Champagne, only a moderate proportion of wine from black grapes enters into the blend.
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ON THE BRIDGE AT RECH, AHR VALLEY. |
Next comes the fining, and four weeks afterwards the wine is newly racked. The bottling takes place during May or June, when any deficiency of natural saccharine in the wine is supplied by the addition of pure sugar-candy. At Messrs. Deinhard’s the wine is bottled at a temperature of 72° Fahr., and the bottles remain resting on large stone tables until the fermentation is completed, and the saccharine is converted into alcohol and carbonic acid gas. This result is commonly obtained in ordinary hot weather in eight days’ time, most of the breakage taking place during this interval. If on being tested with a manometer the wine should indicate too high a pressure, it is at once removed to a cool cellar, consequently the average total breakage rarely exceeds 2¼
per cent. The wine is now left quiet for at least a year, and if possible for two years, after which the bottles are placed on stands in the customary inverted position, and shaken daily for a period of six weeks, in order to dislodge the sediment and force it against the cork. German workmen are far less expert at this operation than their fellows in the Champagne, as few of the former can manage more than their four-and-twenty thousand bottles per diem. The disgorgement and liqueuring of the wine is accomplished at Messrs. Deinhard’s and other German establishments in precisely the same fashion as is followed in the Champagne.
The dry sparkling hocks we tasted here had the real riesling flavour and the fine natural perfume common to this grape. In preparing them no attempt had been made to imitate champagne; but, on the other hand, every care had been taken to preserve the true hock character with its distinguishing freshness of taste combined with a lightness which wines containing liqueur in excess could never have exhibited. The sparkling moselles, too, depended not on any imparted muscatel flavour and perfume, but on their own natural bouquet and the flavour they derive from the schistous soil in which these wines are grown.
LIEBENSTEIN AND STERRENBERG.
[ XVII.—The Sparkling Wines of Germany (continued).]
From Coblenz to Rüdesheim—Ewald and Co.’s Establishment and its Pleasant Situation—Their Fine Vaulted Cellars and Convenient Accessories—Their Supplies of Wine drawn from the most favoured Localities—The Celebrated Vineyards of the Rheingau—Eltville and the extensive Establishment of Matheus Müller—His Vast Stocks of Still and Sparkling German Wines—The Vineyards laid under contribution for the latter—M. Müller’s Sparkling Johannisberger, Champagne, and Red Sparkling Assmannshauser—The Site of Gutenberg’s Birthplace at Mayence occupied by the Offices and Wine-cellars of Lauteren Sohn—The Sparkling Wine Establishment of the Firm, and their Fine Collection of Hocks and Moselles—The Hochheim Sparkling Wine Association—Foundation of the Establishment—Its Superior Sparkling Hocks and Moselles—The Sparkling Wine Establishments of Stock and Sons at Creuznach in the Nahe Valley, of Kessler and Co. at Esslingen, on the Neckar, and of
M. Oppmann at Wurzburg—The Historic Cellars of the King of Bavaria beneath the Residenz—The Establishment of F. A. Siligmüller.