Chapter X: Part II: I (3)

By this time the fermentation is over; but in the interval, commencing from a few days after the bottling of the wine, a loose dark-brown sediment has been forming, which has now settled on the lower side of the bottle, and to get rid of which is a delicate and tedious task. As the time approaches for preparing the wine for shipment, the bottles are placed _sur pointe_, as it is termed--that is to say, slantingly in racks with their necks downwards, the inclination being increased from time to time to one more abrupt.[414] The object of this change in their position is to cause the sediment to leave the side of the bottle where it has gathered. Afterwards it becomes necessary to twist and turn it and coagulate it, as it were, until it forms a kind of muddy ball, and eventually to get it well down into the neck of the bottle, so that it may be finally expelled with a bang when the temporary cork is removed and the proper one adjusted. To accomplish this the bottles are sharply turned in one direction every day for at least a month or six weeks, the time being indefinitely extended until the sediment shows a disposition to settle near the cork. The younger the wine the longer the period necessary for the bottles to be shaken, new wine often requiring as much as three months. Only a thoroughly practised hand can give the right amount of revolution and the requisite degree of slope; and in some of the cellars men were pointed out to us who had acquired such dexterity as to be able at a pinch to shake with their two hands as many as 50,000 bottles in a single day, whilst 30,000 to 40,000 is by no means an uncommon performance.

Some of these men have spent thirty or forty years of their lives engaged in this perpetual task. Fancy being entombed all alone day after day in vaults which are invariably dark and gloomy, and often cold and dank, and being obliged to twist sixty to seventy of these bottles every minute throughout the day of ten hours! Why, the treadmill and the crank, with their periodical respites, must be pastime compared to this maddeningly monotonous occupation, which combines hard labour, with the wrist, at any rate, with next to solitary confinement. One can understand these men becoming gloomy and taciturn, and affirming that they sometimes see devils hovering over the bottle-racks and frantically shaking the bottles beside them, or else grinning at them as they pursue their humdrum task. Still it may be taken for granted that the men who reach this stage are accustomed to drink freely of raw spirits, as an antidote to the damp to which they are exposed, and merely pay the penalty of their over-indulgence.

In former times the bottles used to be placed with their heads downwards on tables pierced with holes, from which they had to be removed and agitated. At a still earlier date the process was more or less successfully accomplished by holding the bottles upside down by the neck, tapping them at the bottom to detach the sediment, and then, after shaking them well up, laying them on their sides until the operation was repeated. In 1818, however, a man named Müller, in the employment of Madame Clicquot, suggested that the bottles should remain in the tables whilst being shaken, and further that the holes should be cut obliquely, so that they might recline at varying angles. His suggestions were privately adopted by Madame Clicquot; but eventually the improved plan got wind, and the system which he initiated now prevails throughout the Champagne.[415]

When the bottles have gone through their regular course of shaking, they are examined before a lighted candle to ascertain whether the deposit has all fallen on to the cork, and the wine has become perfectly clear. Sometimes it happens that, twist these men never so wisely, the deposit, instead of becoming flaky or granular, refuses to stir, and takes the shape of a bunch of threads technically called a 'claw,' or an adherent membrane styled a 'mask.' When this is the case an attempt is made to start it by tapping the part to which it adheres with a piece of iron, the result being frequently the sudden explosion of the bottle in the workman's hands. By way of precaution, therefore, the operator protects his face with a wire mask, or by gigantic wire spectacles, which give to him a ghoul-like aspect. Frequently it is found impossible to detach the 'mask' from the side of the bottle, and in this case the only thing that remains is to pour the wine back again into the cask, with the view of mixing it in some future _cuvée_.[416]

The cellars of the Champagne manufacturers are very varied in character. The wine that has been grown on the chalky hills is left to develop itself in vaults burrowed out of the calcareous strata which underlie the entire district. In excavating these cellars the sides and roofs are frequently worked smooth and regular as finished masonry. The larger ones are composed of a number of spacious and lofty galleries, sometimes parallel with each other, but often ramifying in various directions, and evidently constructed on no definite plan. They are of one, two, and, in rare instances, of three stories, and now and then consist of a series of parallel galleries communicating with each other, lined with masonry, and with their stone walls and vaulted roofs resembling the crypt of some conventual building. Others of ancient date are less regular in their form, being merely so many narrow, low, winding corridors, varied, perhaps, by recesses hewn roughly out of the chalk, and resembling the brigands' cave of melodrama; while a certain number of the larger cellars at Reims are simply abandoned quarries, the broad and lofty arches of which are suggestive of the nave and aisles of some Gothic church. In these varied vaults, lighted by solitary lamps in front of metal reflectors, or by the flickering tallow candles which we carry in our hands, we pass rows of casks filled with last year's vintage or reserved wine of former years, and piles after piles of bottles of _vin brut_ in seemingly endless sequence--squares, so to speak, of raw recruits for the historically famous 'Regiment de Champagne'[417]--awaiting their turn to be thoroughly drilled and disciplined. These are varied by bottles reposing neck downwards in racks at different degrees of inclination, according to the progress their education has attained. Reports caused by exploding bottles now and then assail the ear, and as the echo dies away it becomes mingled with the rush of the escaping wine, cascading down the pile, and finding its way across the sloping sides of the floor to the narrow gutter in the centre. The dampness of the floor and the shattered fragments of glass strewn about show the frequency of this kind of accident.

