and August, and are made either sweet or dry according to the country they are destined for. Considerable shipments of the dry pale Styrian champagne take place to England, where the firm also send a delicate sparkling muscatel and a sparkling red burgundy, which will favourably compare with the best sparkling wines of the Côte d’Or. They have also a large market for their wines in Austria, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, and export to British North America, the East Indies, China, Japan, and Australia. From the year 1855 up to the present time the firm of Kleinoscheg Brothers have been awarded no less than sixteen medals for their sparkling wines at various important home and foreign exhibitions.
At Marburg on the river Drave, in the vicinity of the Bacher Mountains, which stretch far into Carinthia, and have their lower slopes covered with vines, Herr F. Auchmann has established a successful sparkling wine manufactory. The raw wine comes from the vineyards around Marburg and from Pettau, some ten or twelve miles lower down the Drave. The vintage commonly lasts from the middle of October until the middle of November. Black grapes of the clevener and portuguese varieties are pressed as in the Champagne, so as to yield a white must, with which a certain portion of white wine from the mosler or furmint grape is subsequently mingled. The bottling takes place as early as April or May. The wines are principally consumed in Austria, but are also exported to Russia, Italy, Egypt, the Danubian Principalities, Australia, &c.
Sparkling wines seem to be made in various parts of Hungary, judging from the samples sent to the Vienna and Paris Exhibitions from Pesth, Pressburg, Oedenburg, Pécs, Velencze, and Kolozsvár. Rose-colour wines are evidently much in favour with the respective manufacturers, several of whom make sparkling red wines as well, but with none of the success of their Styrian neighbours. The best Hungarian sparkling wines we have met with are those of Hubert and Habermann, made at Pressburg, the former capital of Hungary, where its kings, after being crowned, used to ride up the Königsberg brandishing the
sword of St. Stephen towards the four points of the compass in token of their determination to defend the kingdom against all enemies. The white sparkling wines are made exclusively from white grapes grown in the neighbouring vineyards of Bösing, Geñnau, and St. Georgen, but the firm make red sparkling wines as well from the produce of the Ratzersdorf and Wainor vineyards. The vintage takes place some time in October, and the wines are bottled both in the spring and autumn, but never until they are fully twelve months old. With these variations the system pursued with regard to the wines is the same as is followed in the Champagne. There are several other sparkling wine manufacturers at Pressburg, and the principal market for these wines is Austro-Hungary, but shipments of them are made to England, the United States, India, Roumania, and Servia. The production of sparkling wine in Hungary is now estimated to amount to one million bottles annually.
In Croatia Prince Lippe-Schaumburg has established a sparkling wine manufactory at Slatina, where he produces a so-called Riesling-Champagner, and it would appear from the collection of Austro-Hungarian sparkling wines exhibited at Vienna by Herr Bogdan Hoff of Cracow, that these wines are also made at Melnik, in Bohemia, at Bisenz in Moravia, at Sebenicodi Maraschino in Dalmatia, at Botzen in the Tyrol, at Tasnad in Transylvania, and at Weiss-Kirchen in the Banat. All these wines had been submitted to examination at the Imperial œno-chemical laboratory at Klosterneuberg, and one was not surprised to find that the majority were pronounced to be of too robust a character for transformation into sparkling wines.
Switzerland long since turned its attention to the manufacture of sparkling wines, not, however, to meet the requirements of its own population, but those of the many tourists with well-lined purses who annually explore its valleys, lakes, and mountains. Neuchâtel champagne has met with a certain amount of success, and at the present time there are a couple of establishments devoted to its production, the best known being that of Bouvier
frères. There are, moreover, sparkling wine manufactories at Vevay in the Vaud Canton, and at Sion in the Valais. In the Canton of Neuchâtel the best Swiss red wines are produced—notably Cortaillod and Faverge of a ruby hue and Burgundy-like flavour—and the sparkling wine manufacturers of the district wisely blend a considerable proportion of wine from black grapes with that from white when making their cuvées. Vaud, on the other hand, being noted for white wines bearing some resemblance to certain Rhine growths, it is of these that sparkling wines are exclusively made at Vevay.
The Vevay vineyards occupy the heights which skirt the Lake of Geneva on its northern side. The innumerable terraces, steep and difficult of access to the toiling vine-dresser, on which the vines are planted, are the result of centuries of patient labour. Here the vine seems to flourish at an altitude of more than 1,800 feet above the sea level. To compensate for the deficiency of sunshine the leaves are largely stripped from the vines so as to expose the fruit, and thereby assist its ripening.
The sparkling wine factory at Sion, bordering the river Rhône, in the Canton of the Valais, was established in 1872 by MM. de Riedmatten and De Quay, who derive their raw wine from vineyards in the immediate neighbourhood, almost all of which have a southern exposure, and occupy gentle slopes. The soil chiefly consists of a decomposed limestone schist, locally termed “brisé.” In these vineyards, and more especially the district known as the Clavaux, some of the best and most alcoholic wines in Switzerland are produced.
The firm originally experimented with the choicer and more powerful growths, and, as may be imagined, soon discovered they were not well adapted for conversion into sparkling wines. To-day they limit themselves to wines produced from what is known as the “fendant” variety of grape, said by some to be identical with the German riesling, and by others to be of the same type as the French chasselas. The vintage in the Valais is the earliest in Switzerland, taking place in favourable years at the close of September, but ordinarily in the course of