[157] Ode À Messieurs Coffin et Grenan, Professeurs de Belles Lettres, sur leurs Combats poÉtiques au sujet des Vins de Bourgogne et de Champagne, in Bellechaume’s Recueil.

[158]

[159] In an anonymous letter addressed to Grenan on February 1712, and published in the Recueil.

[160]

[161] Les CÉlÉbritÉs du Vin de Champagne. Epernay, 1880. Maucroix died in his ninetieth year in 1708.

[162] Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines.

[163] In the Journal des Savants.

[164]

From La Critique, an opera of Panard’s, produced in 1742.

[165] ‘With what vivacity,’ he exclaims, with a strange blending of poetry and science, ‘does this divine liquid burst forth in sparkling foam-bells! And what an agreeable impression it produces upon the olfactory organs! What a delicious sensation it creates upon the delicate fibres of the palate! ... It is fixed air which, by its impetuous motion, forms and raises up that foam, the whiteness of which, rivalling that of milk, soon offers to our astonished eye the lustre of the most transparent crystal. It is this same air that, by its expansion and the effervescence it produces, develops the action of the vinous spirit of which it is the vehicle, in order that the papillÆ of the nerves may more promptly receive the delicious impression.... Vainly calumny spreads the report on all sides that the sparkle of our wines is injurious; vainly it asserts that they have only a hurtful fire and a worthless flavour. Incapable of hiding under an insidious appearance a perfidious venom, they will always present a faithful image of the ingenuousness of their native province.’

[166] Max Sutaine’s Essai sur le Vin de Champagne.

[167] Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines. Pluche, in his Spectacle de la Nature, notices the controversy regarding the respective merits of the wines of the Marne and the CÔte d’Or in the following terms:

‘Count: If we will be determined by the finest palates, the Champaign wine is much preferable to Burgundy.

Prior: It is a sufficient honour for Champaign to be admitted to the same degree of estimation with Burgundy; and it may very well dispense with the priority. I always thought Burgundy had some similitude with a solid understanding, which affects us with lasting impressions, and that Champaign resembles a lively wit, which glitters more upon the imagination, but which is not always serviceable to its possessor.

Count: If you had made the froth of some Champaign wines and the sallies of a sprightly wit your parallel, I should have thought it unexceptionable; and several pleasant remarks might be made on this sprightliness without solidity. But such a Champaign wine as that of Sillery unites all the vigour of Burgundy, with an agreeable flavour peculiar to itself.

Prior: I prefer useful qualities to those that are merely agreeable. Burgundy seems to be a more salutary wine than Champaign, and will always be triumphant for that reason. Its colour alone declares it to be a wine of a good body, and I must confess I am apt to be diffident of all dazzling appearances.

Count: People believe that this deep colour, so esteemed in Burgundy wines, is an indication of their wholesomeness; but it is observable in the grossest wines, and results from an intermixture of the husky parts of the grape. Wine, in proportion to the quantity of these particles blended with it, will be less qualified for digestion. The gout, therefore, and the stone, with which the inhabitants of wine-countries are so frequently afflicted, are distempers hardly known either at Reims or on the banks of the Marne, where the wines are very moderately coloured.... Wines may be made almost as white in Burgundy as they are in Champaign, though not so good; and, on the other hand, the Champenois press a wine as red as the Burgundy growth, and the merchants sell it either as the best species of Burgundy to the wine-conners, who are the first people that are deceived in it, or as red Champaign to the connoisseurs, who prefer it to any other wine. If we may judge of the merit of wines by the price, we shall certainly assign the preference to Champaign, since the finest species of this wine is sold in the vaults of Sillery and Epernai for six, seven, or eight hundred livres, when the same quality of the best Burgundy may be purchased for three hundred.

Countess: Let me entreat you, gentlemen, to leave this controversy undecided. The equal pretensions that are formed by these two great provinces promote an emulation which is advantageous to us. The partisans for Burgundy and Champaign form two factions in the State; but their contests are very entertaining, and their encounters not at all dangerous. It is very usual to see the zealots of one party maintaining a correspondence with those of the other; they frequently associate together without any reserve, and those who were advocates for Burgundy at the beginning of the entertainment are generally reconciled to Champaign before the appearance of the dessert.’

[168] Letters, &c. Hamburg and Paris, 1788. The translator adds, as a note, ‘People do not any longer get drunk on Champagne.’

[169] MÉmoires du Duc de St. Simon.

[170] Journal de Barbier.

[171] A curious proof of the popularity of sparkling Champagne, and of the singular system of provincial government into which France was broken up during the reign of Louis XV., is found in a decree of the Council of State, dated May 25, 1728. The decree in question begins by setting forth that, by the Ordonnance des aides de Normandie, wine was forbidden to be brought into Rouen or its suburbs in bottles, jugs, or any less vessels than hogsheads and barrels—with the exception of vin de liqueur packed in boxes—under pain of confiscation and one hundred livres’ fine, and that carriers were prohibited from conveying wine in bottles in the province without leave from the fermier des aides. Nevertheless, petitions had been presented by the maire and Échevins of Reims, stating ‘that the trade in the gray wines of Champagne had considerably increased for some years past, through the precautions taken at the place of production to bottle them during the first moon of the month of March following the vintage, in order to render them mousseux; that those who make use of the gray wine of Champagne prefer that which is mousseux to that which is not; and that this gray wine cannot be transported in casks into the interior of the kingdom or to foreign countries without totally losing its qualities,’—a statement probably intentionally overdrawn, since Bertin du Rocheret used to export it in casks to England. Yet the fermiers des aides de Normandie claimed to prohibit the transport of wines in bottle; and if their pretension held good, the trade in the gray wine of Champagne would be destroyed. ‘Shifting the cause, as a lawyer knows how,’ the decree recapitulates the plea of the fermiers that the transport of wine in bottles offered facilities for defrauding the revenue, since a carrier with a load could easily leave some of it en route with innkeepers, and these in turn could hide bottles holding a pinte de Paris from the officers in chests, cupboards, &c., and sell them subsequently, to the detriment of the droits de dÉtail.

The foregoing duly rehearsed, there follows the decree permitting ‘to be sent in bottles into the province of Normandy, for the consumption of the said province, gray wine of Champagne in baskets, which must not hold less than one hundred bottles,’ but prohibiting the introduction in bottles of any other growth or quality, under the penalty of confiscation and one hundred livres’ fine. Permission is also given to pass gray and red wine of Champagne, or of any other cru or quality, in baskets of fifty or one hundred bottles for conveyance into other provinces, or for shipment to foreign parts by the ports of Rouen, Caen, Dieppe, and Havre. The wagoners, however, in all cases are to have certificates signed and countersigned by all manner of authorities, and are only to enter the province by certain specified routes. All wine, too, is to pay the droit de dÉtail, except in the case of people not continuously residing in the province, who may be going to their estates, or those bound for the eaux de Forges, a celebrated watering-place, both of whom may take a certain quantity in bottle with them for their own consumption free of duty.

[172] ‘To be drunk as nouveau or bottled,’ says M. Louis Perrier in his MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne.

[173] D’Argenson’s MÉmoires.

[174] Bois-Jourdain’s MÉlanges Historiques. The editor of the Journal de Barbier observes in a note to a passage referring to the King’s suppers at La Muette with Madame de Mailly, under the date of November 1737: ‘These suppers were drinking bouts. It was there that the King acquired a taste for Champagne.’

[175] Clauteau’s Relation de ce qui s’est passÉ au Passage du Roi. Reims, 1744.

[176] Ibid.

[177] Varin’s Archives Administratives de Reims.

[178] Louis Paris’ Histoire de l’Abbaye d’Avenay.

[179] Amongst these may be cited the AbbÉ Bignon, who, in a letter to Bertin du Rocheret dated January 1734, says: ‘The less the wine is mousseux and glittering, and the more, on the contrary, it shows at the outset of what you style liqueur, and I, in chemical terms, should rather call balsamic parts, the better I shall think of it.’

[180] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne.

[181]

[182]

[183] Desaulx, a canon of Reims Cathedral, rendered Lebatteux’s ode as follows:

[184]

The above was set to music by M. Dormel, organist of St. GeneviÈve.