In these subterranean galleries we frequently come upon parties of workmen engaged in transforming the perfected _vin brut_ into Champagne. Viewed at a distance while occupied in their monotonous task, they present in the semi-obscurity a series of picturesque Rembrandt-like studies. One of the end figures in each group is engaged in the important process of _dégorgement_, which is performed when the deposit, of which we have already spoken, has satisfactorily settled in the neck of the bottle. Baskets full of bottles with their necks downwards are placed beside the operator, who stands before a cask set on end, and having a large oval opening in front. This nimble-fingered manipulator seizes a bottle, raises it for a moment before the light to test the clearness of the wine and the subsidence of the deposit; holds it horizontally in his left hand, with the neck directed towards the opening already mentioned; and with a jerk of the steel hook which he holds in his right hand loosens the agrafe securing the cork. Bang goes the latter, and with it flies out the sediment and a small glassful or so of wine, further flow being checked by the workman's finger, which also serves to remove any sediment yet remaining in the bottle's neck. Like many other clever tricks, this looks very easy when adroitly performed, though a novice would probably allow the bottle to empty itself by the time he discovered that the cork was out. Yet such is the dexterity acquired by practice that the average amount of wine, foam, and deposit ejected by this operation does not exceed one-fourteenth of the contents of the bottle. Occasionally a bottle bursts in the _dégorgeur's_ hand, and his face is sometimes scarred from such explosions. The sediment removed, the _dégorgeur_ slips a temporary cork into the bottle, or places the latter in a machine provided with fixed gutta-percha corks and springs for securing the bottles firmly in their places. The wine is now ready for the important operation of the _dosage_, upon the nature and amount of which the character of perfected Champagne, whether it be dry or sweet, light or strong, very much depends.[418]

Different manufacturers have different recipes for the composition of this syrup, all more or less complex in character, and varying with the quality of the wine and the country for which it is intended; but the genuine liqueur consists of nothing but old wine of the best quality, to which a certain amount of sugar-candy and perhaps a dash of the finest cognac spirit has been added.[419] The saccharine addition varies according to the market for which the wine is destined: thus the high-class English buyer demands a dry Champagne, the Russian a wine sweet and strong as 'ladies' grog,' and the Frenchman and German a sweet light wine. To the extra-dry Champagnes a modicum dose is added, while the so-called '_brut_' wines receive no more than from one to three per cent of liqueur.[420]

In establishments wedded to old-fashioned usages the dose is administered with a tin can or ladle; but more generally an ingenious machine which regulates the percentage of liqueur to a nicety is employed. The bottle being usually nearly full when passed to the _doseur_, he, when a heavy percentage of liqueur has to be administered, is constrained, under the old system, to pour out some of the wine to make room for it, and this surplus in many cases is afterwards transformed into the well-known _tisane de Champagne_. As soon as the _dosage_ is accomplished, the bottle is passed to another workman known as the _égaliseur_, who fills it up with pure wine, frequently with a part of that which has been poured out by the _doseur_, to the requisite level for corking. In the event of a pink Champagne being required, the wine thus added will be red, although manufacturers of questionable reputation sometimes employ the solution of elderberries, known as _teinte de Fismes_, to impart that once-favourite roseate hue which has been compared to the glow of fading sunlight on a crystal stream.

The _égaliseur_ in his turn hands the bottle to the corker, who places it under a machine furnished with a pair of claws (so as to compress the cork to a size sufficiently small to allow it to enter the neck of the bottle) and a suspended weight, which in falling drives it home. These corks, principally obtained from Catalonia and Andalucia, are bound to possess a close and regular fibre and perfect elasticity. They form no unimportant item in the Champagne manufacturer's budget, costing upwards of twopence each, and are delivered in huge sacks resembling hop-pockets. Previous to being used they are either boiled in wine or soaked in a solution of tartar, or else they have been steamed by the cork merchants, in order to prevent their imparting a bad flavour to the wine, and to hinder any leakage. They are commonly handed warm to the corker, who dips them into a small vessel of wine before making use of them. Some firms, however, prepare their corks by subjecting them to cold-water _douches_ a day or two beforehand. The _ficeleur_ receives the bottle from the corker, and with a twist of the fingers secures the cork with string, at the same time rounding its hitherto flat top, at a rate which allows from a thousand to twelve hundred bottles to pass through his hands in course of the day. The _metteur de fil_ next affixes the wire with like celerity;[421] and then the final operation is performed by a workman seizing a couple of bottles by the neck and whirling them round his head, as though engaged in the Indian-club exercise, in order to secure a perfect amalgamation of the wine and the liqueur.

The final manipulation accomplished, the agitated course of existence through which the wine has been passing at last comes to an end, and the bottles are conveyed to another part of the establishment, where they repose for several days, or even weeks, in order that the mutual action of the wine and the liqueur upon each other may be complete. When the time arrives for despatching them, they are confided to feminine hands to have their dainty toilettes made, and are tastefully labelled, and are either capsuled, or else have their corks and necks imbedded in sealing-wax or swathed in gold or silver foil, whereby they are rendered presentable at the best-appointed tables. All that now remains is to wrap them up in coloured tissue-paper, to slip them into straw envelopes, or encircle them with wisps of straw, and pack them either in cases or baskets for despatch to all quarters of the civilised globe.

