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
On Kelley’s Island, Erie county, also in the State of Ohio, a wine
company, established in 1866, and trading principally in still wines,
makes sparkling wines upon a considerable scale exclusively from the
catawba variety of grape, which is cultivated in its highest perfection
both on the islands of Lake Erie and along a narrow slip of territory
not two miles long bordering the southern shore of the lake, and also in
the vicinity of Lake Keuka, near Hammondsport, N.Y. The Kelley Island
Wine Company, as it is styled, presses the grapes between the middle of
October and the end of November, and bottles from about the 20th May
until the commencement of July in the year following. Its brands are
Island Queen, Nonpareil, and Carte Blanche. Ninety-five per cent. of the
wines are dry, and the tendency of the market is in favour of a still
drier article. Shipments are principally confined to the United States,
the great centre of the trade being St. Louis, on the Mississippi, which
has its own sparkling wine establishments, and to-day disputes with
Chicago the title of Queen of the West. The company keep some 100,000
bottles of sparkling wines in stock, and possess facilities for bottling
five times that quantity whenever the demand might warrant such a step
being taken. Of recent years, however, economy has been the rule in
American society, and the market for native sparkling wines at any rate
is to-day a reduced one.
At Hammondsport, south of Lake Keuka--in other words, Crooked Lake--and
in the State of New York, the establishments of the Pleasant Valley and
Urbana wine companies, devoting their attention to both still and
sparkling wines, are installed. The region, which enthusiastic writers
now term the Champagne of America, was colonised in 1793, and vines of
the catawba and isabella varieties were first planted for the purpose of
making wine in 1854. At the present time there are about 8,000 acres
under cultivation with all the better species of vines. The produce from
black and white grapes is mingled for the sparkling wines of the
district. Of the former but two kinds are considered suitable, the
concord and the isabella, both being varieties of the indigenous
labrusca, or so-called foxy-flavoured grape. The concord is a hardy and
productive plant, producing large and compact bunches of large round
sweet grapes, yielding a wine of the obnoxious foxy flavour. The
isabella is an equally hardy and productive variety, and its bunches are
of good size, although not compact. Its berries, too, are large, oval,
and juicy, and marked by a strong musky aroma.
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