Good Champagne does not rain down from the clouds, or gush out from the rocks, but is the result of incessant labour, patient skill, minute precaution, and careful observation. In the first place, the soil imparts to the natural wine a special quality which it has been found impossible to imitate in any other quarter of the globe. To the wine of Ay it lends a flavour of peaches, and to that of Avenay the savour of strawberries; the vintage of Hautvillers, though somewhat fallen from its former high estate, is yet marked by an unmistakably nutty taste; while that of Pierry smacks of the locally-abounding flint, the well-known _pierre à fusil_ flavour. So, on the principle that a little leaven leavens the whole lump, the produce of grapes grown in the more favoured vineyards is added in definite proportions, in order to secure certain special characteristics, as well as to maintain a fixed standard of excellence. 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. Four descriptions of vines are chiefly cultivated in the Champagne, three of them yielding black grapes, and all belonging to the pineau variety, from which the grand Burgundy wines are produced, and so styled from the clusters taking the conical form of the pine. The first is the franc pineau, the plant doré of Ay, with its closely-jointed shoots and small leaves, producing squat bunches of small round grapes, with thickish skins of a bluish-black tint, and sweet and refined in flavour. The next is the plant vert doré, with its leaves of vivid green, more robust and more productive than the former, but yielding a less generous wine, and the berries of which, growing in compact pyramidal bunches, are dark and oval, very thin-skinned, and remarkably sweet and juicy. The third variety, extensively planted in the vineyards of Verzy and Verzenay, is the plant gris, or burot, as it is styled in the Côte d'Or, a somewhat delicate vine, whose fruit has a brownish tinge, and yields a light and perfumed wine. The remaining species is a white grape known as the épinette, a variety of the pineau blanc, and supposed by some to be identical with the chardonnet of Burgundy, which yields the famous wine of Montrachet. It is met with all along the Côte d'Avize, notably at Cramant, the delicate and elegant wine of which ranks immediately after that of Ay and Verzenay. The épinette is a prolific bearer, and its round transparent golden berries, which hang in somewhat straggling clusters amongst its dark-green leaves, are both juicy and sweet. It ripens, however, much later than either of the black varieties. [Illustration: TYPES OF THE CHAMPAGNE VINES IN BEARING.]