At least that is what they tell visitors; although the only time I have visited champagne cellars could hardly be called a peaceful experience, owing to the almost continuous bombardment of bursting bottles. And it is said that as a rule at least 10 per cent of the stored wine is wasted in this way; whilst in seasons of early and unusual heat the percentage may rise to as much as 20, and even 25. Sparkling champagne—and we are not concerned with the still wine—is the result of a peculiar treatment during fermentation. During the winter months the wine is racked-off, and fined with isinglass; and in the early spring it is bottled and tightly corked. In order to collect the sediment in the necks of the bottles these are placed at first in a sloping condition, with the corks downward, for a term. In the second year this sediment requires to be disgorged, or _dégagé_-ed. This feat can only be learnt by long practice, and even then there be workmen who cannot be safely trusted to shift the sediment, without shifting a too-large proportion of the wine itself. {131} May I confess to the belief that I should never make a good, reliable, valuable disgorger? Of course there is art, or knack, in it. The _degager_ takes a bottle, cuts the string of the cork, expels the sediment—occasionally without spilling more than a drop or two—and passes the bottle to his neighbour, who fills it up with a liqueur, composed of sugar-candy dissolved in cognac, and flavoured, and with some bright, clarified wine. The bottle is then recorked, by machinery, wired, labelled, and sent about its business. The fermentation being incomplete at the first bottling of the wine, the carbonic acid gas generated in a confined space—this part comes unadorned, out of a book—exerts pressure on itself, and it thus remains as a liquid in the wine. When this pressure is removed it expands into gas, and thus communicates the sparkling property to champagne. Hence the bombardments. How do I know all this? I once paid a visit to the cellars of Pommery et C^{ie.}; and my dearest friend asked subsequently what sort of writ of ejectment had to be drawn up to rid them of my presence and thirst. But all joking apart the time was well spent, and the industry is deserving of all the encouragement which it receives. The head cellarman is, literally a host in himself, an old gentleman of aristocratic mien, and portly—or, rather, champagne-ly—presence; and one of the _formulae_ to be gone through before quitting the premises is to drink a glass of the very best with that charming old gentleman, who I hope still flourishes amid his bottles and his {132} disgorgers. And when it is added that there are usually upwards of 15,000,000 bottles in the cellars at one time, the old heresy as to the district being unable to supply sufficient wine save for Russian consumption is at once exploded.