It is thus that Champagne sets out on its beneficial pilgrimage to promote the spread of mirth and light-heartedness, to drive away dull care and foment good-fellowship, to comfort the sick and cheer the sound. Wherever civilisation penetrates, Champagne sooner or later is sure to follow; and if Queen Victoria's morning drum beats round the world, its beat is certain to be echoed before the day is over by the popping of Champagne corks. Nowadays the exhilarating wine graces not merely princely but middle-class dinner-tables, and is the needful adjunct at every _petit souper_, as well as the stimulant to the wildest revels in all the gayer capitals of the world. It gives a flush to beauty at garden-parties and picnics, sustains the energies of the votaries of Terpsichore until the hour of dawn, and imparts to many a young gallant the necessary courage to declare his passion. It enlivens the dullest of _réunions_, brings smiles to the lips of the sternest cynics, softens the most irascible tempers, and loosens the most taciturn tongues.

The grim Berliner and the gay Viennese both acknowledge the exhilarating influence of the wine. Champagne sparkles in crystal goblets in the great capital of the North, and the Moslem wipes its creamy foam from his beard beneath the very shadow of the mosque of St. Sophia; for the Prophet has only forbidden the use of wine, and of a surety--Allah be praised!--this strangely-sparkling delicious liquor, which gives to the true believer a foretaste of the joys of Paradise, cannot be wine. At the diamond-fields of South Africa and the diggings of Australia the brawny miner who has hit upon a big bit of crystallised carbon, or a nugget of virgin ore, strolls to the 'saloon' and shouts for Champagne. The mild Hindoo imbibes it quietly, but approvingly, as he watches the evolutions of the Nautch girls, and his partiality for the wine has already enriched the Anglo-Bengalee vocabulary and London slang with the word 'simkin.' It is transported on camel-backs across the deserts of Central Asia, and in frail canoes up the mighty Amazon. The two-sworded Daimio calls for it in the tea-gardens of Yokohama, and the New Yorker, when not rinsing his stomach by libations of iced water, imbibes it freely at Delmonico's.

Wherever the Romans died they left traces behind them in their quaint funeral urns; wherever the civilised man of the nineteenth century has set his foot--at the base of the Pyramids and at the summit of the Cordilleras, in the mangrove swamps of Ashantee and the gulches of the Great Lone Land, in the wilds of the Amoor and on the desert isles of the Pacific--he has left traces of his presence in the shape of the empty bottles that were once full of the sparkling vintage of the Marne. They are strewn broadcast over the face of the globe, literally from Indus to the Pole. The crews of the Alert and the Discovery left them on the ice-bound verge of the paleocrystic sea; the French expeditionary columns have scattered them within the limits of the Great Sahara. In the lodges of the red man they are found playing the part of a great medicine, and in the huts of the negro they assume all the importance due to a big fetish. Stanley, arriving fainting and exhausted at the mouth of the Congo, hailed with joy the foil-tipped flask that the hospitable merchants who answered his appeal for succour had despatched; and as he quaffed its contents, recalled how he and Livingstone, when thousands of miles from any other European, had emptied a bottle of sparkling Champagne together on the night of their memorable meeting at Ujiji. And when, after the battle of Ulundi, the victorious British troops occupied Cetewayo's kraal, they found within the sable potentate's private chamber several empty Champagne bottles, the contents of which, it is to be presumed, he had quaffed the night before to the success of his followers. In the Transvaal too, during the negotiations for an armistice, Sir Evelyn Wood regaled the Boer delegates with Champagne. On a subsequent occasion, the latter were unable to return the compliment, excusing themselves by suggestively remarking, 'We don't take such things with us when we go to fight.'

VI.

/Reims and its Champagne Establishments./

The city of Reims--Its historical associations--The Cathedral--Its
western front one of the most splendid conceptions of the
thirteenth century--The sovereigns crowned within its
walls--Present aspect of the ancient archiepiscopal city--The
woollen manufactures and other industries of Reims--The city
undermined with the cellars of the great Champagne firms--Reims
hotels--Gothic house in the Rue du Bourg St. Denis--Renaissance
house in the Rue de Vesle--Church of St. Jacques: its gateway
and quaint weathercock--The Rue des Tapissiers and the Chapter
Court--The long tapers used at religious processions--The Place
des Marchés and its ancient houses--The Hôtel de Ville--Statue
of Louis XIII.--The Rues de la Prison and du Temple--Messrs.
Werlé & Co., successors to the Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin--Their
offices and cellars on the site of a former Commanderie of the
Templars--Origin of the celebrity of Madame Clicquot's wines--M.
Werlé and his son--Remains of the Commanderie--The forty-five
cellars of the Clicquot-Werlé establishment--Our tour of inspection
through them--Ingenious dosing machine--An explosion and its
consequences--M. Werlé's gallery of paintings--Madame Clicquot's
Renaissance house and its picturesque bas-reliefs--The Werlé
vineyards and vendangeoirs.

The ancient city of Reims is pleasantly situate in a spacious natural basin, surrounded by calcareous hills, for the most part planted with vines. It is fertile in historical associations, rich in archæological treasures, and at the same time able to claim the respect more readily accorded in the nineteenth century to a busy and prosperous commercial centre. Indeed, its historical, archæological, and commercial importance is in advance of its actual political situation, for administratively it only ranks as a simple subprefecture in the department of the Marne. The student of history can hardly afford to neglect a city so intimately associated with the story of monarchy in France, and one which has witnessed the coronations of a long series of sovereigns, beginning with Clovis and ending with Charles X. From the day when the 'proud Sicamber' bent his neck at the adjuration of St. Remi, and vowed to adore that which he had burnt and to burn that which he had adored, down to the time when the future exile of Holyrood had his forehead touched by Jean Baptiste Antoine de Latil with the remnant of the 'sacred pomatum' so miraculously saved from revolutionary hands, few of the titular rulers of the country have failed to honour it with their presence. As the Durocortorum of Cæsar, the residence of Charlemagne, the seat of the great Ecclesiastical Councils of the twelfth century, the stronghold of the League, and the scene of one of the first Napoleon's most brilliant feats of arms during the campaign of 1813-14, it has also earned for itself a conspicuous place in history. To Englishmen it is, perhaps, most noteworthy as having successfully checked the victorious advance of the third Edward after Cressy, and witnessed the apogee of that meteoric career, which began in the inn-yard at Domremi and ended in the market-place at Rouen, the career of Jeanne la Pucelle. Nor must it be forgotten that Reims sheltered the childhood of Mary Stuart, and saw the heralds of England hurl solemn defiance at Henri II. in the Abbey of St. Remi, at the command of Mary Tudor.