[185] Marmontel’s MÉmoires d’un PÈre pour l’instruction de ses Enfants. M. Louis Paris, in his Histoire de l’Abbaye d’Avenay, identifies this spot as one known indifferently as Le Fay or Feuilly. He furnishes some interesting details respecting Mademoiselle de Navarre, who, after being the mistress of Marshal Saxe, married the Chevalier de Mirabeau, brother to the Ami des Hommes and uncle of the celebrated orator, and then goes on to say: ‘In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the wines of Avenay shared with those of Hautvillers the glory of rivalling the best of Ay. “Avenay, les bons raisins,” was the popular saying inscribed on the banner of its chevaliers de l’Arquebuse (a corps of local sharpshooters). La BruyÈre, St. Evremond, Boileau himself, Coulanges, L’Atteignant, and many others had celebrated the tender and delicate wines of our vineyards; and that of Madame l’Abbesse especially had acquired such a reputation, that several great families, strangers to the locality, thought it the right thing to have a vendangeoir at Avenay, and to pass part of the autumn in the renowned Val d’Or.’

[186]

[187]

From the edition of his Poesies published in 1757.

[188]

Panard’s Œuvres, Paris, 1763.

[189]

[190]

[191]

[192] An allusion to the vin gris of the Champagne.

[193]

[194] Max Sutaine’s Essai sur le Vin de Champagne.

[195] M. Sutaine observes that in 1780 a merchant of Epernay bottled 6000 bottles, and that the importance of this tirage was noted as something remarkable; and this statement has been repeated by every other writer on Champagne. Yet here is a tirage of 6000 bottles taking place thirty-four years previously. The extent of the bottled-wine trade is confirmed by Arthur Young, who in 1787 visited Ay, where M. Lasnier had 60,000 bottles in his cellar, and M. DorsÉ from 30,000 to 40,000. Marmontel in 1716 mentions Henin de Navarre’s cellars at Avenay as containing 50,000 bottles of Champagne.

[196] E. J. MaumenÉ’s TraitÉ du Travail des Vins, 1874.

[197] Ibid. The casse of 1776 has never been forgotten at Epernay; and M. Perrier, in a letter of August 1801, mentions a recent one at Avize amounting to 85 per cent. That of 1842 flooded the cellars throughout the Champagne. Even in 1850 M. MaumenÉ mentions a casse in a Reims cellar which had reached 98 per cent at his visit, and was still continuing.

[198] Max Sutaine’s Essai sur le Vin de Champagne. The AbbÉ Bignon confirms this in a letter of December 20, 1736, to Bertin du Rocheret, respecting wine received from him. ‘The wine sealed with a cipher in red wax,’ he observes, ‘seemed to me very delicate, but having as yet some liqueur which time may get rid of, though after that I am afraid there will not remain much strength. Another, also sealed with red wax, but with a coat-of-arms, seems to have more quality and vinosity, though also very delicate and very light, both sablant perfectly, though they cannot be called mousseux. As to that which is sealed with black, the people who esteem foam would bestow the most magnificent eulogies upon it. It would be difficult to find any that carries this beautiful perfection further. Three spoonfuls at the bottom of the glass is surmounted with the strongest foam to the very brim; on the other hand, I found in it a furious vert, and not much vinosity.’

[199] In 1734 he speaks of his mousseux sablant, and forwards to the Marquis de Polignac both mousseux and petillant. In 1736 he offers M. VÉron de Bussy his choice of demi-mousseux, bon mousseux, and saute bouchon; and the following year distinguishes his Ay mousseux from his saute bouchon.

[200] Respecting the price of sparkling Champagne during the first half of the eighteenth century, a few instances from the correspondence of Bertin du Rocheret may here he quoted. In 1716 he offers Marshal d’Artagnan 1500 bottles at 35 sols, cash down, and taken at Epernay. In 1725 he offers flacons blancs mousseux liqueur at from 30 to 50 sols, and ambrÉs non mousseux, sablant, at 25 sols. Ten years later saute bouchon is quoted by him at 40 and 45 sols, and in 1736 at 3 livres, demi-mousseux ranging from 36 to 40 sols, and bon mousseux from 45 to 50 sols. The following year saute bouchon fetched 3 livres 6 sols, and mousseux 42 sols. In 1736 he insisted upon his flacons holding a pinte; and a royal decree of March 8, 1755, which regulated the weight and capacity of sparkling-wine bottles, required these to weigh 25 ounces, and to hold a pinte de Paris, or about 1.64 imperial pint. They were, moreover, to be tied crosswise on the top of the cork, with a string of three strands well twisted. Their cost was 15 livres per hundred in 1734 and 1738, and from 17 to 19 livres in 1754.

[201] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne.

[202] It would appear from Bidet that the wines of the Mountain had not been transformed into vin mousseux as late as 1752, as, in his book on wine published during that year, he only includes in the list of places producing sparkling wine Ay, Avenay, Mareuil, Dizy, Hautvillers, Epernay, Pierry, Cramant, Avize, and Le Mesnil.

[203]

[204] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne. In the thesis in favour of Champagne, written by Dr. Xavier of Reims in 1777, the acidulous character of the wine is confirmed by the author, who naÏvely remarks that it is as efficacious in preventing putrefaction as are other acids. He also compares it to acidulated waters.

[205] Legrand d’Aussy’s Vie privÉe des FranÇais, 1782.

[206] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne. The pretended secret of Dom Perignon, quoted from the MÉmoire of 1718, and mentioning the addition of sugar to the wine of Hautvillers, is flatly contradicted by Dom Grossart’s letter to M. DherbÈs (see page 41 ante). But it is probable that the suggestion thus made public was acted upon, though at first only timidly.

[207] Chaptal’s Art de faire du Vin. As Minister of the Interior, he forwarded the results of his experiments to the prÉfets, with the recommendation to spread them throughout their departments.

[208] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne.

[209] Letter of M. Nicolas Perrier to M. Cadet-Devaux, dated August 1801.

[210] As bourru, tocane, and en nouveau.

[211] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne.

[212] The letter in which he mentions this is extant, but the secret which was enclosed in it is missing.

[213] Dom Grossart, who had retired to Montier-en-Der in 1790, was unacquainted with this plan when he wrote to M. DherbÈs in 1821, although it had been practised for twenty years past.

[214] In a MS. quoted in Varin’s Archives Administratives de Reims.

[215] The gifts presented by the municipality on this occasion included flowers, pears, and gingerbread, Reims being as famed for the latter as for its wines. The guild of gingerbread-makers at Reims was established in the sixteenth century, and from that time forward was engaged in continual squabbles with the bakers and pastrycooks of the city, who could not be brought to understand that they had not the right to make gingerbread. Countless reams of paper were scribbled over by the lawyers of the two contending interests; but though the Bailli of Reims on several occasions pronounced a formal verdict, to the effect that no one but a sworn and accepted gingerbread-maker should have act or part in the making of the indigestible delicacy, the contumacious bakers continued to treat his edicts as naught. Eventually a royal edict of 1776, which suppressed the privileges of the majority of the guilds in France, deprived the Reims gingerbread-makers for ever of the right of figuring with swords by their sides and three-cornered hats on their heads at all local ceremonies, civil or religious, and threw their trade open to all.

It was at the close of Louis XIV.’s reign that the pain d’Épice of Reims reached the summit of its renown. At the coronation of his successor, the Échevins of Reims presented the monarch with several baskets of it; and when Maria Leczinska passed through Reims in January 1725, the notables offered her twelve wicker baskets, covered with damask and ornamented with ribbons, containing fresh and dried pears, conserves, preserved lemons, almond-cakes, and a new kind of gingerbread, which received the name of nonnette À la Reine.

[216] This escutcheon shows the arms of Reims, which at first consisted of rinÇeaux or branches; subsequently a cross and a crozier, placed saltire-wise, and a sainte Ampoule, were added. When the government of the city passed from the archbishop, the entwined olive-branches and chief strewn with fleurs de lis were adopted, the old motto, ‘Dieu en soit garde,’ being retained. The iron gates of the Porte de Paris were removed to their present position in 1843, to allow of the passage of the canal.

[217] From the days of Charles VIII. to those of Louis XIV., it was customary on these occasions for the keys to be presented by a young girl styled the Pucelle de Reims; and J. M. C. Leber, in his work Des CÉrÉmonies du Sacre, is of opinion that this custom arose in some way from the visit of Joan of Arc. Louis XV. was the first who received them from the lieutenant.

[218] Baron Taylor’s Reims, la Ville de Sacres.

[219] N. Menin’s TraitÉ du Sacre et Couronnement des Rois.

[220] P. TarbÉ’s Reims, ses Rues et ses Monuments.

[221] H. Taine’s L’Ancien RÉgime.

[222] Ibid.

[223] Arthur Young’s Travels in France in 1787–9.

[224] Ibid. Another grievance alleged against the monasteries was the presence of the innumerable fishponds belonging to them scattered throughout the country. The Cahier des Plaintes, DolÉances, et Remontrances du Tiers Etat du Baillage de Reims, on the Assembly of the States General under Louis XVI., ask that ‘all fishponds situate outside woods and, above all, those which lie close to vineyards, may be suppressed, as hurtful to agriculture.’

