CONVEYING GRAPES TO THE PRESS AT SAINT-PÉRAY.
[ XV.—The Sparkling Wines of the South of France.]
Sparkling Wines of Auvergne, Guienne, Dauphiné, and Languedoc—Sparkling Saint-Péray the Champagne of the South—Valence with its Reminiscences of Pius VI. and Napoleon I.—The “Horns of Crussol” on the Banks of the Rhône—Vintage Scene at Saint-Péray—The Vines and Vineyards Producing Sparkling Wine—Manipulation of Sparkling Saint-Péray—Its Abundance of Natural Sugar—The Cellars of M. de Saint-Prix and Samples of his Wines—Sparkling Côte-Rotie, Château-Grille, and Hermitage—Annual Production and Principal Markets of Sparkling Saint-Péray—Clairette de Die—The Porte Rouge of Die Cathedral—How the Die Wine is Made—The Sparkling White and Rose-Coloured Muscatels of Die—Sparkling Wines of Vercheny and Lagrasse—Barnave and the Royal Flight to Varennes—Narbonne formerly a Miniature Rome, now Noted merely for its Wine and Honey—Fête of the Black Virgin at Limoux—Preference given to the New Wine over the Miraculous Water—Blanquette of Limoux and How it is Made—Characteristics of this Overrated Wine.
Sparkling wines are made after a fashion in several of the southern provinces of France—in Auvergne, at Clermont-Ferrand, under the shadow of the lofty Puy de Dôme; in Guienne, at Astaffort, the scene of a bloody engagement during the
Wars of Religion in which the Protestant army was cut to pieces when about to cross the Garonne; at Nérac, where frail Marguerite de Valois kept her dissolute Court, and Catherine de Médicis brought her flying squadron of fascinating maids of honour to gain over the Huguenot leaders to the Catholic cause; and at Cahors, the Divina, or divine fountain of the Celts, and the birthplace of Pope John XXII., of Clement Marot, the early French poet, and of Léon Gambetta; in Dauphiné, at Die, Saint-Chef, Saint-Péray, and Largentière, so named after some abandoned silver mines, and where the vines are cultivated against low walls rising in a series of terraces from the base to the summit of the lofty hills; and in Languedoc, at Brioude, where St. Vincent, the patron saint of the vinedressers, suffered martyrdom, and where it is the practice to expose the must of the future sparkling wine for several nights to the dew in order to rid it of its reddish colour; also at Linardie, and, more southward still, at Limoux, whence comes the well-known effervescing Blanquette.
Principal among the foregoing is the excellent wine of Saint-Péray, commonly characterised as the champagne of the South of France. The Saint-Péray vineyards border the Rhône some ten miles below the Hermitage coteau—the vines of which are to-day well-nigh destroyed by the phylloxera—but are on the opposite bank of the river. Our visit to Saint-Péray was made from Valence, in which dull southern city we had loitered in order to glance at the vast Hôtel du Gouvernement—where octogenarian Pius VI., after being spirited away a prisoner from Rome and hurried over the Alps in a litter by order of the French Directory, drew his last breath while silently gazing across the rushing river at the view he so much admired—and to discover the house in the Grande Rue, numbered 4, in an attic of which history records that Napoleon I., when a sub-lieutenant of artillery in garrison at Valence, resided, and which he quitted owing three and a-half francs to his pastrycook.
We crossed the Rhône over one of its hundred flimsy suspension bridges, on the majority of which a notice warns you
neither to smoke nor run, and were soon skirting the base of a lofty, bare, precipitous rock, with the “horns of Crussol,” as the peasants term two tall pointed gables of a ruined feudal château, perched at the dizzy edge, and having a perpendicular fall of some five or six hundred feet below. The château, which formerly belonged to the Dukes of Uzès, recognised by virtue of the extent of their domains as premiers pairs de France, was not originally erected in close proximity to any such formidable precipice. The crag on which it stands had, it seems, been blasted from time to time for the sake of the stone, until on one unlucky occasion when too heavy a charge of powder was employed, the entire side of the rock, together with a considerable portion of the château itself, were sent flying into the air. The authorities, professing to regard what remained of the edifice as an historical monument of the Middle Ages, hereupon stepped in and prohibited the quarry being worked for the future.
Passing beneath the cliff, one wound round to the left and dived into a picturesque wooded dell at the entrance to a mountain pass, then crossed the rocky bed of a dried-up stream and drove along an avenue of mulberry-trees, which in a few minutes conducted us to Saint-Péray, where one found the vintage in full operation. Carts laden with tubs filled with white and purple grapes, around which wasps without number swarmed, were arriving from all points of the environs and crowding the narrow streets. Any quantity of grapes were seemingly to be had for the asking, for all the pretty girls in the place were gorging themselves with the luscious-looking fruit. In the coopers’ yards bran-new casks were ranged in rows in readiness for the newly-made wine, and through open doorways, and in all manner of dim recesses, one caught sight of sturdy men energetically trampling the gushing grapes under their bare feet, and of huge creaking wine-presses reeking with the purple juice. It was chiefly common red wine, of an excellent flavour, however, that was being made in these nooks and corners, the sparkling white wine, known as Saint-Péray, being manufactured in larger establishments, and on more scientific principles. It