Sparkling wine

“ IN 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. ”

“ Wherever civilisation penetrates, champagne sooner or later is sure to follow; and if Queen Victoria’s morning drum beats round the world, its beat is certain to be echoed before the day is over by the popping of champagne-corks. Now-a-days the exhilarating wine graces not merely princely but middle-class dinner-tables, and is the needful adjunct at every petit souper in all the gayer capitals of the world. ”

“ Wine multiplies itself into many forms, which appear to be distinct; it is new, it is old; it is sweet, it is sour; it is sharp, it is soft; it is sparkling, it is still; water is ever the same. Wine must be petted and cherished, stored up in special skins and special caves, styled by particular names, praised under special titles, and heartily liked or disliked, like a child of passion ”

“ 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. ”

“ On descending into the basement beneath, the popping of corks and the continual clatter of machinery intimate that the disgorging and re-corking of the wine are being accomplished, and in the dim light we discern groups of workmen engaged in the final manipulation which champagne has to undergo, while fresh relays of wine are arriving from the cellars by the aid of endless chains. ”

“ Fortified wine is that wine to which distilled spirits have been added to increase alcoholic strength, for purposes of preservation only, and shall be held to be pure, when the spirits so used are the product of the grape only. Pure champagne or sparkling wine is that which contains carbonic acid gas or effervescence produced only by natural fermentation of saccharine matter of musts, or partially fermented wine in bottle. ”

“ We have explained that in the Champagne it is the custom for the manufacturers of sparkling wine to purchase considerable quantities of grapes from the surrounding growers, and to press these themselves, or have them pressed under their own superintendence. At Saumur only those firms possessing vineyards make their own vin brut, the bulk of the wine used for conversion into sparkling wine being purchased from the neighbouring growers. ”

“ The majority of the inhabitants are afoot: the feeble feminine half, baskets on arm, thread their way with the juveniles through the rows of vines planted half-way up the mountain, and all aglow with their autumnal glories of green and purple, crimson and yellow; while the sturdy masculine portion are mostly passing to and fro between the press-houses and the wine-shops. ”

“ Passing through a large open gateway we enter the vast courtyard of the establishment, which, with arriving and departing carts—the first loaded with wine in cask or with new bottles, and the others with cases of champagne—presents rather an animated scene. ”

“ It grows its own grapes and consumes annually about 1,500 tons of fruit, bottling from 200,000 to 300,000 bottles of sparkling wine in the course of the year. Its brands are the Great Western, of which there is a dry and an extra dry variety, the Carte Blanche, and the Pleasant Valley. Even the extra dry variety of the first-named wine tastes sweet in comparison with a moderately dry champagne, in addition to which its flavour, though agreeable, is certainly too pronounced for a sparkling wine of high quality. ”

“ When the wine works (like the vine) your wine will effervesce more than usual; a taste of vintage and of fermentation will be found in it.” The excellent wines of Ay and our good Champagne wines do not froth, or very slightly; they content themselves with sparkling in the glass.’ ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Any wine, in fact, can be rendered sparkling, although only wines of a certain lightness of body and which are at the same time delicate and clean to the taste—being devoid of anything approaching to a goût de terroir—are really suited to the purpose. Given a wine containing sufficient saccharine, either natural or applied, and duly regulate its temperature, and it is easy enough to render it sparkling. The Germans discovered this long ago when they first transformed the acidulous wines of the Rhine into what we term sparkling hocks. ”

“ To a gill of good pale sherry add a liqueur glass of maraschino and a few lumps of sugar which have been well rubbed over the rind of a Seville orange, the juice of which is also to be added to the mixture. After the sugar is dissolved throw in a sprig of borage or a slice or two of cucumber and some pounded ice. Then add a quart bottle of Apollinaris water and a bottle of champagne or some other sparkling wine. ”

“ They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright,'—say, like sparkling Champagne.—'At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange wonders, and thine heart shall utter perverse things ”

“ On all sides a scene of bustling animation presents itself. From one gallery men keep arriving with baskets of wine ready for the disgorger; while along another bottles of wine duly dosed with syrup are being borne off to be decorated with metal foil and their distinctive labels. Groups of workmen are busily engaged disgorging, dosing, and re-corking the newly-arrived bottles of wine ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is singular that the presence of a natural liqueur—the consequence of a complete but not excessive ripeness of the grape, and at present considered one of the highest qualities of the wine—was, at the commencement of the eighteenth century, regarded as a disease. ”