[225] H. Taine’s L’Ancien RÉgime.

[226] Instructions of local directeurs des aides, quoted from the Archives Nationales by Taine.

[228] Les CÉlÉbritÉs du Vin de Champagne, Epernay, 1880.

[229] H. Taine’s L’Ancien RÉgime. At Rethel a poinÇon of the jauge de Reims paid 50 to 60 francs for the droit de dÉtail alone.

[230] Arthur Young’s Travels in France in 1787–9.

[231] H. Taine’s L’Ancien RÉgime.

[232] Crebillon the younger’s Les Bijoux Indiscrets.

[233] A MS. account of the wine culture of Poligny in the Jura states that in 1774 attempts were made to imitate the gray and pink wines of the Champagne, then selling at 3 livres 10 sous the bottle.

[234] Erckmann-Chatrian’s Histoire d’un Paysan.

[235] ‘Suppose Champagne flowing,’ says Carlyle, when describing this banquet in his French Revolution.

[236] Carlyle’s French Revolution.

[237] The date ‘An 1^er de la libertÉ’ may possibly refer to the ‘Year One’ of the Republican calendar (1792), in which Mirabeau fell in a duel at Fribourg. But an earlier edition of the same caricature seems to have been published, according to De Goncourt in the Journal de la Mode et du GoÛt, in May 1790.

[238]

are the lines assigned to him in Le Vicomte de Barjoleau, ou le Souper des Noirs, a two-act comedy of the epoch.

[239]

This caricature, which is neither signed nor dated, is simply entitled ‘Le Gourmand;’ though Jaime, in his Histoire de la Caricature, states that it represents Louis XVI. at Varennes. According to Carlyle, however, the king reached Varennes at eleven o’clock at night, was at once arrested in his carriage, and taken to Procureur Sausse’s house. Here he ‘demands refreshments, as is written; gets bread-and-cheese, with a bottle of Burgundy, and remarks that it is the best Burgundy he ever drunk.’ At six o’clock the following morning he left Varennes, escorted by ten thousand National Guards. Very likely there may have been a story current at the time to the effect that the arrest was due to the king’s halting to gratify his appetite. Or the caricature may represent some incident that occurred, during his return to Paris, as he passed through the Champagne district, and halted at the HÔtel de Rohan at Epernay.

[240] De Goncourt’s SociÉtÉ FranÇaise pendant la RÉvolution.

[241] Ibid.

[242] St. Aubin’s ExpÉdition de Don Quichotte.

[243] Aux voleurs! aux voleurs! quoted by De Goncourt.

[244] Lettres du PÈre DuchÊne, quoted by De Goncourt.

[245] Les CÉlÉbritÉs du Vin de Champagne, Epernay, 1880.

[246] Journal de ce qui s’est passÉ d’intÉressant À Reims en 1814.

[247] Ibid.

[248] G. A. Sala’s Paris Herself Again.

[249] Gronow’s Celebrities of London and Paris, 1865.

[250] Gronow’s Reminiscences, 1862.

[251]

BÉranger’s Chansons.

[252]

PoÉsies de J. Boese, de Blidah.

[253]

Le Parfait Vigneron, Paris, 1870.

[254] Titi Livii Foro-Juliensis Vita Henrici Quinti. The author was a protÉgÉ of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester.

[255] Francisque Michel’s Histoire du Commerce et de la Navigation À Bordeaux. It was not till the marriage of Henry III. with Eleanor of Aquitaine that we began to import Guienne wine from Bordeaux.

[256] Varin’s Archives Administratives de Reims.

[257] Ibid.

[258] Victor FiÉvet’s Histoire d’Epernay.

[259] Francisque Michel’s Histoire du Commerce et de la Navigation À Bordeaux.

[260] Published in 1615.

[261] That of 1574. Surflet’s translation appeared in 1600.

[262] Venner’s Via recta ad longam Vitam, 1628.

[263] Writing to Sir Walter Mildmay in 1569, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who had charge of the royal prisoner, complains that his regular allowance of wine duty free is not enough. ‘The expenses I have to bear this year on account of the Queen of the Scots are so considerable as to compel me to beg you will kindly consider them. In fact, two butts of wine a month hardly serve for our ordinary use; and besides this, I have to supply what is required by the Princess for her baths and similar uses.’

[264] Clarendon’s Memoirs.

[265] Letter of Guy Patin, 1660.

[266] Otway’s Soldier’s Fortune, act iv. sc. 1, 1681.

[267] Ibid.

[268] Redding’s History and Description of Modern Wines.

[269] Otway’s Friendship in Fashion, 1678.

[270]

Œuvres de Saint-Evremond.

[271]

Œuvres de Saint-Evremond:
Sur la Verdure qu’on met aux cheminÉes en Angleterre.

In these verses we trace the custom, elsewhere spoken of, of drinking the Marne wines when new. St. Evremond himself, in a passage of his prose works, says that the wines of Ay should not be kept too long, or those of Reims drunk too soon.

[272] Sparkling is not used here in the modern sense of effervescing: see page 90.

[273] Sir George Etherege’s Man of the Mode, or Sir Fopling Flutter, act iv. sc. 1, 1676.

[274] Otway’s Friendship in Fashion, act ii. sc. 1, 1678.

[275] Etherege’s She wou’d if she cou’d, act iv. sc. 2, 1668.

[276] Sir Charles Sedley’s Mulberry Garden, act ii. sc. 2, 1668.

[277] Otway’s Friendship in Fashion, act i. sc. 1, 1678.

[278] Shadwell’s Virtuoso, act ii. sc. 2, 1676.

[279] By Dr. Charleton, and published as late as 1692.

[280] Oldham’s Paraphrases from Horace, book i. ode xxxi., 1684.

[281] Oldham’s Works, &c., 1684.

[282] Butler’s Hudibras, part ii. canto i., 1664. Stum is unfermented wine; and the term brisk applied to Champagne is here employed not to denote effervescence, but to indicate the contrast between the thick immature fluid and the clear carefully-made wines of the Champagne.

[283] Butler’s Hudibras, part iii. canto iii., 1678.

[284] Sedley’s The Doctor and his Patients. No date, but Sedley died in 1701.

[285] Thomson’s Poems.

[286] Cyrus Redding’s evidence before the Parliamentary Committee on the Wine-Duties, 1851.

[287] Redding’s French Wines.

[288] Varin’s Archives Administratives de Reims.

[289] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne.

[290] St. Simon’s MÉmoires.

[291] Redding’s French Wines.

[292] Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle, act ii. sc. 2, 1698.

[293] An evident allusion to its effervescence; whilst the words ‘straw doublet’ most likely refer to the covering of the flask.

[294] Cibber’s Love makes a Man, act i. sc. 1, 1700.

[295] Farquhar’s The Inconstant, or the Way to win Him, act i. scene 2, 1703.

[296] Epilogue to the Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee of Farquhar, spoken by Wilks in 1700. Locket’s tavern, which stood on the site now occupied by Drummond’s bank at Charing Cross, was especially famous for its Champagne. In the Quack Vintners, a satire against Brooke and Hilliers, published in 1712, we read:

[297] Farquhar’s Twin Rivals, act v. sc. 1, 1705.

[298] Several other writers, who speak of ‘bottles’ of other wines, use the word ‘flask’ when referring to Champagne.

[299] Farquhar’s Beaux’ Stratagem, act iii. sc. 3, 1706.

[300] Memoir, prefixed to Leigh Hunt’s edition of Congreve’s works.

[301] Cunninghame’s History of Britain from the Revolution to the Hanover Succession.

[302] Farquhar’s The Constant Couple, or a Trip to the Jubilee, act v. sc. 1, 1700. M. Francisque Michel, in his Histoire du Commerce et de la Navigation À Bordeaux, clearly establishes that from the beginning to the middle of the eighteenth century all the best growths of the MÉdoc were bought and shipped for England. It was not until after 1755 that any went to Paris.

[303]

Coffin’s Campania vindicata, 1712. The force of the reference to England is better understood when it is mentioned that no other nation is alluded to as purchasing the wines of the Champagne.

[304] A practice not lost sight of at a later date, to judge from Borachio’s observation, ‘I turn Alicant into Burgundy and sour cider into Champagne of the first growth of France.’ Jephson’s Two Strings to your Bow, act i. sc. 2.

[305] The Tatler, No. 131, Feb. 9, 1709.

[306] Mrs. Centlivre’s A Bold Stroke for a Wife, act v. sc. 1, 1718.

