cordilleras, in the mangrove swamps of Ashantee and the gulches of the Great Lone Land, in the wilds of the Amoor and on the desert isles of the Pacific—he has left traces of his presence in the shape of the empty bottles that were once full of the sparkling vintage of the Marne. ”

“ GOOD Champagne does not rain down from the clouds, or gush out from the rocks, but is the result of incessant labour, patient skill, minute precaution, and careful observation. In the first place, the soil imparts to the natural wine a special quality which it has been found impossible to imitate in any other quarter of the globe. To the wine of Ay it lends a flavour of peaches, and to that of Avenay the savour of strawberries; the vintage of Hautvillers, though somewhat fallen from its former high estate, is yet marked by an unmistakably nutty taste ”

“ Carts piled up with baskets, or crowded with peasants from a distance on their way to the vineyards, jostle the low railway-trucks laden with brand-new casks, and the somewhat rickety cabriolets of the agents of the big Champagne houses, who are reduced to clinch their final bargain for a hundred or more pièces of the peerless wine of Ay or Bouzy, Verzy or Verzenay, beside the reeking wine-press. ”

“ There is another and a lower depth of cellars to be explored, to which access is gained by trap-holes in the floor—through which the barrels and baskets of wine are raised and lowered—and by flights of steps. From the foot of the latter there extends an endless vista of lofty and spacious passages hewn out of the chalk, the walls of which, smooth as finished masonry, are lined with thousands of casks of raw wine, varied at intervals by gigantic vats. ”

“ A couple of pleasant country houses, half hidden by spreading foliage, stand at the two extremities of a spacious and well-kept garden, beyond which one catches a glimpse of some outbuildings sheltered by the vine-crowned cliff, in which a labyrinth of gloomy galleries has been hollowed out. Here M. Ackerman-Laurance, the extent of whose business ranks him as second among the sparkling wine manufacturers of the world, stores something like 10,000 casks and several million bottles of wine. ”

“ 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 workpeople 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. ”

“ Berchier’s lap, when the one in a dream, and the other with waking eyes, saw a snow-white dove—the same, firm believers in miracles suggested, which had brought down the holy oil for the anointment of Clovis at his coronation at Reims—flutter through the wood, and finally alight afar off on the stump of a tree. Such an omen could no more be neglected by a seventh-century saint than a slate full of scribble by a nineteenth-century spiritualist, and accordingly the site thus miraculously indicated was forthwith decided upon. ”

“ WITH the exception of certain famous vineyards of the Rhône, the vinelands of the Champagne may, perhaps, be classed among the most picturesque of the more notable vine-districts of France. Between Paris and Epernay, even, the banks of the Marne present a series of scenes of quiet beauty. The undulating ground is everywhere cultivated like a garden. ”

“ 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. At the end of this gallery is a spacious compartment, where a large stock of pure Champagne cognac of grand vintages is stored for cask and liqueur use. 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. ”

“ The modern mind may well look back with shuddering horror to that dreary period when Champagne, if given at all, was doled out at dinner-parties ‘like drops of blood.’ No wonder the ladies used to fly from the table and the gentlemen to slide underneath it. And, speaking of the ladies, is not Champagne their wine par excellence? ”

“ The poets of the first half of the present century have hardly done justice to Champagne. Tom Moore, the most Anacreontic of them all, although ready, like his Grecian prototype, to ‘pledge the universe in wine,’ the merits of which he was continually chanting in the abstract, has seldom been so invidious as to particularise any especial vintage. Champagne, the wine of all others best fitted to inspire his bright and sparkling lyrics, has received but scant attention in his earlier productions. ”

“ THE special characteristic of Champagne is that its manufacture only commences where that of other wines ordinarily ends. No one would recognise in the still brut fluid—which, after being duly racked and fined, has somewhat the taste and colour of an acrid Rhine wine, with a more or less pronounced bitter flavour—that exhilarating essence which is capable of raising the most depressed spirits, and imparting gaiety to the dismallest gatherings. ”

“ The Normans, who threatened Reims and sacked Epernay in 882, swept over them like devouring locusts; and their annals during the following century are written in letters of blood and flame.
Times were indeed bad for the peaceful vine-dressers in the tenth century, when castles were springing up in every direction; when might made right, and the rule of the strong hand alone prevailed; and when the firm belief that the end of the world was to come in the year 1000 led men to live only for the present, and seek to get as much out of their fellow-creatures as they possibly could. ”

“ Snow and cold are at once forgotten. Each man grasps his rifle and waits for the boar to pass by. The branches of the underwood creak and break; there is a noise as of a squadron of cavalry dashing into a wood; then, all of a sudden, a black mass is caught sight of approaching. But the boar is a cunning fellow; he has seen the sportsman who is in wait for him, or has scented his presence, and will pass out of range. ”

