A manufacturer of the pre-scientific days of the last century relates how one year, when the wine was rich and strong, he only preserved 120 out of 6000 bottles; and it is not long since that 120,000 out of 200,000 were destroyed in the cellars of a well-known Champagne firm. M. Mauméné, moreover, relates that in 1850 he was called in to consult about the checking of a _casse_, which had already reached 96 per cent.[413] Over-knowing purchasers affect to select a wine which has exploded in the largest proportion in the cellars, as being well up to the mark as regards its effervescence, and are in the habit of making inquiries as to its performances in this direction. [Illustration] It is evident that, in spite of the teachings of science, the bursting of Champagne bottles has not yet been reduced to a minimum, for whereas in some cellars it averages 7 and 8 per cent, and rises to 15 when the pressure is unusually strong, in others it rarely exceeds 2-1/2 or 3. The period between May and September is that in which the greatest destruction takes place. In the month of October, the first and severest breakage being over, the newly-bottled wine is definitively stacked in the cellars in piles from two to half a dozen bottles deep, from six to seven feet high, and frequently a hundred feet or upwards in length. Usually the bottles remain in their horizontal position, in which they gradually develop two essential qualities, that of effervescing well and that of travelling satisfactorily, for about eighteen or twenty months, though some firms, who pride themselves upon shipping perfectly matured wines, leave them thus for double this space of time. During this period the temperature to which the wine is exposed is, as far as practicable, carefully regulated; for the risk of breakage, though greatly diminished, is never entirely at an end. [Illustration] [Illustration]