[307] Gay’s poem On Wine, published in 1708.

[308] Gay’s Welcome from Greece.

[309] Prior’s Alma, or the Progress of the Mind.

[310] Prior’s Alma, or the Progress of the Mind.

[311] Prior’s Bibo and Charon.

[312] Shenstone’s Verses written at a Tavern at Henley.

[313] Vanbrugh’s Journey to London, act i. sc. 2. Left unfinished at his death in 1726.

[314] Swift’s Journal to Stella, March 12, 1712–13.

[315] Ibid. Feb. 20, 1712–13.

[316] Ibid. April 9, 1711.

[317] Ibid. March 18, 1710.

[318] Ibid. March 29, 1711–12.

[319] Ibid. Dec. 21, 1711.

[320] Ibid. April 7, 1711.

[321] Letter to Mr. Congreve, April 7, 1715.

[322] Mrs. Centlivre’s A Bold Stroke for a Wife, act i. sc. 1, 1718.

[323] Fielding’s The Miser, 1732.

[324] The Rake’s Progress, or the Humours of Drury Lane: a poem published in 1735, to accompany a set of prints pirated from Hogarth’s.

[325] Blunt’s Geneva: a poem dedicated to Sir R. Walpole, 1729.

[326] Hoadley’s Suspicious Husband, act iv. sc. 1, 1747.

[327] This wine, though sometimes sent by way of Dunkirk, was usually forwarded vi Calais, by the intermediary of a Sieur Labertauche, a commission-agent at that port, the cost of transport from Epernay to Calais being from 70 to 75 livres per queue. A bobillon of wine was sent with each lot of casks for filling up. Moreover, from 1731 Bertin annually despatches a certain quantity of cream of tartar, destined to cure the ropiness to which all white wines were especially subject before the discovery that tannin destroys the principle engendering this disease.

[328] Chabane appears to have been fully cognisant of the method of collage and soutirage (fining and racking) practised in the Champagne; and Bertin, in one of his letters dated July 1752, mentions the enclosure of a receipt for a kind of collage, by following which all necessity to dÉpoter the bottles is obviated. This enclosure is unfortunately lost.

[329] Ms. correspondence of Bertin du Rocheret, quoted by M. Louis Perrier in his MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne. M. Perrier states that the prohibition was removed by an act of the 1st Nov. 1745; and a letter of Bertin to Chabane, the following year, bears this out. It is therefore singular to find the following entry in Bubb Doddington’s Diary, under the date of Feb. 1, 1753: ‘Went to the House to vote for liberty to import Champaign in bottles. Lord Hillsborough moved it; Mr. Fox seconded it. We lost the Motion. Ayes, 74; Noes, 141.’

[330] Letter to Sir Horace Mann, June 18, 1751.

[331] Jesse’s Selwyn and his Contemporaries. It is very probable that the name printed as Prissieux is really Puissieux, a title of the Sillery family.

[332] Lady Mary Wortley Montague’s Letter from Arthur Grey, the Footman, to Mrs. Murray. Written in the autumn of 1721.

[333] Lady M. W. Montague’s The Lover. This is generally designated ‘a ballad to Mr. Congreve,’ but is headed in Lady Mary’s note-book, ‘To Molly,’ and, as Mr. Moy Thomas has suggested, was probably addressed to Lord Hervey, Pope’s ‘Lord Fanny.’

[334] Note to his Letter on Bowles.

[335] Westminster Magazine, 1774.

[336] Grainger’s The Sugar Cane, 1764.

[337] Coleman and Garrick’s Clandestine Marriage, act i. sc. 2, 1766.

[338] Garrick’s Bon Ton, or High Life above Stairs, act i. sc. 2, 1775.

[339] Ibid.

[340] Ibid. act ii. sc. 1.

[341] Townley’s High Life below Stairs, act ii. sc. 1, 1759.

[342] So in Mrs. Cowley’s Which is the Man? Burgundy is extolled and ‘vile Port’ denounced; and in Cumberland’s The Fashionable Lover (1772) a sneer is levelled at a ‘paltry Port-drinking club.’ Burgundy, too, is in favour in Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin, 1792.

[343] Foote’s The Lame Lover, act iii. sc. 1, 1770.

[344] Garrick’s The Country Girl, act v. sc. 1.

[345] Foote’s The Fair Maid of Bath, act i. sc. 1, 1771.

[346] Holcroft’s The Road to Ruin, act iv. sc. 2, 1792.

[347] Sir Edward Barry’s Observations, Historical, Critical, and Medical, on the Wines of the Ancients, and the analogy between them and Modern Wines, 1775.

[348] Tickell’s Poems.

[349] Timbs’ Clubs and Club Life.

[351] Arthur Young’s Travels in France in the Years 1787–9.

[352] Sheen’s Wine and other fermented Liquors.

[353] Amongst other English customers of the firm in 1788, 1789, and 1790 were ‘Milords’ Farnham and Findlater, the latter of whom was supplied with 120 bottles of the vintage of 1788; Manning, of the St. Alban’s Tavern, London, who ordered 130 bottles of vin de Champagne, at 3 livres or 2 s. the bottle, to be delivered in the autumn by M. Caurette; Messrs. Felix Calvert & Sylvin, who took two sample bottles at 5 s.; and Mr. Lockhart, banker, of 36 Pall Mall, who in 1790 paid 3 s. per bottle for 360 bottles of the vintage of 1788. The high rate of exchange in our favour is shown by the 54 l. covering this transaction being taken as 1495 livres 7 sols 9 deniers, or about 28 livres per pound sterling.

[354] Walker’s The Original.

[355] ‘The Fair of Britain’s Isle’ (Convivial Songster, 1807).

[356] Diary of Mrs. Colonel St. George, written during her Sojourn amongst the German Courts in 1799 and 1800.

[357] Moore’s The Twopenny Post-bag, 1813.

[358] Moore’s Parody of a Celebrated Letter.

[359] The compound known as ‘the Regent’s Punch’ was made out of 3 bottles of Champagne, 2 of Madeira, 1 of hock, 1 of curaÇoa, 1 quart of brandy, 1 pint of rum, and 2 bottles of seltzer-water, flavoured with 4 lbs. bloom raisins, Seville oranges, lemons, white sugar-candy, and diluted with iced green tea instead of water (Tovey’s British and Foreign Spirits).

[360] Captain Gronow’s Reminiscences.

[361] Ibid.

[362] Prince Puckler Muskau’s Letters.

[363] Miss Burney’s Memoirs.

[364] Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines, 1824. Henderson, who appears to have visited the Champagne in 1822, remarks of the remaining crÛs of the province: ‘The wines of the neighbouring territories of Mareuil and Dizy are of similar quality to those of Ay, and are often sold as such. Those of Hautvillers, on the other hand, which formerly equalled, if not surpassed, the growths just named, have been declining in repute since the suppression of the monastery, to which the principal vineyard belonged.’

[365] Moore’s The Fudge Family Abroad, 1818.

[366] Moore’s The Sceptic.

[367] Moore’s Illustration of a Bore.

[368] Moore’s The Summer FÊte, 1831.

[369] Ibid.

[370] Ibid.

[371] Moore’s Diary, June 1819.

[372] Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott.

[373] Scott’s Diary, November 15, 1826.

[374] Byron’s English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 1808.

[375] Byron’s Don Juan, canto xv. stanza lxv., 1821.

[376] Ibid. canto xvi. stanza ix.

[377] Ibid. canto xiii. stanzas xxxvii., xxxviii.

[378] According to recent statistics issued by the Chamber of Commerce of Reims, the department of the Marne contains 16,500 hectares of vineyards (40,755 acres), of which 2465 hectares are situated in the district of Vitry-le-FranÇois; 555 hectares in that of ChÂlons; 700 in that of Sainte Menehould; 7624 in that of Reims; and 5587 in the Epernay district, where the finest qualities of Champagne are grown. The value of the wine produced annually in these districts exceeds 60,000,000 francs (nearly 2 ½ millions sterling). During the last thirty years, the value of these vineyards has increased fourfold. The ‘population vigneronne’ of the department is 16,093 inhabitants.

[379] In the year 1871.

[380] The blending of black and white grapes together, although its advantages had been recognised in the Maison Rustique of 1574, appears not to have been successfully carried out at Ay till the days of Dom Perignon. ‘Formerly,’ remarks Pluche, ‘it was very difficult to preserve the wine of Ay longer than one year. When the juice of the white grapes, whose quantity was very great in that vineyard, began to assume a yellowish hue, it became predominant, and created a change in all the wine; but ever since the white grapes have been disused, the Marne wines may be easily kept for the space of four or five years’ (Spectacle de la Nature, 1732).