To the archæologist as to the ordinary sightseer, the chief attractions presented by Reims consist in its numerous ecclesiastical edifices, some still serving the purpose for which they were originally erected, others long since converted to secular usages. Most conspicuous among them is the cathedral church of Notre Dame, the stately basilica in which the sovereigns of France were wont to be crowned. This superb monument of Gothic architecture was commenced in 1210, upon the plans of Robert de Coucy, by Archbishop Alberic de Humbert. It was completed at the commencement of the fourteenth century, and though the original design was somewhat modified--owing, it is said, to the contributions of the faithful not coming in with sufficient rapidity--it remains a marvel of strength, admirably combined with grace. The exterior is extremely fine; and the western face, with its elaborately ornate portal, has been described as 'one of the most splendid conceptions of the thirteenth century.'[422] Amidst the almost bewildering multiplicity of ornament, the triple porch, surmounted by a group representing the Coronation of the Virgin, the great rose window, flanked by colossal effigies of David and Goliath, and the range of statues known as the Gallery of the Kings, running across the façade near its summit, are conspicuous. The interior, although fine, and containing many objects of interest, is less impressive, while the plundered treasury can still boast of many quaint and curious relics of bygone times. But the chief interest centres in the fact of the surrounding walls having witnessed so many scenes of stately pomp and pageantry. St. Louis, Philip the Fair, Philip of Valois, the unfortunate John the Good, Charles the Simple, and Charles the Victorious, with Joan of Arc, standard in hand, by his side; the wily Louis XI., Louis the Father of his People, the magnificent Francis I., and his scarcely less magnificent son, the young husband of Mary Queen of Scots; the savage Charles IX., Henri III., with his protest that the crown hurt him, Louis the Just, the Roi Soleil himself, Louis the Well-Beloved, the hapless Louis Seize, and Charles X., have all knelt here in turns whilst the crown was placed on their heads, the sword girded to their sides, and the oriflamme waved above them.

Many of the most famous cities of the Middle Ages are mere fossilised representatives of former grandeur, but with Reims the case is otherwise. If somewhat fallen from its former high estate, politically speaking--though it should be remembered that Troyes was the titular capital of the Champagne when the province was ruled by independent Counts--its material prosperity has augmented. Round the nucleus of narrow and often tortuous streets, representing the old archiepiscopal city--the 'Little Rome' of the twelfth century--a network of spacious thoroughfares and broad boulevards has spread itself, and the life and movement of a busy manufacturing population are not lacking. In addition to the wine trade, which of course employs, both directly and indirectly, a large number of hands, Reims is one of the most important seats of the woollen manufacture in France, and the industrial element forms a very important factor amongst its inhabitants. In addition to the flannels, merinoes, blankets, trouserings, shawls, &c., that are annually produced, to the value of from thirty to forty million of francs, there is also a considerable production of gingerbread, biscuits, and dried pears, enjoying a wide-spread reputation.

The cellars of the great Champagne manufacturers of Reims are scattered in all directions over the historical old city. They undermine its narrowest and most insignificant streets, its broad and handsome boulevards, and on the eastern side extend beyond its more distant outskirts. In whichever direction we may elect to proceed when visiting the principal Champagne establishments, our starting-point will necessarily be the vicinity of the Cathedral, for it is here that all the hotels are situated. Facing the great western doorway of the ancient Gothic edifice is the Hôtel Lion d'Or, formerly the Hôtel Petit Moulinet, where the allied sovereigns sojourned on their way to Paris in 1814, and Napoleon rested on his flight after the battle of Waterloo. Close by is the Hôtel Maison Rouge, with the commemorative tablet on its renovated façade setting forth that in the year 1429, at the coronation of Charles VII. in this hostelry, then named the Striped Ass, the father and mother of Jeanne Darc were lodged at the expense of the city council. Almost facing is the newly-erected Grand Hôtel, and on the north-western side of the Cathedral is the Hôtel de Commerce, the resort, as its name implies, of most of the commercial travellers frequenting the capital of the Champagne. The visitor to Reims, be his object business or pleasure, is bound to put up at one or other of these four hostelries, and hence the starting-point of his peregrinations is necessarily the same.

