On leaving Messrs. Pommery’s we retrace our steps down the Avenue Gerbert, bordered on either side with rows of plane-trees, until we reach the treeless Avenue de Sillery, where Messrs. de St. Marceaux & Co.’s new and capacious establishment is installed. Simple and without pretension, the establishment, which covers an area of upwards of 18,000 feet, is distinguished for its perfect appropriateness to the industry for which it was designed. The principal block of building is flanked by two advanced wings enclosing a garden-court, set off with flowers and shrubs, and from the centre of which rises a circular shaft, covered in with glass, and admitting light and air to the cellars below. In the building to the left the wine is received on its arrival from the vineyard, and here are ranged large quantities of casks replete with the choice crus of Verzenay, Ay, Cramant, and Bouzy, while thousands of bottles ready for labelling are stacked in massive piles at the end of the packing-hall in the corresponding wing of the establishment. Here, too, a tribe of workpeople are arraying the bottles with gold and silver headdresses, and robing them in pink paper, while others are filling, securing, marking, and addressing the cases or baskets destined to Hong-Kong, San Francisco, Yokohama, Bombay, London, New York, St. Petersburg, Berlin, or Paris.
THE PACKING-HALL OF MESSRS. DE ST. MARCEAUX AT REIMS.
The wine in cask, stored in the left-hand wing, after having been duly blended in an enormous vat, is drawn off into bottles, which are then lowered down a shaft to the second tier of cellars by means of an endless chain, on to which the baskets of bottles are swiftly hooked. The workman engaged in this duty, in order to guard against his falling down the shaft, has a leather belt strapped round his waist, by means of which he is secured to an adjoining iron column. We descended into the lower cellars down a flight of ninety-three broad steps—a depth equal to the height of an ordinary six-storied house—and found no less than four-and-twenty galleries excavated in the chalk, devoid of masonry supports, and containing upwards of a million bottles of Champagne. These galleries vary in length, but are of uniform breadth, and allow either for a couple of racks with wine sur pointe, or stacks of bottles, in four row’s on either side, with ample passage-room down the centre.
The upper range of cellars comprises two large arched galleries of considerable breadth, one of which contains wine in wood and wine sur pointe, while the other is stocked with bottles of wine heads downward, ready to be delivered into the hands of the dégorgeur.
MM. de St. Marceaux & Co. have the honour of supplying the King of the Belgians, the President of the French Republic, and several German potentates with an exceedingly delicate Champagne known as the Royal St. Marceaux. The same wine is popular in Russia and other parts of Europe, just as the Dry Royal of the firm is much esteemed in the United States. The brand of the house most appreciated in this country is its Carte d’Or, a very dry wine, the extra superior quality of the firm, which secured the first place at a recent Champagne competition in England.
Some little distance beyond the remnants of the ancient fortifications of Reims, skirting the Butte de St. Nicaise, is the establishment of Veuve Morelle & Co., successors to Veuve Max Sutaine & Co. This house was founded in 1823 by the late M. Maxime Sutaine, who, like several other notabilities in the Reims wine trade, was as familiar with art and science as with the special industry to which he had devoted himself. An amateur painter of no mean skill, he showed himself thoroughly at home in the biographical and critical notices on artists and art in his native province which he produced. His name, however, is chiefly identified in literature with his Essai sur le Vin de Champagne.[425] This work may be regarded as the first attempt to collect the scattered materials relating to the history of Champagne wine, and to deal with them in a critical spirit. Though necessarily imperfect, its value is undoubtedly great, and it has been frequently quoted from in the present volume. The family of Sutaine long held an honourable position at Reims, the name of one of M. Max Sutaine’s immediate ancestors, who filled the position of lieutenant of the city in 1765, appearing on the bronze slab at the base of the statue of Louis XV. in the Place Royale, erected during that year.