[381] From time immemorial the vineyards of Ay and Dizy paid tithes to the Abbey of Hautvillers, the former a sixtieth and the latter an eleventh of their produce. These dues were, by a decree of 1670, levied at the gate of Ay. In 1772, Tirant de Flavigny, a large wine-grower, who farmed, amongst other vineyards, ‘Les Quartiers’ at Hautvillers, insisted on leaving the tithe of grapes at the foot of the vine for collection by the abbey tithe-collectors. The Abbot Alexandre Ange de Talleyrand PÉrigord refused to accept them, and insisted in turn that the whole of the grapes should either be brought to the gate of Hautvillers or converted into wine in the vineyard, and the eleventh part of this wine handed to his representative. From a procÈs verbal drawn up by the Mayor of Ay, it seems that the inhabitants were willing to pay a monetary commutation, as was the prevailing custom, or to leave the abbot’s share of grapes in the vineyards; but objected to the tithe being taken, usually with considerable delay, on each basket, whereby the remaining grapes were bruised, and the possibility of bright white wine being made from them rendered exceedingly doubtful. It was not till 1787 that it was finally settled that the tithes should be paid in money at the rate of so much per arpent, and it is plain that the abbot’s chief object was to throw as much difficulty as he could in the way of rival makers of fine wines.

[382] This curse is alluded to in the following verse from a sixteenth-century ballad written against the men of Ay:

The fountain of St. Tresain, which enjoys the reputation of curing diseases, and in the water of which it is pretended stolen food cannot be cooked, still exists at Mareuil.

[383] The yield from the Ay vineyards averages five piÈces, or 220 gallons per acre. Arthur Young, writing in 1787, estimated that the arpent (rather more than the acre) produced from two to six piÈces of wine, or an average of four piÈces, two of which sold for 200 livres, one for 150 livres, and one for 50 livres. He valued the arpent of vines at from 3000 to 6000 livres. Henderson, in his History of Ancient and Modern Wines, says that in 1822 there were a thousand arpents on the hill immediately behind the village of Ay valued at from 10,000 to 12,000 francs the arpent, and that one plot had shortly before fetched 15,000 francs per arpent.

[384] In 1873, two years later, the price mounted as high as 1000 francs; while in 1880, owing to the yield being far below an average one and the quality promising to be exceedingly good, the wine was bought up before the grapes were pressed at prices ranging from 1100 to 1400 francs the piÈce.

[385] In one of these, dated 1243, mention is made of the ‘vinea parva’ belonging to the Abbey of Avenay, and of the ‘vineam Warneri in loco qui dicetur Monswarins,’ perhaps the existing clos Warigny. In another of Philip the Fair, dated 1300, and confirming the abbey in the possession of property purchased from Jeanne de Sapigneul, we read of ‘unam vineam dictam la grant vigne domine Aelidis sitam en Perrelles’ and ‘unam vineam dictam a la Perriere.’ In charters of the fourteenth century vineyards are mentioned at Avenay and Mutigny, under the titles of Les Perches, Haut-Bonnet, PraËlles, Les Foissets, Fond de Bonnet, Berard, Chassant, &c. One sold to the abbey in 1334 by Guillaume de Valenciennes was at a spot then, as now, styled Plantelles. In 1336 the justices at ChÂteau-Thierry confirmed the Abbess, Madame ClÉmence, in the ‘droit de ban vin’—that is, the right of selling her wine before any one else in the territory of Avenay. This was again confirmed in 1344 by the Bailly of SÉzanne, who held that she alone had the right of selling during the month after Christmas, the month after Easter, and the month after Pentecost. Amongst other records is one noting the condemnation of Perresson Legris, clerk, of Avenay, who was sentenced in 1460 by the Bailly of Epernay to a fine of 60 sols, for selling his wine during the month after Christmas without permission of the Dames d’Avenay. The charters of the fifteenth century also abound in references to vineyards, or ‘droits de vinage,’ appertaining to the abbey at Les Coutures, Champ Bernard, Auches, Bois de Brousse, Thonnay, &c., in the territory of Avenay, and Les CharmiÈres, Torchamp, Saussaye, &c., at Mutigny.

[386] In 1668, an epoch at which the wines of Avenay had acquired a high reputation, the abbey owned 43 arpents of vineland at Avenay, Mutigny, and Mareuil, yielding the preceding year 200 poinÇons of wine, the sale of which produced 6000 livres. It also had 13 pressoirs banaux, which were farmed for 50 poinÇons of wine, and tithes of wine at Mareuil amounting to 14 poinÇons and 460 livres in money, and at Ambonnay amounting to 3 poinÇons, the total of 67 poinÇons fetching 1206 livres. The valet who looked after the vines had 50 livres per annum, and the cooper who looked after the wines, 40 livres. The total cost of stakes, manure, culture, pruning, wine-making, and casks was 2700 livres per annum. Ten piÈces of wine ‘of the best of the abbey, and worth 300 livres,’ were annually given away in caques and bottles to ‘persons of quality and friends of the house, and travellers of condition who pass;’ whilst 120 poinÇons, valued at 3000 livres, were consumed at the abbey itself. The abbey was partially destroyed by fire in 1754; and its destruction was completed during the Revolution, at which epoch its vineyards yielded a net revenue of 2500 livres.

[387] In addition to Madame de la Marck, who was connected, by the marriage of one of her brothers to a princess of the house of Bourbon, with Henri Quatre, and to whose influence with that monarch the execution of the ‘TraitÉ des Vendanges’ was mainly due, the roll of the Abbesses of Avenay comprises several illustrious personages, amongst them St. Bertha; Bertha II., daughter of the Emperor Lothaire; the ex-Empress Teutberga; BÉnÉdicte de Gonzague, daughter of the Duke de Nevers, and sister of the Princess Palatine, who took such an active part during the troubles of the Fronde; and ladies of the illustrious families of Saulx Tavannes, Craon, Levis, Beauvillers, Brulart de Sillery, Boufflers, &c. M. Louis Paris, in his Histoire de l’Abbaye d’Avenay, gives some curious instances of the exercise of the ‘haut et basse justice’ possessed by these ladies. In 1587, under the rule of Madame de la Marck, we find the Bailly of Avenay, acting as ‘first magistrate of Madame l’Abbesse,’ sentencing one man and four women ‘to be hung, strangled, and burnt, and the goods belonging to them confiscated to the profit of the Lady Justiciary,’ for the crime of sorcery. In 1645 we find a ‘sentence of the Bailly of Avenay against Simeon Delacoste, accused and convicted of the crime of homicide committed upon the person of Jean Bernier, and for this condemned to be hung and strangled by the executioner on a gallows erected in the public market-place, with confiscation of 300 livres, to be levied on his goods, to the profit of the Lady Justiciary.’ When the criminal could not be caught, as was the case with Nicholas Thimot, vine-grower at Avenay in 1555, the sentence ran that he should ‘be hung in effigy, and his goods confiscated to the profit of Madame.’

[388] The following lines, quoted by M. Philibert Milsand in his ProcÈs poÉtique touchant les Vins de Bourgogne et de Champagne, may be taken as referring either to the wine or the scenery:

[389] In Arthur Young’s time (1787–9) an arpent of vineyard at Hautvillers, valued at 4000 livres, yielded from two to four piÈces, or hogsheads, of wine, which sold from 700 to 900 livres the queue (two piÈces). This is more than the wine would ordinarily realise to-day, although in years of scarcity it has fetched 700 francs the piÈce, and in 1880 as much as 1000 francs.

[390] Cazotte, ex-Commissary-General of the Navy and author of the Diable Amoureux, who was guillotined as a Royalist in 1792, had a magnificently fitted mansion at Pierry. He distinguished himself by his opposition to the pretensions of the Abbey of Hautvillers, which in 1775 claimed the right of taking tithes at Pierry not only in the vineyards, but on the wine in the cellars. Cazotte argued that unless the monks chose to take their due proportion of grapes left for them at the foot of each vine, all they were entitled to was a monetary commutation of the tithe; for the wine being usually made of grapes from a dozen different sources, many of them beyond their domain, it would be impossible to ascertain the proportion that was their due. The Parliament of Paris decided, however, that the abbey might take the fortieth of the wine a month after it was barrelled, unless the vine-growers preferred to give them the fortieth part of all the grapes brought to the press. The fact was that the monks really wished to check the practice of mixing grapes from different districts at the press, for fear wine equal to their own should result from this plan, first satisfactorily put in practice by Dom Perignon. Arthur Young mentions that an arpent of vines at Pierry was valued at 2000 livres, half the price the same extent commanded at Hautvillers.

