The wine known as Sillery sec is a full, dry, pleasant-flavoured, and somewhat spirituous amber-coloured wine. Very little of it is made nowadays, and most that is comes from the adjacent vineyards of Verzenay and Mailly, and is principally reserved by the growers for their own consumption. One of these candidly admitted that the old reputation of the wine had exploded, and that better white Bordeaux and Burgundy wines were to be obtained for less money. In making dry Sillery, which locally is esteemed as a valuable tonic, it is essential that the grapes should be subjected to only slight pressure; while to have it in perfection it is equally essential that the wine should be kept for ten years in the wood according to some, and eight years in bottle according to others, to which circumstance its high price is in all probability to be attributed. In course of time it forms a deposit, and has the disadvantage common to all the finer still wines of the Champagne district of not travelling well. Beyond Sillery the vineyards of Verzenay unfold themselves, spreading over the extensive slopes and stretching to the summit of the steep height to the right, where a windmill or two are perched. Everywhere the vintagers are busy detaching the grapes with their little hook-shaped _serpettes_, the women all wearing projecting close-fitting bonnets, as though needlessly careful of their anything but blonde complexions. 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. Rising up in front of the old gray cottages, encompassed by orchards or gardens, are the white walls and long red roofs of the vendangeoirs belonging to the great Champagne houses--Moët & Chandon, Clicquot, G. H. Mumm, Roederer, Deutz & Geldermann, and others--all teeming with bustle and excitement, and with the vines almost reaching to their very doors. Messrs. Moët & Chandon have as many as eight presses in full work, and own no less than 120 acres of vines on the neighbouring slopes, besides the Clos de Romont--in the direction of Sillery, and yielding a wine of the Sillery type--belonging to M. Raoul Chandon. Verzenay ranks as a _premier cru_, and for three years in succession--1872, 3, and 4--its wines fetched a higher price than either those of Ay or Bouzy. In 1873 the _vin brut_ commanded the exceptionally large sum of 1050 francs the hogshead of 44 gallons. All the inhabitants of Verzenay are vine-proprietors, and several million francs are annually received by them for the produce of their vineyards from the manufacturers of Champagne. The wine of