On passing through the large _porte-cochère_ giving entrance to Messrs. Heidsieck's principal establishment, one finds oneself in a small courtyard, with the surrounding buildings overgrown with ivy and venerable vines. On the left is a dwelling-house enriched with elaborate mouldings and cornices, and at the farther end of the court is the entrance to the cellars, surmounted by a sun-dial bearing the date 1829. The latter, however, is no criterion of the age of the buildings themselves, as these were occupied by the firm at its foundation, towards the close of the last century. We are first conducted into an antiquated-looking low cellier, the roof of which is sustained with rude timber supports, and here bottles of wine are being labelled and packed, although this is but a mere adjunct to the adjacent spacious packing-room, provided with its loading platform and communicating directly with the public road. At the time of our visit this hall was gaily decorated with flags and inscriptions, the day before having been the fête of St. Jean, when the firm entertain the people in their employ with a banquet and a ball, at which the choicest wine of the house liberally flows. From the packing-room we descend into the cellars, which, like all the more ancient vaults in Reims, have been constructed on no regular plan. Here we thread our way between piles after piles of bottles, many of which, having passed through the hands of the disgorger, are awaiting their customary adornment. The lower tier of cellars is mostly stored with _vin sur pointe_, and bottles with their necks downward are encountered in endless monotony along a score or more of long galleries. The only variation in our lengthened promenade is when we come upon some solitary workman engaged in his monotonous task of shaking his 30,000 or 40,000 bottles per diem. The disgorging at Messrs. Heidsieck's takes place, in accordance with the good old rule, in the cellars underground, where we noticed large stocks of wine three and five years old, the former in the first stage of _sur pointe_, and the latter awaiting shipment. It is a specialty of the house to ship only matured wine, which is necessarily of a higher character than the ordinary youthful growths, for a few years have a wonderful influence in developing the finer qualities of Champagne. At the time of our visit, in the spring of 1877, when the English market was being glutted with the crude full-bodied wine of 1874, Messrs. Heidsieck were continuing to ship wines of 1870 and 1872, beautifully rounded by keeping, and of fine flavour and great delicacy of perfume. Of these thoroughly matured wines the firm had fully a year's consumption on hand.