[391] M. Armand Bourgeois, in his work on Le Sourdon et sa VallÉe, mentions a local tradition to the effect that Saint Remi, who from his will is shown to have owned vinelands of some extent in a part of this district still known as the EvÊchÉ, installed a hermit in this said grotto of the Pierre de Saint Mamert to supervise his vineyards.

[392] Bertin du Rocheret writes thus in 1744, and adds that the aspect of Avize had at that epoch become entirely changed by the numerous fine ‘maisons de vendange’ erected there.

[393] In 1205 Gilbert Belon conferred an annual gift on the Abbey of St. Martin of seven hogsheads of vinage derived from the vineyards of Oger.

[394]

Eustache Deschamps’ poem on the Burning of Vertus.

[395]

Deschamps’ La Charte des Bons Enfans de Vertus.

[396]

[397] In 1880 the Vertus wine realised the remarkably high price of from 1200 to 1400 francs the piÈce.

[398] St. Evremond’s Letters (London, 1728).

[399] St. Simon’s MÉmoires.

[400] Bertin du Rocheret’s MS. extracts from the Registre des AssemblÉes du peuple de la ville d’Epernay.

[401] Henderson’s History of Ancient and Modern Wines.

[402] Arthur Young’s Travels in France in 1787–8–9.

[403] Anonymous Journal de ce qui s’est passÉ d’intÉressant À Reims en 1814.

[404] Dom Chatelain, in his MS. notes on the History of Reims, relates that Henri Quatre, being one day at Sully’s, asked the Minister for some breakfast, and after drinking a glass or two of wine, exclaimed, ‘Ventre Saint Gris, this is a grand wine; it beats mine of Ay and all others. I should like to know where it comes from.’ ‘’Tis my friend Taissy,’ answered Sully, ‘who sends it to me.’ ‘Then I must be introduced to him,’ said the King; which was accordingly done. The wines of Taissy had a high reputation as late as the eighteenth century. They were classed by St. Evremond and Brossette, the commentator of Boileau, amongst the best vintages of the Champagne, and their reputation was maintained by the care bestowed by the AbbÉ Godinot on the vineyards which he owned here.

[405]

Translation by Le Monnoye in the Recueil des PoÉsies Latines et FranÇaises, &c., Paris, 1712.

[406] The wine of Verzenay, like that of Bouzy, owes much of its reputation to the example set in the eighteenth century by the AbbÉ Godinot, author of the MÉmoire on the cultivation of the grape and the manufacture of wine in the Champagne, published in 1711. He owned extensive vineyards at Verzenay and Bouzy, and his prolonged investigations as to the species of vines and composts best suited to the district led to a complete revolution in the system of culture and mode of pressing the fruit. Bertin du Rocheret praises ‘the excellent wine of Verzenay’ served at the banquets celebrating the conclusion of the assembly of the Etats de Vitry, held at ChÂlons in 1744.

[407] The value in 1880 of a hectare of vines, equivalent to nearly two and a half acres, was as follows:

[408] This was far from being the first appearance of the pest in this district. From 1779 to 1785 similar ravages drove the vignerons to despair; but the weather during the last-named year suddenly turning wet and cold, just at the epoch of the butterflies emerging from their chrysalids, the evil disappeared as though by enchantment, an event duly acknowledged by parochial rejoicings and religious processions. In 1816 similar ravages took place; and from 1820 to 1830 the pyrale also caused great devastation.

In the year 1613, Jehan Pussot, the local chronicler of Reims, notes that a large proportion of the vines were destroyed by ‘a great concourse of worms,’ which attacked those plants which the frost had spared. This would establish that either the pyrale or the cochylis was known to the Champenois viticulturists at the commencement of the seventeenth century.

[409] In 1873, in all the higher-class vineyards, as much as two francs and a quarter per kilogramme (11 d. per lb.) were paid, being more than treble the average price. And yet the vintage was a most unsatisfactory one, owing to the deficiency of sun and abundance of wet throughout the summer. The market, however, was in great need of wine, and the fruit while still ungathered was bought up at most exorbitant prices by the spÉculateurs who supply the vin brut to the Champagne manufacturers.

In 1874 the grapes of the Mountain sold from at 55 to 160 francs the caque, according to the crus; and those of the CÔte d’Avize at from 1 f. 25 c. to 2 f. per kilogramme. In 1875, on the other hand, grapes could be obtained at Verzenay, Verzy, Ambonnay, and Bouzy at from 45 to 55 francs the caque; and at Vertus, Le Mesnil, Oger, Grauves, Cramant, and Avize, at from 40 to 70 centimes the kilogramme. By far the highest price secured by the growers for their grapes was in 1880, when the produce of the grand crus of the Mountain fetched as much as 220 f. the caque, equal to nearly 3 f. 60 c. the kilogramme, or about 1 s. 5 d. per lb. It was, as usual, scarcity rather than quality that caused this unprecedented rise in price.

[410] M. MaumÉnÉ relates in his TraitÉ du Travail des Vins that on one occasion, when, as an experiment, 3000 first-class bottles, which had already been used, were employed anew, only fifteen or sixteen of the whole number resisted the pressure. Moreover, if much broken glass is remelted down and used in the manufacture, the bottles do not turn out well, the second fusion of silicates never having the same cohesion as the first. The glass-works of SÈvres and Bercy, which melt down most of the broken glass collected in Paris, have never been able to supply bottles strong enough for sparkling wines.

[411] Loivre is about seven miles from Reims on the road to Laon.

[412] It is calculated that wine, the grape sugar in which yields ten per cent of alcohol, according to the average in Champagne, would, if bottled immediately after pressing, produce enough carbonic acid gas to develop a pressure of thirty-two atmospheres. But such a pressure is never developed, as the wine is not bottled directly it leaves the press; besides which no bottle could stand it. From four to six atmospheres insure a lively explosion and a brisk creamy foam. It is necessary, therefore, that fermentation should have been carried on till at least three-fourths of the sugar have been converted into alcohol and carbonic acid gas before the wine is drawn off for bottling, for even the very best bottles burst under a pressure of eight atmospheres.

A few words on the origin and development of the effervescent properties of Champagne will not be out of place here. These are due, as already explained, to the presence of a large quantity of carbonic acid gas, the evolution of which has been prevented by the bottling of the wine prior to the end of the alcoholic fermentation. The source of carbonic acid gas exists in all wines, and they may be all rendered sparkling by the same method of treatment. Still, no effervescent wine can compare with the finest growths of the Champagne, for these possess the especial property of retaining a large portion of their sugar during, and even after, fermentation; besides which, the soil imparts a native bouquet that no other wine can match.

Carbonic acid gas is one of the two products of the fermentation of grape sugar, the other being alcohol. In wine fermented in casks it rises to the surface, and escapes through the bunghole left open for the purpose. The case is different with wine fermenting in bottles tightly secured by corks. Part of the gas developed rises into the chamber or vacant space left in the bottle, where, mingling with the atmospheric air, it exercises a constantly increasing pressure on the surface of the wine. This pressure at length becomes so strong as to keep all the gas subsequently formed dissolved in the wine itself, which it saturates, as it were, and thereby converts into sparkling wine. Upon the bottle being opened, the gas accumulated in the chamber rushes into the air, producing a slight explosion, or pop, and freeing from pressure the gas which had remained dissolved in the wine, and which in turn escapes in the shape of numberless tiny bubbles, forming the foam so pleasing to the eye on rising to the surface.

Sometimes on opening a bottle of Champagne the pop is loud, but the effervescence feeble and transitory; and, on the other hand, there is merely a slight explosion, and yet the wine froths and sparkles vigorously and continuously. The two bottles may contain the same quantity of gas, but in the one there is more in the chamber and less dissolved in the wine, and hence the loud pop and slight sparkle; while in the other the pressure is low, and the explosion consequently slighter, but there is more gas in the wine itself, and the effervescence is proportionately greater and more lasting. In the former case the wine has received the addition of, or has contained from the outset, some matter calculated to diminish its power of dissolving carbonic acid gas, and is unsuitable for making good sparkling wine. The nature of the effervescence is one of the best tests of the quality of the wine. Gas naturally dissolved does not all escape at once on the removal of the pressure, but, on the contrary, about two-thirds of it are retained by the viscidity of the wine. The better and more natural the wine, the more intimately the carbonic acid gas remains dissolved in it, and the finer its bubbles.

