The year after the Treaty of Commerce was signed, we have an anonymous writer remarking[350] that in time of peace the English drew large quantities of wine from Bordeaux and Nantes, and that the other French wines they were in the habit of consuming were those of Mantes, Burgundy, and Champagne, shipped respectively from Rouen, Dunkirk, and Calais. Arthur Young, writing at the same time, remarks, _apropos_ of Champagne, that the trade with England 'used to be directly from Epernay; but now the wine is sent to Calais, Boulogne, Montreuil, and Guernsey, in order to be passed into England they suppose here by smuggling. This may explain our Champagne not being so good as formerly.'[351] It is to be hoped that neither Arthur Young nor other connoisseurs of Champagne had been enticed into drinking as the genuine article any of the produce of the vineyard which the Hon. Charles Hamilton had planted with the Auvernat grape near Cobham, in Surrey, and which was said to yield a wine 'resembling Champagne.'[352] The reduction of duty consequent upon the treaty as a matter of course largely increased the importation of French wine. Respecting the taste for Champagne then prevailing in England, and the price the wine commanded, a few interesting particulars are afforded by the early correspondence and account-books of Messrs. Moët & Chandon of Epernay, which we have courteously been permitted to inspect. From these we find that in October 1788 the Chevalier Colebrook, writing in French to the firm from Bath, asks that seventy-two bottles of Champagne may be sent to his friend, the Hon. John Butler of Molesworth-street, Dublin, 'who, if content with the wine, will become a very good customer, being rich, keeping a good house, and receiving many amateurs of _vin de Champagne_.' The writer is no doubt the 'M. Collebrock' to whom the firm shortly afterwards forward fifty bottles of '_vin non mousseux_, 1783,' on his own account. Messrs. Carbonnell, Moody, & Walker, predecessors of the well-known existing firm of Carbonnell & Co., London, in a letter dated November 1788, and also written in French, say: 'If you can supply us with some Champagne of a very good body, not too much charged with liqueur, but with an excellent flavour, and not at all _moussu_, we beg you to send two ten dozen baskets. Also, if you have any dry Champagne of very good flavour, solidity, and excellent body, send two baskets of the same size.'