“ Some are planted in a very light and strong Soil, and they yield a bright and fragrant Wine; others are placed in a more nourishing Tract of Land, and they produce a Wine of a greater Body. The reasonable Combination of these different Fruits will produce an exquisite Liquor, that will have all the Advantages of a sufficient Body, a Delicacy of Flavour, a Fragrancy of Scent, and a Liveliness of Colour, and which may be Kept for several Years without the least Alteration. ”

“ When white wine is being made from black grapes for sparkling Saumur, the grapes are conveyed in these baskets to the underground pressoirs in the neighbouring villages before their skins get at all broken, in order that the wine may be as pale as possible in colour. ”

“ Let the wines not exceed four—a light hock, redolent of the fruit of the Riesling; a glass or two of Montepulciano or of Pichon-Longueville, two flûtes of half dry champagne (cider rather than “brût”) or sparkling dry Saint-Péray; and for the after-taste—the last taste of sweets—the perfumed sunshine of Sauternes, Lafaurie, or La Tour Blanche of a well-succeeded year, iced to snow. “A glass of wine,” Richard Sheridan used to say, “would encourage the bright thought to come; and then it was right to take another to reward it for coming.” Let the courses not exceed seven, including the salad ”

“ Others not less expert declare that a simple mixture of the Ay, Pierry, and Cramant vintages furnishes a perfect wine. As when this blending takes place the wine is only imperfectly fermented and exceedingly crude, the reader may imagine the delicacy and discrimination of palate requisite to judge of the flavour, finesse, and bouquet which the cuvée is likely eventually to develop. ”

“ For a wine to be sparkling it is requisite that it should ferment in the bottle, a result obtained by bottling it while it contains a certain undeveloped proportion of alcohol and carbonic acid, represented by so much sugar, of which they are the component parts. This ingredient has frequently to be added to the Champagne wines to render them sparkling, but the wine of Saint-Péray in its natural state contains so much sugar that any addition would be deleterious. ”

“ A curious feature about these cellars is that the roots of the larger trees in the garden above have penetrated through 137 the roof of the upper story and hang pendent overhead like innumerable stalactites. Here after the comparatively new wine of 1874 had been shown to us—including samples of the Vin Brut or natural champagne of which the firm make a speciality at a moderate price—some choice old champagnes were brought forth, including the fine vintages of 1865, 1857, and 1846. ”

“ They 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. ”

“ The vintaging of the white grapes takes place about a fortnight later than the black grapes, and is commonly a compound operation, the best and ripest bunches being first of all gathered just as the berries begin to get shrivelled and show symptoms of approaching rottenness. It is these selected grapes that yield the best wine. The second gathering, which follows shortly after the first, includes all the grapes remaining on the vines, and yields a wine perceptibly inferior in quality. ”

“ While it is admitted that climate is not without its influence in imparting a delicate sweetness and aroma, combined with finesse and lightness, to the wine, some authorities maintain that to the careful selection of the vines best suited to the soil and temperature of the district the excellence of genuine Champagne is mainly to be ascribed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All the arrangements at this establishment are very complete. There is a place for everything, and everything is to be found in its place. Adjoining the courtyard, where new bottles are stacked beneath open ornamental sheds, are the tasting-room and the apartment where the operations of disgorging, dosing, and re-corking are performed. The liqueur added by the firm to their sparkling wines is kept in bottle from three to five years before being used. ”

“ To walk amid these upright, branching casks of purple wine, which retain and diffuse a sunset glow, tasting each one with your eye, instead of counting the pipes on a London dock, what a privilege! For Nature's vintage is not confined to the vine. Our poets have sung of wine, the product of a foreign plant which commonly they never saw, as if our own plants had no juice in them more than the singers. Indeed, this has been called by some the American Grape, and, though a native of America, its juices are used in some foreign countries to improve the color of the wine ”

“ Vintages ripened under certain skies, on certain hills, where certain waters flowed, with cellarage in certain soils, had a faculty of aging gracefully, mellowing to a smoothness and purity and desirableness that made for cheer and health without the alloy of sordid inebriety. The bouquet of wine, the perfected essence of the grape subjected to the further courses of nature, has been a theme of praise for centuries. ”