The form of the glass out of which Champagne is drunk has an influence on its effervescence. The wine sparkles far better in a glass terminating in a point, like the old-fashioned flÛte, or the modern goblet or patera, with a hollow stem, than in one with a rounded bottom. The reason is that any point formed around the liquid, as instanced in the pointed bottoms of these glasses, or in the liquid, as may be proved by putting the end of a pointed glass rod into the wine, favours the disengagement of the gas. Powder of any kind presents a number of tiny points, and hence the dropping of a little powdered sugar into Champagne excites effervescence. Porous bodies like bread-crumbs produce the same effect. Even dust has a similar action; and the wine will froth better in a badly-wiped glass than in one perfectly clean, though it would hardly do to put forward such an excuse as this for using dirty goblets.

The lively pop of the cork is less esteemed in England than in certain circles in France, where many hosts would be sadly disappointed if the wine they put before their guests did not go off with a loud bang, causing the ladies to scream and the gentlemen to laugh. A brisk foam, too, is absolutely necessary for the prestige of the wine, and ‘grand mousseux’ is a quality much sought after by the general public on the other side of the Channel. It is not rare to meet with wines of a high class in which the removal of the cork produces a loud explosion; but unfortunately the brisk report and sharp but transitory rush of foam are features easily imparted by artificial means. The ordinary white wines of Lorraine and other provinces receive a certain addition of spirit and liqueur, and are then artificially charged with carbonic acid gas obtained from carbonate of lime, chalk, and similar materials, after the fashion in which soda-water is made. These wines, sold as Champagne, eject their corks with a loud pop, but three-fourths of the carbonic acid gas escape at the same time, and the wine soon becomes flat and dead; whereas a naturally sparkling wine of good quality left open for three hours and then recorked will be found fresh and drinkable the next day.

Both the explosion and the subsequent effervescence are aided by a high temperature, which assists the development of the gas. Cold has the opposite effect, and iced wine neither pops nor sparkles. It, however, retains, if genuine, the whole of the carbonic acid gas held dissolved, which is not the case with the imitations spoken of.

Were it not that the question has been seriously started on more than one occasion, and only solved to the satisfaction of the questioner by a chemico-anatomical explanation, it would hardly be worth while touching upon the supposed hurtfulness of the carbonic acid gas contained in sparkling wines. The fact of accidents frequently occurring in breweries, distilleries, wine-presses, &c., from the accumulation of this gas, to breathe which for a few seconds is mortal, has led some people to wonder how Champagne, whilst containing so large a proportion of it, can be swallowed with impunity. The gas, however, which produces fatal results when inhaled into the lungs, by depriving the blood of the oxygen which it should find there, has in the stomach a beneficial effect, serving to promote digestion. In drinking Champagne it is conveyed direct to this latter region, so that no danger whatever exists, any more than in the mineral waters.—Mainly condensed from E. J. MaumÉnÉ’s TraitÉ du Travail des Vins.

[413] For a long time the most erroneous ideas as to the cause of such breakage and the means of preventing it prevailed. Tasting, which was most relied on for ascertaining how far fermentation had gone, could not be depended upon with accuracy, though the rule of thumb laid down by some makers was that the time to bottle with the least risk of breakage was when the sweet taste had disappeared, and vinous flavour developed itself. The aerometers subsequently introduced failed to answer the purpose, because the saccharine matter was not the only thing capable of influencing them. The result usually was either the bottling of a must so full of effervescence as to break the bottles, or of wine already completely fermented and incapable of effervescing at all.

[414] In some establishments tables made after the same fashion replace the racks, whilst another plan of coaxing the sediment down towards the cork is to stack the bottles at the outset in double rows, with their necks inclining downwards, laths placed between each layer maintaining them in their position. This method effects a great economy of time and space, the bottles requiring on an average only a few days on the racks prior to shipment to thoroughly complete the operation.

[415] As the real origin of this system is a matter which has excited no small amount of controversy, and as several claimants to the honour of its discovery have had their names put forward by different writers, the following extracts from a letter from M. Alfred WerlÉ, of the house founded by Madame Clicquot, may serve to render honour where it is really due: ‘Already, in 1806 (I am unable to speak of an earlier period with absolute certainty), the bottles were placed on tables, like to-day, with their heads downwards; each bottle being taken out of its hole, raised in the air, and shaken with the hand, so as to cause the cream of tartar and the deposit it contained to fall upon the cork, the holes being round, and the bottles placed straight downwards. This lasted till 1818, when a man named MÜller, an employÉ of Madame Clicquot, suggested to her that the bottles should be left in the table whilst being shaken, and that the holes should be cut obliquely, so that the bottles might remain inclined. He maintained that one would thus obtain a wine of far greater limpidity. The trial was made, and every day, with a view of keeping this new process a secret, MÜller and Madame Clicquot shut themselves up alone in the cellars, and shook the bottles unperceived. In 1821 MÜller was assisted by a workman named Mathieu Binder; and in 1823 or 1824, Madame Clicquot having purchased from M. Morizet a cuvÉe of wine which was shaken and prepared in this merchant’s cellars, one of his employÉs named Thomassin became acquainted with the new method, and resolved to practise it; since when it gradually spread, and eventually was generally adopted. M. WerlÉ senior recollects perfectly well that when he arrived at Madame Clicquot’s in 1821 it was only at her establishment that the bottles were shaken in this manner. The practice of shaking the bottles was a very old one, and no more invented by MÜller than by Thomassin; but the former certainly effected great improvements by employing the system of oblique holes, and shaking the bottles in the table and not in the air.’

[416] M. MaumÉnÉ has pointed out that if a solution of tannin or alum has been added to the cuvÉe at the time of fining, the deposit is certain to be granular and non-adherent. But he justly remarks that these solutions, especially the latter, though doing good to the wine, have a precisely opposite effect upon the human stomach that consumes it.

[418] The system of dosing the wine does not appear to have been practised prior to the present century.

[419] The high favour in which sugar-candy is held for mixing with this Champagne liqueur dates from the latter part of the last century, when there was a perfect mania for everything in a crystallised form, as being the height of condensation and purity. The competition between the first houses of Reims and Epernay to secure the largest and finest crystals was very keen, and it was considered disgraceful for any firm of standing to make use of sugar-candy of a yellow tinge or in small crystals. Latterly it has been demonstrated that these expensive crystals contain more water and less saccharine matter than an equal weight of loaf-sugar, and that they sometimes contain a glutinous element capable of imparting an insipid flavour to the wine.—MaumÉnÉ’s TraitÉ du Travail des Vins.

[420] Instances have been known of additions of 25 and even 30 per cent of liqueur, though the average may be taken to be for Germany and France, 15 to 18 per cent; America, 10 to 15 per cent; England, 2 to 6 per cent.

[421] The corrosive action of rust upon the wire has led to several attempts to replace it, and some Champagne houses have adopted more or less ingenious appliances of metal, &c. Tinned iron wire has been found to resist rust, but is too expensive; whilst an experiment with galvanised wire resulted in serious illness amongst the workmen handling it, owing to the poisonous fumes evolved by the zinc when acted upon by the acids of the wine.

[422] M. Viollet-le-Duc, Dictionnaire raisonnÉ de l’Architecture du Vme au XVIme SiÈcle.

[423] An engraving of this tower, removed while the present work was passing through the press, will be found on p. 50.

[424] See the engraving on p. 16.

[425] Read before the Academy of Reims in February 1845, printed by them in their Transactions, and subsequently republished in volume form.

[426] It is generally supposed that the gate took its name from a hospital standing a short distance without the walls, and destined for the reception either of lepers or of pilgrims arriving after nightfall. The prevalent opinion is that it bore the inscription Dei merito, translated as Dieu le mÉrite, which became corrupted into Dieu-LumiÈre. Under Louis XI. it certainly figures as Di Merito.

[427] A curious old engraving copied from an ancient tapestry represents the entry of the royal procession into Reims through the Porte Dieu-LumiÈre. Joan of Arc, beside the king and in company with the Dukes of Bourbon and AlenÇon, bears the banner of France; whilst her father and mother are seen arriving with the king’s baggage by another road.

[428] A.D. 499.

[429] Victor Fievet’s Histoire d’Epernay.

[430] M. A. Nicaise’s Epernay et l’Abbaye de St. Martin.

[431] Ibid.

[432] Victor Fievet’s Histoire d’Epernay. In December 1540, when the eschevins fixed the ‘vinage,’ the queue of wine was valued at eight to nine livres.

[433] The partiality of Charles V. for the wine of Ay has been elsewhere spoken of. The vendangeoir mentioned was in existence in 1726.

[434] Victor Fievet’s Histoire d’Epernay.

[435] M. A. Nicaise’s Epernay et l’Abbaye de St. Martin.

[436] Ibid.

