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
The principal vineyard proprietors at Bouzy, which ranks, of course, as
a _premier crû_, are M. Werlé, M. Irroy, and Messrs. Moët and Chandon,
the first and last of whom have capacious vendangeoirs here, M. Irroy’s
pressing-house being in the neighbouring village of Ambonnay. M. Werlé
possesses at Bouzy from forty to fifty acres of the finest vines,
forming a considerable proportion of the entire vineyard area. At the
Clicquot-Werlé vendangeoir, containing as many as eight presses, about
1,000 pièces of wine are made annually. At the time of our visit, grapes
gathered that morning were in course of delivery, the big basketfuls
being measured off in caques--wooden receptacles, holding two-and-twenty
gallons--while the florid-faced foreman ticked them off with a piece of
chalk on the head of an adjacent cask.
As soon as the contents of some half-hundred or so of these baskets had
been emptied on to the floor of the press, the grapes undetached from
their stalks were smoothed compactly down, and a moderate pressure was
applied to them by turning a huge wheel, which caused the screw of the
press to act--a gradual squeeze rather than a powerful one, and given
all at once, coaxing out, it was said, the finer qualities of the fruit.
The operation was repeated as many as six times; the yield from the
three first pressures being reserved for conversion into champagne,
while the result of the fourth squeeze would be applied to replenishing
the loss, averaging 7½ per cent., sustained by the must during
fermentation. Whatever comes from the fifth pressure is sold to make an
inferior champagne. The grapes are subsequently well raked about, and
then subjected to a couple of final squeezes, known as the _rébêche_,
and yielding a sort of _piquette_, given to the workmen employed at the
pressoir to drink.
The small quantity of still red Bouzy wine made by M. Werlé at the same
vendangeoir only claims to be regarded as a wine of especial mark in
good years. The grapes before being placed beneath the press are allowed
to remain in a vat for as many as eight days. The must undergoes a long
fermentation, and after being drawn off into casks is left undisturbed
for a couple of years. In bottle, where, by the way, it invariably
deposits a sediment, which is indeed the case with all the wines of the
Champagne, still or sparkling, it will outlive, we were told, any
Burgundy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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