Proceeding along the Rue Tronçon Ducoudray, we reached the Rue de Vesle, where the Palais de Justice and the new theatre are situated. In the adjacent Rue du Bourg St. Denis is an old house--the ground-floor of which is a wine-shop styled Buvette du Théâtre--notable for its antique Gothic doorway, containing, within the upper portion of the arch, the bas-relief of a man fighting with a bear. There is a tradition that on this spot formerly stood a hospital dedicated to St. Hubert, and intended for the reception of persons wounded when hunting, or who might have chanced to be bitten by mad dogs. In the Rue de Vesle is another old house with an ornamental frieze surmounting its façade, which looks on to one of the entrances of the Church of St. Jacques. This edifice, originally erected at the close of the twelfth century, is hemmed in on all sides by venerable-looking buildings, while above them rises its tapering steeple, surmounted by a mediæval weathercock in the form of an angel. The interior of the church presents a curious jumble of architectural styles from early Gothic to late Renaissance. One noteworthy object of art which it contains is a life-size crucifix carved by Pierre Jacques, a Remois sculptor of the days of the Good King Henri, and from an anatomical point of view a perfect _chef-d'[oe]uvre_.

The Rue de Vesle merges into the Rue des Tapissiers, where in former times the carpet manufacturers of Reims had their warehouses. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the carpets of Reims were as famous in France as those of Aubusson are to-day, but subsequently they began to decline. Half-way up this street--where, by the way, in 1694 the first numbers of the _Gazette de France_, the oldest existing French newspaper, were printed, the news being duly forwarded from Paris--we pass the ancient gateway leading to the chapter-court of the Cathedral. Within the court a weekly market of small wares is now held; but in the days when the archbishops, dukes, and peers of Reims wielded sovereign sway in the capital of the Champagne, this open space was a _champ clos_, where trials by battle took place. The surrounding buildings comprised residences for various ecclesiastics connected with the Cathedral, together with a small farm whence these epicurean priests derived their supply of fresh milk and fatted capons. According to ancient custom, the inhabitants of the houses facing the chapter-gateway were required to keep their doors and windows open on days of religious processions, the tapers carried by the clergy on these occasions being of such immoderate length that it was necessary to incline them, and run them into the doors and windows of the houses opposite when the bearers passed under the archway.

At the end of the Rue des Tapissiers is the handsome Place Royale, connected with the Place des Marchés by a broad rectangular street lined with lofty edifices in the modern Parisian style of architecture. A break ensues in this range of massive-looking buildings as we enter the ancient Place des Marchés, the forum of Roman Reims, and to-day bordered more or less by houses of a mediæval character, remarkably well preserved. Principal among these is a Gothic timber-house of the fifteenth century, with its projecting upper stories supported by elaborately-carved corbels, and its entire façade enriched with mouldings and finials, and with columns and capitals overlaid with sculptured ornaments.

Some little distance beyond the Place des Marchés is the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, which derives all its interest from the handsome-looking edifice in the florid Italian style of the early part of the seventeenth century which gives it its name. The façade of this building is profusely decorated with Ionic, Doric, and Corinthian columns, and on the pediment above the principal entrance is a bas-relief equestrian statue of Louis XIII., whom the Latin inscription beneath fulsomely characterises as 'the just, the pious, the victorious, the clement, the beloved of his people, the terror of his enemies, and the delight of the world,' and to whom 'the senate and inhabitants of Reims have raised this imperishable trophy.' Some century and a half later, however, the imperishable trophy got hurled down and shattered into fragments by the populace, and its vacant place was only filled by the present statue in the year 1818.

To the right of the Place is the Chambre des Notaires of Reims, raised on the site of the ancient _présidial_, or court of justice, where the city magistrates used to be elected during the Middle Ages, and to which a chapel and a prison were attached. The latter building evidently gave its name to the adjoining Rue de la Prison, the gloomy-looking houses of which--of a more massive character than the gabled structures of the market-place and the Rue de l'Etape--with their formidably-barred windows, possible relics of the religious wars, seem to frown, as it were, upon the passer-by. In a narrow tortuous street leading from this thoroughfare Messrs. Werlé & Co., the successors of the famous Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, have their offices and cellars, on the site of a former Commanderie of the Templars; and strangers passing by this quiet spot would scarcely imagine that under their feet hundreds of busy hands are incessantly at work, disgorging, dosing, shaking, corking, storing, wiring, labelling, capsuling, waxing, tinfoiling, and packing hundreds of thousands of bottles of Champagne destined for all parts of the civilised world.

The house of Clicquot, established in the year 1798 by the husband of La Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, who died in 1866, in her 89th year, was indebted for much of the celebrity of its wine to the lucky accident of the Russians occupying Reims in 1814 and 1815, and freely requisitioning the sweet Champagne stored in the widow's capacious cellars. Madame Clicquot's wines were slightly known in Russia prior to this date; but the officers of the invading army, on their return home, proclaimed their merits throughout the length and breadth of the Muscovite Empire, and the fortune of the house was made. Madame Clicquot, as every one knows, amassed enormous wealth, and succeeded in marrying both her daughter and granddaughter to counts of the _ancien régime_.

The present head of the firm is M. Werlé, who comes of an old Lorraine family although born in the ancient free imperial town of Wetzlar on the Lahn, where Goethe lays the scene of his 'Sorrows of Werther,' the leading incidents of which really occurred there. M. Werlé entered the establishment which he has done so much to raise to its existing position so far back as the year 1821. His care and skill, exercised for nearly two-thirds of a century, have largely contributed to obtain for the Clicquot brand that high repute which it enjoys to-day all over the world. M. Werlé, who has long been naturalised in France, was for many years Mayor of Reims and President of its Chamber of Commerce, as well as one of the deputies of the Marne to the Corps Législatif. He enjoys the reputation of being the richest man in Reims, and, like his late partner, Madame Clicquot, he has also secured brilliant alliances for his children, his son, M. Alfred Werlé, having married the daughter of the Duc de Montebello, while his daughter espoused the son of M. Magne, Minister of Finance under the Second Empire.