“ Naturally, in France as elsewhere, the sparkling vintage of the Marne maintains its claims to be reckoned the wine of beauty and fashion, and more especially in beauty’s gayer hours. A glass of Champagne and a biscuit de Reims has been a refection which, though often verbally declined, was in the end pretty sure to be accepted from the days of the merveilleuses and incroyables, through those of the lionnes, down to the present epoch of the cocodettes de la haute gomme. ”

“ Since the death of Madame Clicquot the legal style of the firm has been ‘Werlé & 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. ”

“ Long carts laden with baskets of grapes block the narrow roads, and donkeys, duly muzzled, with panniers slung across their backs, toil up and down the steeper slopes. Half-way up the principal hill, backed by a dense wood and furrowed with deep trenches, whence soil has been removed for manuring the vineyards, is the village of Verzenay—where in the Middle Ages the Archbishop of Reims had a fief—overlooking a veritable sea of vines. ”

“ Champagne sparkles in all the plays of the Restoration, and seems the fitting inspiration of their matchless briskness of dialogue. The Millamours and Bellairs, the Carelesses and Rangers, the Sir Joskin Jolleys and Sir Fopling Flutters, the beaux of the Mall and the rakes of the Mulberry and New Spring Gardens, the gay frequenters of the Folly on the Thames and the habitués of Pontack’s Ordinary, whom the contemporary dramatists transferred bodily to the stage of the King’s or the Duke’s, are constantly tossing off bumpers of it. ”

“ The pleasantest season of the year to visit the Champagne is certainly during the vintage. When this is about to commence, the vintagers—some of whom come from Sainte Menehould, forty miles distant, while others hail from as far as Lorraine—are summoned at daybreak by beat of drum in the market-places of the villages adjacent to the vineyards, and then and there a price is made for the day’s labour. ”

“ ALTHOUGH the date of the introduction of the vine into France is lost in the mists of antiquity, and though the wines of Marseilles, Narbonne, and Vienne were celebrated by Roman writers prior to the Christian era, many centuries elapsed before a vintage was gathered within the limits of the ancient province of Champagne. Whilst the vine and olive throve in the sunny soil of the Narbonnese Gaul, the frigid climate of the as yet uncultivated North forbade the production of either wine or oil. ”

“ The cellars are entered down a steep incline under a low stone arch, the masonry above which is overgrown with ivy in large clusters and straggling creeping plants. We soon come upon a deep recess to the right, wherein stands a unique cumbersome screw-press, needing ten or a dozen men to work the unwieldy capstan which sets the juice flowing from the crushed grapes into the adjacent shallow trough. On our left hand are a couple of ancient reservoirs, formed out of huge blocks of stone, with the entrance to a long vaulted cellar filled with wine in cask. ”

“ Sportsmen are so numerous in every little village of the Marne, the shooting license only costing five-and-twenty francs, that feathered game has become very rare. The most remarkable specimen is the caimpetière, or small bustard, which exists only in the Champagne and Algeria, and the flesh of which is highly esteemed.
Partridges and hares would have entirely disappeared from the plains were it not for the shelter which the vineyards afford them, for woe to him who ventures to shoot among the vines! The vine is as sacred to the Champenois as the mistletoe was to their Gallic forefathers. ”

“ The boar is about to turn at bay. His strength is becoming exhausted, and feeling that he is doomed to die, he has faced round, with his back towards some inaccessible thicket, so as not to be taken in the rear, and confronts his pursuers, determined to die bravely and to sell his life dearly. It is no longer the baying of a pack in full cry that now rends the air, but isolated yelpings and plaintive howlings, such as watch-dogs give vent to when strangers are wandering round the house they protect. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At the vintage, as we witnessed it, men and women—young, middle-aged, and old—accompanied by troops of children, were roaming all over the slopes dexterously nipping off the bunches of grapes with their thumb and finger nails, and flinging them into the little wooden tubs with which they were provided. The pressing of the grapes and the after-treatment of the wine destined to become sparkling are the same in the Beaujolais as in Upper and Lower Burgundy. ”

“ Still it may be mentioned that the great Epernay firm, with the view of meeting the requirements of the time, have lately commenced shipping a high-class vin brut, or natural Champagne, possessing great vinosity, combined with remarkable delicacy of flavour. To this fine dry wine the name of ‘Brut Impérial’ has been given by the house. Moët & Chandon’s famous ‘Star’ brand is known in all societies, figures equally at clubs and mess-tables, at garden-parties and picnics, dinners and soirées, and has its place in hotel cartes all over the world. ”

“ For nearly two hundred years this strange edict remained in force, during which period all the wine consumed in the Gallo-Roman dominions was imported from abroad. Six generations of men, to whom the cheerful toil of the vine-dresser was but an hereditary tale, and the joys of the vintage a half-forgotten tradition, had passed away when, in 282, the Emperor Probus, a gardener’s son, once more granted permission to cultivate the vine, and even exercised his legions in the laying-out and planting of vineyards in Gaul. ”