VIEW OF AY FROM THE BANKS OF THE MARNE CANAL.
XI.
SOME CHAMPAGNE ESTABLISHMENTS AT AY AND MAREUIL.
The bourgade of Ay and its eighteenth-century château—Gambling propensities of a former owner, Balthazar Constance Dangé-Dorçay—Appreciation of the Ay vintage by Sigismund of Bohemia, Leo X., Charles V., Francis I., and Henry VIII.—Bertin du Rocheret celebrates this partiality in triolets—Estimation of the Ay wine in the reigns of Charles IX. and Henri III.—Is a favoured drink with the leaders of the League, and with Henri IV., Catherine de Medicis, and the courtiers of that epoch—The ‘Vendangeoir d’Henri Quatre’ at Ay—The King’s pride in his title of Seigneur d’Ay and Gonesse—Dominicus Baudius punningly suggests that the ‘Vin d’Ay’ should be called ‘Vinum Dei’—The merits of the wine sung by poets and extolled by wits—The Ay wine in its palmy days evidently not sparkling—Arthur Young’s visit to Ay in 1787—The establishment of Deutz & Geldermann—Drawing off the cuvée there—Mode of excavating cellars in the Champagne—The firm’s new cellars, vineyards, and vendangeoir—M. Duminy’s cellars and wines—The house founded in 1814—The new model Duminy establishment—Picturesque old house at Ay—Messrs. Pfungst Frères & Co.’s cellars—Their finely-matured dry Champagnes—The old church of Ay and its numerous decorations of grapes and vine-leaves—The sculptured figure above the Renaissance doorway—The Montebello establishment at Mareuil—The château formerly the property of the Dukes of Orleans—A titled Champagne firm—The brilliant career of Marshal Lannes—A promenade through the Montebello establishment—The press-house, the cuvée-vat, the packing-room, the offices, and the cellars—Portraits and relics at the château—The establishment of Bruch-Foucher & Co.—The handsome carved gigantic cuvée-tun—The cellars and their lofty shafts—The wines of the firm.
FIGURE ABOVE THE DOORWAY
OF AY CHURCH.
THE historic bourgade of Ay is within a short walk of the station on the line of railway connecting Epernay with Reims. The road lies across the light bridge spanning the Marne canal, the tall trees fringing which hide for a time the clustering houses; still we catch sight of the steeple of the antique church, relieved by a background of vine-covered slopes, and of an eighteenth-century château rising above a mass of foliage. Perched half-way up the slope, covered with ‘golden plants,’ which rises in the rear of the village, the château, with its long façade of windows, commands the valley of the Marne for miles; and from the stately-terraced walk, planted with ancient lime-trees, geometrically clipped in the fashion of the last century, a splendid view of the distant vineyards of Avize, Cramant, Epernay, and Chouilly is obtained. The château formed one of a quartette of seignorial residences which, at the commencement of the present century, belonged to Balthazar Constance Dangé-Dorçay, whose ancestors had been lords of Chouilly under the ancien régime. Dorçay had inherited from an aunt the châteaux of Ay, Mareuil, Boursault, and Chouilly, together with a large patrimony in land and money; but a mania for gambling brought him to utter ruin, and he dispossessed himself of money, lands, and châteaux in succession, and was reduced, in his old age, to earn a meagre pittance as a violin-player at the Paris Opera-house. The old château of Boursault, which still exists contiguous to the stately edifice raised by Madame Clicquot on the summit of the hill, was risked and lost on a single game at cards by this pertinacious gamester, whose pressing pecuniary difficulties compelled him to sell the remaining châteaux one by one. That of Ay was purchased by M. Froc de la Boulaye, and by him bequeathed to his cousin the Count de Mareuil, whose son is to-day a partner in the Champagne house of Ayala & Co.
The wine of Ay, from an early date, has found equal favour in the eyes of poets and princes. Eustache Deschamps sang its praises in the fourteenth century, and was echoed a hundred years later by the anonymous author of the Eglogue sur le Retour de Bacchus.[456] Sigismund of Bohemia, the betrayer of John Huss, on visiting France in 1410, desired to pass through Ay in order to taste the wine at the place of its production.[457] Leo X., Charles V., Francis III., and our own Henry VIII., each had a house in or near Ay; ‘for amongst all the great affairs of state which these princes had to unravel, supplying themselves with this vintage was not the least of their cares.’[458] Malicious tongues have asserted that they were somewhat suspicious of the honesty of the wine-growers of the district, and, in order to secure a genuine article, deemed it needful to have a commissioner or agent resident on the spot, to superintend the making of the wine set apart for their own consumption.[459] Tradition still points out, on the right of the road from Dizy to Ay, a vineyard called Le Léon, as the one whence the Pope derived his wine, though no traces remain of the vendangeoir built by the Emperor in a coppice above Ay during the siege of Epernay in 1544, and still standing in 1727.[460] The president Bertin du Rocheret has celebrated the partiality of a couple of these potentates for the wine of Ay in some triolets addressed to M. de Senécé, and published in the Mercure in 1728:
‘Ay produces the best wine—