The vintage takes place towards the end of October, and the grapes are gathered by Chinamen, who will each pick his 12 to 14 cwt. of grapes a day for the wage of a dollar. Light wooden boxes are used for holding the grapes, which are stripped from their stalks on their arrival at the press-house, and then partially crushed by a couple of revolving rollers. An inclined platform beneath receives them, and after the expressed juice has been run off into cask they are removed to the press, and the must subsequently extracted is added to that forced out by the rollers. When white wine is being made from black grapes the pressure is less continuous, and the must is of course separated at once from the skins. The fermentation, which is violent for some ten or twelve hours, ceases in about a fortnight, providing a temperature of from 70° to 75° Fahr. is maintained in the vaults. The wine is racked at the new year, and again before the blending and bottling of it in the spring.
The Californian sparkling wines not only find a market in the eastern States, but are sent across the Pacific to the Sandwich Islands, Japan, China, and even to wine-producing Australia, which has not yet succeeded in producing sparkling wines of its own.
The manufacture of spurious sparkling wines is carried on to some extent in the United States. The raw wine is cleared by fining it with albumen or gelatine and with alum; the latter substance imparting to it great brilliancy. After being dosed with a flavoured syrup the wine is charged like soda-water with carbonic acid gas by placing the bottles under a fountain, and as this gas is derived from marble dust and sulphuric acid, it is liable to be impregnated with both lead and copper, which have the effect of disorganising alike the wine and the consumers of it—nausea, headache, and other ills resulting from drinking sparkling wines made under such conditions.
[ XX.—Concluding Facts and Hints.]
Dry and Sweet Champagnes—Their Sparkling Properties—Form of Champagne Glasses—Style of Sparkling Wines Consumed in Different Countries—The Colour and Alcoholic Strength of Champagne—Champagne Approved of by the Faculty—Its Use in Nervous Derangements—The Icing of Champagne—Scarcity of Grand Vintages in the Champagne—The Quality of the Wine has little influence on the Price—Prices realised by the Ay and Verzenay Crûs in Grand Years—Suggestions for Laying down Champagnes of Grand Vintages—The Improvement they Develop after a few Years—The Wine of 1874—The proper kind of Cellar to lay down Champagne in—Advantages of Burrow’s Patent Slider Wine Bins—Increase in the Consumption of Champagne—Tabular Statement of Stocks, Exports, and Home Consumption from 1844-5 to 1877-8—When to Serve Champagne at a Dinner Party—Charles Dickens’s dictum that its proper place is at a Ball—Advantageous Effect of Champagne at an ordinary British Dinner Party—Sparkling Wine Cups.
When selecting a sparkling wine one fact should be borne in mind—that just as, according to Sam Weller, it is the seasoning which makes the pie mutton, beef, or veal, so it is the liqueur which renders the wine dry or sweet, light or strong. A really
palatable dry champagne, emitting the fragrant bouquet which distinguishes all wines of fine quality, free from added spirit, is obliged to be made of the very best vin brut, to which necessarily an exceedingly small percentage of liqueur will be added. On the other hand, a sweet champagne can be produced from the most ordinary raw wine—the Yankees even claim to have evolved it from petroleum—as the amount of liqueur it receives completely masks its original character and flavour. This excess of syrup, it should be remarked, contributes materially to the wine’s explosive force and temporary effervescence, but shortly after the bottle has been uncorked the wine becomes disagreeably flat. A fine dry wine, indebted as it is for its sparkling properties to the natural sweetness of the grape, does not exhibit the same sudden turbulent effervescence. It continues to sparkle, however, for a long time after being poured into the glass owing to the carbonic acid having been absorbed by the wine itself instead of being accumulated in the vacant space between the liquid and the cork, as is the case with wines that have been highly liqueured. Even when its carbonic acid gas is exhausted a good champagne will preserve its fine flavour, which the effervescence will have assisted to conceal. Champagne, it should be noted, sparkles best in tall tapering glasses; still these have their disadvantages, promoting as they do an excess of froth when the wine is poured into them, and almost preventing any bouquet which the wine possesses from being recognised.
Manufacturers of champagne and other sparkling wines prepare them dry or sweet, light or strong, according to the markets for which they are designed. The sweet wines go to Russia and Germany, the sweet-toothed Muscovite regarding M. Louis Roederer’s syrupy product as the beau-idéal of champagne, and the Germans demanding wines with 20 or more per cent. of liqueur, or nearly quadruple the quantity that is contained in the average champagnes shipped to England. France consumes light and moderately sweet wines; the United States gives a preference to the intermediate qualities; China, India, and other hot countries stipulate for light dry wines; while the very strong
ones go to Australia, the Cape, and other places where gold and diamonds and such-like trifles are from time to time “prospected.” Not merely the driest but the very best wines of the best manufacturers, and commanding of course the highest prices, are invariably reserved for the English market. Foreigners cannot understand the marked preference shown in England for exceedingly dry sparkling wines. They do not consider that as a rule they are drunk during dinner with the plats, and not at dessert, with all kinds of sweets, fruits, and ices, as is almost invariably the case abroad.