It is a common idea that only a very few clarets are entitled to the prefix “Château.” The truth is very different. The district on the south bank of the Gironde simply teems with châteaux, of a kind. For miles you cannot go a few hundred yards in any direction without seeing or passing two or three; each with its vineyards and cellars and special labels, and more or less unblemished reputation. There is Château {134} Latour, and there is (or may be) the Château Smith. Did I choose to buy a cottage in that district, grow my own grapes, and make my own wines, I should be fully entitled to label them “Château Gubbins,” and incur no penalty by so doing. But please do not pick the ripe grapes, although you may be sorely tempted by the sight of dozens of bunches separated from the vines by their sheer weight, and lying in the furrows. Plenty of people do commit this sort of theft, for there be hundreds of the rough element who visit the Médoc country. The “Hooligans” and _gamins_ of Bordeaux drift here at picking-time just as the poor of London drift into the county of Kent during the hopping season. They are not loved, but they have to be endured. Somebody must pick the grapes, and after all a few depredations will not ruin the grower any more than do the strawberry-pickers in the south of England “break” the growers, by adopting their usual plan: “three in the mouth, one in the basket.” The claret-cellars are not nearly as far beneath the earth as are those in the region about Rheims. Nor are they as amusing. There is no “pop, pop” down here, no danger of wounds and lacerations from flying splinters of glass. The principal objects of interest are the cobwebs which are piled up all over the place like dusky curtains. It is not well to sample too many glasses which may be offered you of the wine of the country. For the samples are taken from the new, immature wine, and are suggestive of {135} pains and disturbances below the belt. The head cellarman, portly and urbane like his brother of Rheims, will watch your face closely as you taste his novelties, and will invariably ask your opinion of it. But the wise visitor will not be too opinionative on the subject. I have noticed that the man who says the least is accounted the most knowing, whether he be inspecting the contents of a cellar, or of a stable. And believe me, there is as much rubbish talked about wine as about horses. Still, in sampling new champagne you may praise indiscriminately, without being accounted an absolute dunce; whilst with claret it is altogether different. The wine varies exceedingly with the vintage; and none but an expert and accomplished palate may dare to say what is good, what is bad, and what is mediocre.