Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling WinesVizetelly, Henry
History
Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines
Vizetelly, Henry
Champagne (Wine); Sparkling wines; Wine and wine making
Sparkling wines seem to be made in various parts of Hungary, judging
from the samples sent to the Vienna and Paris Exhibitions from Pesth,
Pressburg, Oedenburg, Pécs, Velencze, and Kolozsvár. Rose-colour wines
are evidently much in favour with the respective manufacturers, several
of whom make sparkling red wines as well, but with none of the success
of their Styrian neighbours. The best Hungarian sparkling wines we have
met with are those of Hubert and Habermann, made at Pressburg, the
former capital of Hungary, where its kings, after being crowned, used to
ride up the Königsberg brandishing the sword of St. Stephen towards the
four points of the compass in token of their determination to defend the
kingdom against all enemies. The white sparkling wines are made
exclusively from white grapes grown in the neighbouring vineyards of
Bösing, Geñnau, and St. Georgen, but the firm make red sparkling wines
as well from the produce of the Ratzersdorf and Wainor vineyards. The
vintage takes place some time in October, and the wines are bottled both
in the spring and autumn, but never until they are fully twelve months
old. With these variations the system pursued with regard to the wines
is the same as is followed in the Champagne. There are several other
sparkling wine manufacturers at Pressburg, and the principal market for
these wines is Austro-Hungary, but shipments of them are made to
England, the United States, India, Roumania, and Servia. The production
of sparkling wine in Hungary is now estimated to amount to one million
bottles annually.
In Croatia Prince Lippe-Schaumburg has established a sparkling
wine manufactory at Slatina, where he produces a so-called
Riesling-Champagner, and it would appear from the collection of
Austro-Hungarian sparkling wines exhibited at Vienna by Herr Bogdan Hoff
of Cracow, that these wines are also made at Melnik, in Bohemia, at
Bisenz in Moravia, at Sebenicodi Maraschino in Dalmatia, at Botzen in
the Tyrol, at Tasnad in Transylvania, and at Weiss-Kirchen in the Banat.
All these wines had been submitted to examination at the Imperial
œno-chemical laboratory at Klosterneuberg, and one was not surprised to
find that the majority were pronounced to be of too robust a character
for transformation into sparkling wines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account