BUS AND BACCHUS.]

Half-way down the narrow Rue du Temple is an ancient gateway, on which may be traced the half-effaced sculptured heads of Ph[oe]bus and Bacchus. Immediately in front is a green _porte-cochère_ forming the entrance to the Clicquot-Werlé establishment, and conducting to a spacious trim-kept courtyard, set off with a few trees, with some extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remois Commanderie of the Knights Templars existed until the epoch of the Great Revolution, and today a few fragments of the ancient buildings remain adjacent to the 'celliers' of the establishment, which are reached through a pair of folding-doors and down a flight of stone steps. The date of the foundation of this Commanderie is uncertain, but it is known that a Templar's church occupied a portion of the site in 1170. In 1311 both the church and the Commanderie passed into possession of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which held them until the epoch of the Revolution. Formerly the _échevins_ of Reims used to be elected in the ancient hall of the Commanderie, which at one period was a sanctuary for debtors, and also for criminals. Early in the present century the buildings were sold and demolished.

Arms of the Knight of Malta.

DEVICES FROM THE COMMANDERIE AT REIMS.]

After being furnished with lighted candles, we set out on our tour of inspection of the Clicquot-Werlé establishment, entering first of all the vast cellar of St. Paul, where the thousands of bottles requiring to be daily shaken are reposing necks downward on the large perforated tables which crowd the apartment. It is a peculiarity that each of the Clicquot-Werlé cellars--forty-five in number, and the smallest among them a vast apartment--has its special name. In the adjoining cellar of St. Matthew other bottles are similarly arranged, and here wine in cask is likewise stored. We pass rows of huge tuns, each holding its twelve or thirteen hundred gallons of fine reserved wine designed for blending with more youthful growths; next, are threading our way between seemingly endless piles of hogsheads filled with later vintages, and anon are passing smaller casks containing the syrup with which the _vin préparé_ is dosed. At intervals we come upon some square opening in the floor through which bottles of wine are being hauled up from the cellars beneath in readiness to receive their requisite adornment before being packed in baskets or cases, according to the country to which they are destined to be despatched. To Russia the Clicquot Champagne is sent in cases containing sixty bottles, while the cases for China contain as many as double that number.

The ample cellarage which the house possesses has enabled M. Werlé to make many experiments which firms with less space at their command would find it difficult to carry out on the same satisfactory scale. Such, for instance, is the system of racks in which the bottles repose while the wine undergoes its diurnal shaking. Instead of these racks being, as is commonly the case, at almost upright angles, they are perfectly horizontal, which, in M. Werlé's opinion, offers a material advantage, inasmuch as the bottles are all in readiness for disgorging at the same time, instead of the lower ones being ready before those above, as is the case when the ancient system is followed, owing to the uppermost bottles getting less shaken than the others.

After performing the round of the celliers we descend into the _caves_, a complete labyrinth of gloomy underground corridors excavated in the bed of chalk which underlies the city, and roofed and walled with solid masonry, more or less blackened by age. In one of these cellars we catch sight of rows of workpeople engaged in the operation of dosing, corking, securing, and shaking the bottles of wine which have just left the hands of the _dégorgeur_ by the dim light of half-a-dozen tallow-candles. The latest invention for liqueuring the wine is being employed. Formerly, to prevent the carbonic acid gas escaping from the bottles while the process of liqueuring was going on, it was necessary to press a gutta-percha ball connected with the machine, in order to force the escaping gas back. The new machine, however, renders this unnecessary, the gas, by its own power and composition, forcing itself back into the wine.

In the adjoining cellar of St. Charles are stacks of bottles awaiting the manipulation of the _dégorgeur_; while in that of St. Ferdinand men are engaged in examining other bottles before lighted candles, to make certain that the sediment is thoroughly dislodged, and the wine perfectly clear before the disgorgement is effected. Here, too, the corking, wiring, and stringing of the newly-disgorged wine are going on. Another flight of steps leads to the second tier of cellars, where the moisture trickles down the dank dingy walls, and save the dim light thrown out by the candles we carried, and by some other far-off flickering taper, stuck in a cleft stick, to direct the workmen, who with dexterous turns of their wrists, give a twist to the bottles, all is darkness. On every side bottles are reposing in various attitudes, the majority in huge square piles on their sides, others in racks slightly tilted; others, again, almost standing on their heads, while some, which through overinflation have come to grief, litter the floor and crunch beneath our feet. Tablets are hung against each stack of wine indicating its age, and from time to time a bottle is held up before the light to show us how the sediment commences to form, or to explain how it eventually works its way down the neck of the bottle, and finally settles on the cork. Suddenly we are startled by a loud report, resembling a pistol-shot, which reverberates through the vaulted chamber, as a bottle close at hand explodes, dashing out its heavy bottom as neatly as though it had been cut by a diamond, and dislocating the necks and pounding-in the sides of its immediate neighbours. The wine trickles down, and eventually finds its way along the sloping sides of the slippery floor to the narrow gutter in the centre.

(From the painting by Léon Coignet).]

Ventilating shafts pass from one tier of cellars to the other, enabling the temperature in a certain measure to be regulated, and thereby obviate an excess of breakage. M. Werlé estimates that the loss in this respect during the first eighteen months of a cuvée amounts to 7 per cent, but subsequently is considerably less. In 1862 one Champagne manufacturer lost as much as 45 per cent of his wine by breakages. The Clicquot cuvée is made in the cave of St. William, where 120 hogsheads of wine are hauled up by means of a crane, and discharged into the vat daily as long as the operation lasts. The tirage, or bottling of the wine, ordinarily commences in the middle of May, and occupies fully a month.