[437] The thoroughfare at Epernay known as the Rempart de la Tour Biron commemorates the above event.

[438] Victor Fievet’s Histoire d’Epernay.

[439]

[440]

M. Camille Blondiot’s Henri IV. au SiÈge d’Epernay.

[441]

[442] From the Extrait du Registre et Papiers des AssemblÉs du Peuple de la Ville d’Epernay, preserved in the MSS. of Bertin du Rocheret.

[443] Bertin du Rocheret’s MSS.

[444] Ibid.

[445] MÉmoire concernant la Ville d’Epernay, by MaÎtre FranÇois Stapart, notaire au bailliage, published in 1749.

[446] Max Sutaine’s Essai sur le Vin de Champagne.

[447] Arthur Young’s Travels in France in the Years 1787–8–9.

[448] Victor Fievet’s Histoire d’Epernay. In the list of expenses incurred on the passage of Louis XVI. and his family, four hundred livres are set down to ‘the Sieur Memmie Cousin, innkeeper and merchant at Epernay, for the dinner of the king, the queen, and the royal family, as well as for an indemnity for the furniture broken at the said Cousin’s.’

As regards the price of the wines of the River during the Revolutionary epoch, an old account-book of Messrs. MoËt & Chandon shows that in 1797 the firm paid for the white wine of Epernay and Avize 200 francs, for that of Chouilly 180 francs, and for that of Pierry and Cramant 150 francs per piÈce; whilst that of Ay cost from 565 to 600 francs the queue. Bottles in 1790 only cost 16 livres 10 sols the hundred.

[449] The Clos St. Pierre is now the property of M. Charles Porquet, and the ancient seignorial residence of the monks of St. Pierre, at Pierry, is occupied by M. Papelart. Both these gentlemen are wine-merchants.

[450] Cazotte, writing in October 1791, speaks of the village as peopled with ‘gros propriÉtaires;’ and in November, that it had ‘thirty-two households of well-to-do people.’ Amongst its inhabitants were the Marquis Tirant de Flavigny, Dubois de Livry, Quatresols de la Motte, De Lastre d’Aubigny, De Lantage, &c., most of whose residences are still extant. In October 1792 several accusations were made against soldiers for picking and eating grapes in the vineyards of Pierry and Moussy, belonging to Cazotte, De la Motte, De Lantage, D’Aubigny, &c.

[451] Part of it now serves as the ‘maison communale’ and school-house of the village.

[452] Arrested at Pierry in August 1792, in consequence of the discovery, on the sacking of the Tuileries, of a new plan of escape for the royal family, sent by him to his friend Ponteau, secretary of the Civil List, Cazotte was brought to Paris and immured, in company with his daughter Elizabeth, in the prison of the Abbaye. Arraigned before the self-constituted tribunal presided over by the butcher Maillard, on the night of the 3d September, the fatal words ‘To La Force,’ equivalent to a sentence of death, were pronounced; and Cazotte was about to fall beneath the sabres already raised against him, when Elizabeth covered his body with her own, and by her heroic appeals induced the assassins to forego their prey. She even had the courage to drink with them to the Republic, and with her father was escorted home in triumph. A few days later, however, he was rearrested, condemned to death by the Revolutionary Tribunal, and on the 25th September ascended the scaffold, from whence he cried with a firm voice to the multitude, ‘I die as I have lived, faithful to God and my king.’

Under date of the 10 Prairial An II. (1793), the citizen Bourbon was appointed by the municipality of Pierry to cultivate the vineyards ‘du gillotinÉ (sic) Cazotte.’

[453] In 1775 the Abbot of Hautvillers, as dÉcimateur of Pierry, claimed to take tithe of a fortieth of all wines in the cellars of the village. This claim being rejected by the baillage of Epernay in 1777, he appealed to the Parliament of Paris. Cazotte undertook the case of his fellow-proprietors, pleading that the abbey, which, according to strict law, was bound to take the tithe in the shape of grapes left at the foot of each vine, had long since replaced this by a monetary commutation; and that the inhabitants of Pierry, like the other wine-growers of the Champagne, being ‘obliged, in order to obtain perfection in their wines, to mix the grapes of several crus and different tithings, it would be impossible to tithe the wine itself.’ He also argued that the question had been settled by a decision on the same point in favour of the inhabitants of Ay and Dizy. However, the monks obtained a decree from parliament authorising them to take the fortieth of the vintage a month after the wines had been barrelled, unless the wine-growers preferred ‘to pay the tithe at the wine-press, in form of the fortieth load of grapes free from all mixture.’ The inhabitants appealed in 1780, pleading the impossibility of this plan of tithing at the press, on account of the expense and of the difficulty of sorting out the grapes from those brought from Moussy, Vinay, Monthelon, Cuis, Epernay, and other districts in which they had also vineyards. The Revolution cut the Gordian knot of this affair, which really arose from the wish of the monks to hinder as much as possible that plan of mixing grapes from different sources, to which the perfection of their own wine was due.

[454] In January 1790 the inhabitants of Pierry unanimously elected Cazotte their first mayor under the new rÉgime. A decree signed by him in this capacity, and dated April 11, 1790, fixes the price for a day’s work in the vineyards at 12 sols. In 1793 the municipality of the adjoining district of Moussy fixed the day’s hire of the vintager at 25 sous, of horses employed in the vintage at 7 livres 10 sous, and of asses at 5 livres. As regards the price of the local cru, amongst the items of the accounts of the syndic of Moussy for the years 1787–8 is the following: ‘For thirteen bottles of stringed wine (vin fisselÉ) sent to Paris to the procureur of the community (Failly lawsuit), 13 livres.’ The community were then engaged in a lawsuit with the Count de Failly respecting a wood. During the Revolutionary epoch it was decreed by the municipality of Pierry that a vineyard known as les Rennes should, on account of the resemblance to les Reines, be in future styled les Sans-culottes. It has since resumed its old name.

[455] The story of Cazotte prophesying not only his own fate, but that of the king and queen, Condorcet, Bailly, Malesherbes, Nicolai, the Duchess de Grammont, and others who perished during the Terror, at a dinner given at an Academician’s in 1788, has been proved to be a mere invention on the part of La Harpe. Nevertheless there seems but little doubt that he distinctly foresaw many coming evils; and a native of Pierry, M. Armand Bourgeois, asserts that his maternal grandfather was one day at Cazotte’s house in the village, when the entire company were completely upset by their host’s prophecies of a coming revolution.

[456] P. Jannet’s Recueil des PoÉsies franÇaises des 15me et 16me SiÈcles.

[457] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne.

[458] St. Evremond’s Letters, &c. (London, 1714).

[459] Max Sutaine’s Essai sur le Vin de Champagne.

[460] Bertin du Rocheret’s MSS. Histoire d’Epernay.

[461]

The Adrien mentioned in the second verse was Pope Adrian VI., who had been the Emperor’s preceptor, and who by his influence obtained the tiara on the death of Leo X. Unlike his predecessor, he was very simple in his habits.

[462] Maison Rustique, edition of 1574.

[463] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne.

[464] An allusion to the curse pronounced by St. Tresain against the men of Ay.

[465] Maison Rustique (1582), translated by Richard Surflet (London, 1600).

[466] Ibid.

[467] Ibid.

[468] Paulmier’s treatise, De Vino et Pomaceo (1588).

[469] Maison Rustique (1582).

[470] Legrand d’Aussy’s Vie privÉe des FranÇais.

[471] Louis Perrier’s MÉmoire sur le Vin de Champagne.

[472] Recueil des PoÉsies latines et franÇaises sur le Vin de Champagne (Paris, 1712). Gonesse, a village of the department of Seine-et-Oise, about ten miles to the north of Paris, had a high reputation for its bread for several centuries.

[473]

Published in the Mercure of January 1728. Henry was accustomed to speak of the PrÉsidente as his ‘belle hÔtesse.’

[474] Circa 1590.

[475] ThÉÂtre de l’Agriculture et Mesnage des Champs (1600).

[476] Published at Orleans, 1605. As regards the price of the newly-made wine of Ay at this epoch, Jehan Pussot says that, in 1604, it fetched from 25 to 45 livres; in 1605, from 60 livres upwards; and in 1609, from 100 to 120 livres, at the epoch of the vintage.

[477] Chaulieu says that St. Evremond

Tocane being usually made of the wine of Ay.

[478] St. Evremond’s Works (London, 1714).

[479] Chaulieu extols the Tocane of Ay, and some verses of Voltaire have been quoted on p. 61.

[480] Arthur Young’s Travels in France in the Years 1787–8–9.

[481]

CHAMPAGNE.