IV.

/The Vintage in the Champagne./

Period of the Champagne vintage--Vintagers summoned by beat of drum--Early morning the best time for plucking the grapes--Excitement in the neighbouring villages at vintage-time--Vintagers at work--Mules employed to convey the gathered grapes down the steeper slopes--The fruit carefully examined before being taken to the wine-press--Arrival of the grapes at the vendangeoir--They are subjected to three squeezes, and then to the 'rébêche'--The must is pumped into casks and left to ferment--Only a few of the vine-proprietors in the Champagne press their own grapes--The prices the grapes command--Air of jollity throughout the district during the vintage--Every one is interested in it, and profits by it--Vintagers' fête on St. Vincent's-day--Endless philandering between the sturdy sons of toil and the sunburnt daughters of labour.

[Illustration: WINE-PRESS IN THE CHAMPAGNE.]

When the weather has been exceedingly propitious, the vintage in the Champagne commences as early as the third week in September, and in good average years the pickers set to work during the first week of October. If, however, the summer has been an indifferent one, and only an inferior vintage is looked forward to, it is scarcely before the latter half of October that the gathering of the grapes is proceeded with. There is no vintage-ban in the Champagne, as in Burgundy and other parts of France; but, as a rule, the growers of Ay and of the neighbouring slopes commence operations a week or more earlier than those of the Mountain of Reims, whilst around Cramant and Avize, the white-grape region, the vintagers usually set to work when in the other districts they have nearly finished.

[Illustration: THE CHAMPAGNE VINTAGE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF EPERNAY.]

The pleasantest season of the year to visit the Champagne is certainly during the vintage. When this is about to commence, the vintagers--some of whom come from Sainte Menehould, forty miles distant, while others hail from as far as Lorraine--are summoned at daybreak by beat of drum in the market-places of the villages adjacent to the vineyards, and then and there a price is made for the day's labour. This, as we have already explained, is generally either a franc and a half, with food consisting of three meals, or two francs and a half, rising on exceptional occasions to three francs, without food, children being paid a franc and a half. The rate of wage satisfactorily arranged, the gangs start off to the vineyards, headed by their overseers.

The picking ordinarily commences with daylight, and the vintagers assert that the grapes gathered at sunrise always produce the lightest and most limpid wine. Moreover by plucking the grapes when the early morning sun is upon them, they are believed to yield a fourth more juice. Later on in the day, too, spite of all precautions, it is impossible to prevent some of the detached grapes from partially fermenting, which frequently suffices to give a slight excess of colour to the must, a thing especially to be avoided in a high-class Champagne. When the grapes have to be transported in open baskets for some distance to the press-house, jolting along the road either in carts or on the backs of mules, and exposed to the torrid rays of a bright autumnal sun, the juice expressed from the fruit, however dexterously the latter may be squeezed in the press, is occasionally of a positive purple tinge, and consequently useless for conversion into Champagne.

[Illustration]

At vintage-time everywhere is bustle and excitement; every one is big with the business in hand. In these ordinarily quiet little villages nestling amidst vine clad hollows, or perched half-way up a slope tinted from base to summit with richly-variegated hues, there is a perpetual pattering of sabots and a rattling and bumping of wheels over the roughly-paved streets. The majority of the inhabitants are afoot: the feeble feminine half, baskets on arm, thread their way with the juveniles through the rows of vines planted half-way up the mountain, and all aglow with their autumnal glories of green and purple, crimson and yellow; while the sturdy masculine portion are mostly passing to and fro between the press-houses and the wine-shops. Carts piled up with baskets, or crowded with peasants from a distance on their way to the vineyards, jostle the low railway-trucks laden with brand-new casks, and the somewhat rickety cabriolets of the agents of the big Champagne houses, who are reduced to clinch their final bargain for a hundred or more pièces of the peerless wine of Ay or Bouzy, Verzy or Verzenay, beside the reeking wine-press.

Dotting the steep slopes like a swarm of huge ants are a crowd of men, women, and children, the men, in blue blouses or stripped to their shirt-sleeves, being for the most part engaged in carrying the baskets to and fro and loading the carts; whilst the women, in closely-fitting neat white caps, or wearing old-fashioned unbleached straw-bonnets of the contemned coalscuttle type, resembling the 'sun-bonnet' of the Midland counties, together with the children, are intent on stripping the vines of their luscious-looking fruit. They detach the grapes with scissors or hooked knives, technically termed 'serpettes,' and in some vineyards proceed to remove all damaged, decayed, or unripe fruit from the bunches before placing them in the baskets which they carry on their arms, and the contents of which they empty from time to time into a larger basket resembling an ass's pannier in shape, numbers of these being dispersed about the vineyard for the purpose, and invariably in the shade. When filled the baskets are carried by a couple of men to the roadside, along which dwarf stones carved with initials, and indicating the boundaries of the respective properties, are encountered every eight or ten yards, into such narrow strips are the vineyards divided. Large carts with railed open sides are continually passing backwards and forwards to pick these baskets up; and when one has secured its load it is driven slowly to the neighbouring pressoir, so that the grapes may not be in the least degree shaken, such is the care observed throughout every stage of the process of Champagne manufacture. When the vineyard slopes are very steep--as, for instance, at Mareuil--and the paths do not admit of the approach of carts, mules, equipped with panniers and duly muzzled, are employed to convey the gathered fruit to the press-house.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

In many vineyards the grapes are inspected in bulk instead of in detail before being sent to the wine-press. The hand-baskets, when filled, are brought to a particular spot, where their contents are minutely examined by some half-dozen men and women, who pluck off the bruised, rotten, and unripe berries, and fling them aside into a separate basket. In other vineyards we came upon parties of girls, congregated round a wicker sieve perched on the top of a large tub by the roadside, engaged in sorting the grapes, pruning away the diseased stalks, and picking off all the doubtful berries. The latter were let fall through the interstices of the sieve, while the sound fruit was deposited in large baskets standing beside the sorters, and which, as soon as they were filled, were conveyed to the pressoir. When the proprietor is of an economic turn he usually has the refuse grapes pressed for wine for home consumption. Spite of the minute examination to which the grapes are subjected, a sharp eye will frequently discover in the heart of what looks like a regular and well-grown bunch a grape that is absolutely rotten, and capable of infecting its companions when the whole are heaped up together in the wine-press.

