It is needless to particularise Messrs. Moët and Chandon’s wines, which are familiar to all drinkers of champagne. Their famous “star” brand is known in all societies, figures equally at clubs and mess-tables, at garden parties and picnics, dinners and _soirées_, and has its place in hotel _cartes_ all over the world. One of the best proofs of the wine’s universal popularity is found in the circumstance that as many as 1,000 visitors from all parts of the world come annually to Epernay and make the tour of Messrs. Moët and Chandon’s spacious cellars. A little beyond Messrs. Moët and Chandon’s, in the broad Rue du Commerce, we encounter a heavy, ornate, pretentious-looking château, the residence of M. Perrier-Jouët, which presents a striking contrast to the almost mean-looking premises opposite, where the business of the firm is carried on. M. Perrier-Jouët is the fortunate grandson of the Sieur Perrier Fissier, a little Epernay grocer, who some eighty years or so ago used to supply corks, candles, and string to the firm of Moët and Co., and who, when the profits arising from this connection warranted his doing so, discarded his grocer’s sleeves and apron and blossomed forth as a competitor in the champagne trade. Perrier-Jouët and Co.’s offices are situated on the left-hand side of a courtyard surrounded by low buildings, which serve as celliers, store-houses, packing-rooms, and the like. From an inner courtyard where piles of bottles are stacked under open sheds, the cellars themselves are reached. Previous to descending into these we passed through the various buildings, in one of which a party of men were engaged in disgorging and preparing wine for shipment. In another we noticed one of those heavy beam presses for pressing the grapes which the more intelligent manufacturers regard as obsolete, while in a third was the _cuvée_ vat, holding no more than 2,200 gallons. In making their _cuvée_ the firm commonly mix one part of old wine to three parts of new. An indifferent vintage, however, necessitates the admixture of a larger proportion of the older growth. The cellars, like all the more ancient ones at Epernay, are somewhat straggling and irregular, still they are remarkably cool, and on the lower floor remarkably damp as well. This, however, would appear to be no disadvantage, as the breakage in them is calculated never to exceed 2½ per cent. The firm have no less than five qualities of champagne, and at one of the recent champagne competitions at London, where the experts engaged had no means of identifying the brands submitted to their judgment, Messrs. Perrier-Jouët’s First Quality got classed below a cheaper wine of their neighbours Messrs. Pol Roger and Co., and very considerably below the Extra Sec of Messrs. Périnet et fils, and inferior even to a wine of De Venoge’s, the great Epernay manufacturer of common class champagnes. [Illustration: COURTYARD OF MESSRS. POL ROGER’S ESTABLISHMENT AT EPERNAY. (p. 115)]