M. Werlé's private residence is close to the establishment in the Rue du Temple, and here he has collected a small gallery of high-class modern paintings by French and other artists, including Meissonier's 'Card-players,' Delaroche's 'Beatrice Cenci on her way to Execution,' Fleury's 'Charles V. picking up the brush of Titian,' various works by the brothers Scheffer, Knaus's highly-characteristic _genre_ picture, 'His Highness on a Journey,' and several fine portraits, among which is one of Madame Clicquot, painted by Léon Coignet, when she was eighty years of age, and another of M. Werlé by the same artist, regarded as a _chef-d'[oe]uvre_. Before her father's death Madame Clicquot used to reside in the Rue de Marc, some short distance from the cellars in which her whole existence centred, in a handsome Renaissance house, said to have had some connection with the row of palaces that at one time lined the neighbouring and then fashionable Rue du Tambour. This, however, is extremely doubtful. A number of interesting and well-preserved bas-reliefs decorate one of the façades of the house looking on to the court. The figures are of the period of François Premier and his son Henri II., who inaugurated his reign with a comforting edict for the Protestants, ordaining that blasphemers were to have their tongues pierced with red-hot irons, and heretics to be burnt alive, and who had the ill-luck to lose his eye and life through a lance-thrust of the Comte de Montgomerie, captain of his Scotch guards, whilst jousting with him at a tournament held in honour of the marriage of his daughter Isabelle with the gloomy widower of Queen Mary of England, of sanguinary fame.

The first of these bas-reliefs represents two soldiers of the Swiss guard, the next a Turk and Slav tilting at each other, and then comes a scroll entwined round a thistle, and inscribed with this enigmatical motto: 'Giane le sur ou rien.' In the third bas-relief a couple of passionate Italians are winding up a gambling dispute with a hand-to-hand combat, in the course of which table and cards have got canted over; the fourth presents us with two French knights, armed _cap-à-pie_, engaged in a tourney; while in the fifth and last a couple of German lansquenets essay their gladiatorial skill with their long and dangerous weapons. Several years back a tablet was discovered in one of the cellars of the house, inscribed 'Ci-gist vénérable religieux maistre Pierre Derclé, docteur en théologie, jadis prieur de céans. Priez Dieu pour luy. 1486,' which would almost indicate that the house had originally a religious character, although the warlike spirit of the bas-reliefs decorating it renders any such supposition with regard to the existing building untenable. We should mention that the spaces above the _porte cochère_, and the window by its side, are occupied by four medallions, which present that curious mingling of classic and contemporary styles for which the epoch of the Renaissance was remarkable.

The Messrs. Werlé own numerous acres of vineyards, comprising the very finest situations in the well-known districts of Verzenay, Bouzy, Le Mesnil, and Oger, at all of which places they have vendangeoirs or pressing-houses of their own. Their establishment at Verzenay contains seven presses, that at Bouzy eight, at Le Mesnil six, and at Oger two, in addition to which grapes are pressed under their own supervision at Ay, Avize, and Cramant, in vendangeoirs belonging to their friends.

Since the death of Madame Clicquot the legal style of the firm has been 'Werlé & Co., successors to Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin,' the mark, of which M. Werlé and his son are the sole proprietors, still remaining 'Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin,' while the corks of the bottles are branded with the words 'V. Clicquot-P. Werlé,' encircling the figure of a comet. The style of the wine--light, delicate, elegant, and fragrant--is familiar to all connoisseurs of Champagne. What, however, is not equally well known is that within the last few years the firm, in obedience to the prevailing taste, have introduced a perfectly dry wine of corresponding quality to the richer wine which made the fortune of the house, and gave enduring fame to the Clicquot brand.

VII.

/Reims and its Champagne Establishments/ _(continued)_.

The house of Louis Roederer founded by a plodding German
named Schreider--The central and other establishments of the
firm--Ancient house in the Rue des Elus--The gloomy-looking Rue
des Deux Anges and prison-like aspect of its houses--Inside
their courts the scene changes--Handsome Renaissance house and
garden, a former abode of the canons of the Cathedral--The
Place Royale--The Hôtel des Fermes and the statue of the 'wise,
virtuous, and magnanimous Louis XV.'--Birthplace of Colbert in
the Rue de Cérès--Quaint Adam and Eve gateway in the Rue de
l'Arbalète--Heidsieck & Co.'s central establishment in the Rue de
Sedan--Their famous 'Monopole' brand--The firm founded in the last
century--Their extensive cellars inside and outside Reims--The
matured wines shipped by them--The Boulevard du Temple--M. Ernest
Irroy's cellars, vineyards, and vendangeoirs--Recognition by the
Reims Agricultural Association of his plantations of vines--His
wines and their popularity at the best London clubs--Various
Champagne firms located in this quarter of Reims--The Rue du
Tambour and the famous House of the Musicians--The Counts de la
Marck assumed former occupants of the latter--The Brotherhood of
Minstrels of Reims--Périnet & Fils' establishment in the Rue St.
Hilaire--Their cellars of three stories in solid masonry--Their
soft, light, and delicate wines--A rare still Verzenay--The firm's
high-class Extra Sec.