[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF THE GRAPES AT THE PRESS-HOUSE.]

[Illustration: THE VINTAGE IN THE CHAMPAGNE: A WINE-PRESS AT WORK.]

Carts laden with grapes are continually arriving at the pressoirs, discharging their loads and driving off for fresh ones. The piled-up baskets, marked with the names of the vineyard-owners whose grapes they contain, are temporarily stored under a shed in a cool place, and are brought into the pressoir from time to time as required. In the district of the River the grapes are weighed, while in that of the Mountain they are measured, before being emptied on to the floor of the press. In some places the latter is of the old-fashioned type, resembling the ordinary cider-press; but usually powerful presses of modern invention, worked by a large fly-wheel requiring four sturdy men to turn it, are employed. The grapes are spread over the floor of the press in a compact mass, and in some rare cases are lightly trodden by a couple of men with their naked feet before being subjected to mechanical pressure, which is again and again repeated, only the first squeeze giving a high-class wine, and the second and third a relatively inferior one. After three pressures the grapes are usually worked about with peels, and subjected to a final squeeze known as the 'rébêche,' which produces a sort of _piquette_, given to the workmen to drink, but in many instances forming the habitual, and indeed only, beverage of the economically-inclined peasant proprietor.

The must filters through a wicker basket into the reservoir beneath, whence, after remaining a certain time to allow of its ridding itself of the grosser lees, it is pumped through a gutta-percha tube into the casks. The wooden stoppers of the bungholes, instead of being fixed tightly in the apertures, are simply laid over them, and after the lapse of ten or twelve days fermentation usually commences, and during its progress the must, which is originally of a pale-pink tint, fades to a light-straw colour. The wine usually remains undisturbed until Christmas, when it is drawn off into fresh casks and delivered to the purchaser.

One peculiarity of the Champagne district is that, contrary to the prevailing practice in the other wine-producing regions of France, where the owner of even a single acre of vines will crush his grapes himself, only a limited number of vine-proprietors press their own grapes. The large Champagne houses, possessing vineyards, always have their pressoirs in the neighbourhood, and other large vine-proprietors press the grapes they grow; but the multitude of small cultivators invariably sell the produce of their vineyards to one or other of the former at a certain rate, either by weight or else by caque, a measure estimated to hold sixty kilogrammes (equal to 132 lb. avoirdupois) of grapes. The price which the fruit fetches varies of course according to the quality of the vintage and the requirements of the manufacturers; but the average may be taken at about 80 centimes per kilogramme, equivalent to rather more than 3-1/2_d._ per lb.[409]

[Illustration]

If in the Champagne the picturesque rejoicings immortalised in the Italian vintage scenes of Léopold Robert are lacking, and if the grapes, instead of being trodden to the blithe accompaniment of flute and fiddle, as in some parts of France, are pressed in more quiet fashion, a pleasant air of jollity nevertheless pervades the district at the season of the vintage. Every one participates in the interest which this excites. It influences the takings of all the artificers and all the tradespeople, and brings grist to the mill of the baker and the bootmaker, as well as to the café and cabaret. The contending interests of capital and labour are, moreover, singularly satisfied, the vintagers being content at getting their two francs and a half a day, and the men at the pressoirs their three francs and their food; the vineyard proprietor reaping the return of the time, care, and money expended upon his patch of vines, and the Champagne manufacturer acquiring raw material on sufficiently satisfactory terms, the which, when duly guaranteed by his name and brand, will bring to him both fame and fortune.

Should the vintage be a scanty one, the plethoric _commissionnaires-en-vins_ will wipe their perspiring foreheads with satisfaction when they have at last secured the full number of hogsheads they had been instructed to buy--at a high figure maybe; still this is no disadvantage to them, as their commission mounts up the higher. And even the thickest-skulled among the small vine-proprietors, who make all their calculations on their fingers, see at a glance that, although the crop may be no more than half an average one, they are gainers, thanks to the ill-disguised anxiety of the agents to secure all the wine they require, which has the effect of sending prices up to nearly double those of ordinary years, and this with only half the work in the vineyard and at the winepress to be done.

[Illustration]

The vintage in the Champagne comes to a close without any of those festivals which still linger in the department of the Gironde. On the 22d of January, the fête of St. Vincent, the patron saint of vine-growers, it is customary, however, for one of the proprietors in each village to pay for a mass and give a breakfast to his relatives and friends, at which he presents a bouquet to one of the guests, who, in his turn, is expected to pay for the mass and give the breakfast the year following. On the same day the proprietors entertain their workpeople, who, after having eaten and drunk their fill, wind up the day with song and dance, leading to no end of innocent philandering between the sturdy sons of toil and the sunburnt daughters of labour. On these occasions the famous vintage song is sometimes heard:

'Vendangeons et vive la France, Le monde un jour avec nous trinquera.'

[Illustration]

[Illustration: THE DISGORGING, LIQUEURING, CORKING, STRINGING, AND WIRING OF CHAMPAGNE.]