The house of Louis Roederer, originally founded by a plodding German named Schreider, was content to pursue the sleepy tenor of its way for some years--until indeed it suddenly felt prompted to lay siege to the Muscovite connection of La Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, and secure a market for its wine at Moscow and St. Petersburg. It next opened up the United States, and finally introduced its brand into England. The house possesses cellars in various parts of Reims, and has its offices in one of the oldest quarters of the city--namely, the Rue des Elus, or ancient Rue des Juifs, where the old synagogue formerly stood, and the records of which date as far back as 1103.

At the corner of this street, and abutting on the Place des Marchés, is a curious old house, the overhanging upper stories of which are supported by huge massive carved brackets, decorated with figures more or less quaint in design. M. Louis Roederer's offices in the Rue des Elus are at the farther end of a courtyard, beyond which is found a second court, where carts laden with cases of Champagne seem to indicate that some portion of the shipping business of the house is here carried on. Several requests made by us for permission to visit M. Louis Roederer's establishments having been refused, it is only of their external appearance that we are competent to speak. One of them, in the Boulevard du Temple, is distinguished by a rather imposing façade, and has a carved head of Bacchus surmounting its _porte-cochère_; while the principal establishment, a picturesque range of buildings of considerable extent, is situated in the neighbouring Rue de la Justice.

Leading from the Rue des Elus into the Rue de Vesle is a gloomy-looking ancient street known as the Rue des Deux Anges, all the houses of which have their windows secured by iron gratings, and their massive doors thickly studded with huge nails. These prison-like façades, which in all probability refer to the epoch of the religious wars, succeed each other in lugubrious monotony along either side of the way; but gain admittance to their inner courts, and quite a different scene presents itself. In one notable instance, looking on to a pleasant little flower-garden, we found a small but charming Renaissance house, with its windows ornamented with elaborate mouldings, and surmounted by graceful sculptured heads, while at one corner there rose up a tower with a sun-dial displayed on its front. In this and in an adjoining house the canons of the cathedral were accustomed to reside in the days when something like four-fifths of the city were the property of the Church.

Proceeding along the Rue de Vesle and the neighbouring Rue des Tapissiers, we find ourselves once more in the Place Royale, the principal side of which is occupied by the once notable Hôtel des Fermes, where, in the days of the _ancien régime_, the farmers-general of the Champagne were accustomed to receive the revenues of the province. A bronze statue rises in the centre of the Place, which from its Roman costume and martial bearing might be taken for some hero of antiquity, did not the inscription on the pedestal apprise us that it is intended for the 'wise, virtuous, and magnanimous Louis XV.,' a misuse of terms which has caused a Transatlantic Republican to characterise the monument as a brazen lie. Leading out of the Place Royale is the Rue de Cérès, in which there is a modernised sixteenth-century house claiming to be the birthplace, on the 29th August 1619, of Jean Baptiste Colbert, son of a Reims wool-merchant, and the famous minister who did so much to consolidate the finances of the State which the royal voluptuary, masquerading at Reims in Roman garb, afterwards made such dreadful havoc of.

(From a portrait of the time).]

We again cross the Place des Marchés, at the farther end of which, on the left-hand side, is the Rue de l'Arbalète, notable for a curious Renaissance gateway, with its pediment supported by two life-size figures, which the Rémois, for no very sufficient reason, have popularly christened Adam and Eve. Beyond the Place des Marchés and the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, and at no great distance from the Clicquot-Werlé establishment, is the narrow winding Rue de Sedan, where the old-established firm of Heidsieck & Co., which has secured a high-class reputation in both eastern and western hemispheres for its famous Monopole and Dry Monopole brands, has its central offices. The original firm dates back to 1785, when France was struggling with those financial difficulties that a few years later culminated in that great social upheaving which kept Europe in a state of turmoil for more than a quarter of a century. Among the archives of the firm is a patent, bearing the signature of the Minister of the Prussian Royal Household, appointing Heidsieck & Co. purveyors of Champagne to Frederick William III. The Champagne-drinking Hohenzollern _par excellence_, however, was the son and successor of the preceding, who, from habitual over-indulgence in the exhilarating sparkling beverage during the last few years of his reign, acquired the _sobriquet_ of King Clicquot.

On passing through the large _porte-cochère_ giving entrance to Messrs. Heidsieck's principal establishment, one finds oneself in a small courtyard, with the surrounding buildings overgrown with ivy and venerable vines. On the left is a dwelling-house enriched with elaborate mouldings and cornices, and at the farther end of the court is the entrance to the cellars, surmounted by a sun-dial bearing the date 1829. The latter, however, is no criterion of the age of the buildings themselves, as these were occupied by the firm at its foundation, towards the close of the last century. We are first conducted into an antiquated-looking low cellier, the roof of which is sustained with rude timber supports, and here bottles of wine are being labelled and packed, although this is but a mere adjunct to the adjacent spacious packing-room, provided with its loading platform and communicating directly with the public road. At the time of our visit this hall was gaily decorated with flags and inscriptions, the day before having been the fête of St. Jean, when the firm entertain the people in their employ with a banquet and a ball, at which the choicest wine of the house liberally flows. From the packing-room we descend into the cellars, which, like all the more ancient vaults in Reims, have been constructed on no regular plan. Here we thread our way between piles after piles of bottles, many of which, having passed through the hands of the disgorger, are awaiting their customary adornment. The lower tier of cellars is mostly stored with _vin sur pointe_, and bottles with their necks downward are encountered in endless monotony along a score or more of long galleries. The only variation in our lengthened promenade is when we come upon some solitary workman engaged in his monotonous task of shaking his 30,000 or 40,000 bottles per diem.