I.

/Sparkling Saumur and Sparkling Sauternes./

The sparkling wines of the Loire often palmed off as Champagne--The finer qualities improve with age--Anjou the cradle of the Plantagenet kings--Saumur and its dominating feudal Château and antique Hôtel de Ville--Its sinister Rue des Payens and steep tortuous Grande Rue--The vineyards of the Coteau of Saumur--Abandoned stone-quarries converted into dwellings--The vintage in progress--Old-fashioned pressoirs--The making of the wine--Touraine the favourite residence of the earlier French monarchs--After a night's carouse at the epoch of the Renaissance--The Vouvray vineyards--Balzac's picture of La Vallée Coquette--The village of Vouvray and the Château of Moncontour--Vernou, with its reminiscences of Sully and Pépin-le-Bref--The vineyards around Saumur--Remarkable ancient Dolmens--Ackerman-Laurance's establishment at Saint-Florent--Their extensive cellars, ancient and modern--Treatment of the newly-vintaged wine--The cuvée--Proportions of wine from black and white grapes--The bottling and disgorging of the wine and finishing operations--The Château of Varrains and the establishment of M. Louis Duvau aîné--His cellars a succession of gloomy galleries--The disgorging of the wine accomplished in a melodramatic-looking cave--M. Duvau's vineyard--His sparkling Saumur of various ages--Marked superiority of the more matured samples--M. E. Normandin's sparkling Sauternes manufactory at Châteauneuf--Angoulême and its ancient fortifications--Vin de Colombar--M. Normandin's sparkling Sauternes cuvée--His cellars near Châteauneuf--Recognition accorded to the wine at the Concours Régional d'Angoulême.

[Illustration]

After the Champagne, Anjou is the French province which ranks next in importance for its production of sparkling wines. Vintaged on the banks of the Loire, these are largely consigned to the English and other markets, labelled Crême de Bouzy, Sillery and Ay Mousseux, Cartes Noires and Blanches, and the like; while their corks are branded with the names of phantom firms, supposed to be located at Reims and Epernay. As a rule, these wines come from around Saumur; but they are not necessarily the worse on that account, for the district produces capital sparkling wines, the finer qualities of which improve greatly by being kept for a few years. One curious thing shown to us at Saumur was the album of a manufacturer of sparkling wines containing examples of the many hundred labels ticketed with which his produce had for years past been sold. Not one of these labels assigned to the wines the name of their real maker or their true birthplace, but introduced them under the auspices of mythical dukes and counts, as being manufactured at châteaux which are so many 'castles in Spain,' and as coming from Ay, Bouzy, Châlons, Epernay, Reims, and Verzenay, but never by any chance from Saumur.

Being produced from robuster growths than the sparkling wines of the Department of the Marne, sparkling Saumur will always lack that excessive lightness which is the crowning grace of fine Champagne; still, it has only to be kept for a few years, instead of being drunk shortly after its arrival from the wine-merchant, for its quality to become greatly improved and its intrinsic value to be considerably enhanced. We have drunk sparkling Saumur that had been in bottle for nearly twenty years, and found the wine not only remarkably delicate, but, singular to say, with plenty of effervescence.

[Illustration: STATUE OF RICHARD C[OE]UR DE LION AT FONTEVRAULT.]

To an Englishman Anjou is one of the most interesting of the ancient provinces of France. It was the cradle of the Plantagenet kings, and only ten miles from Saumur still repose the bones of Henry, the first Plantagenet, and Richard of the Lion Heart, beneath their elaborate coloured and gilt effigies, in the so-called Cimetière des Rois of the historic Abbey of Fontevrault. The famous vineyards of the Coteau de Saumur, eastward of the town and bordering the Loire, extend as far as here, and include the communes of Dampierre, Souzay, Varrains, Chacé, Parnay, Turquant, and Montsoreau, the last-named within three miles of Fontevrault, and chiefly remarkable through its seigneur of ill-fame, Jean de Chambes, who instigated his wife to lure Bussy d'Amboise to an assignation in order that he might the more surely poignard him. Saumur is picturesquely placed at the foot of this bold range of heights, near where the little river Thouet runs into the broad and rapid Loire. A massive-looking old château, perched on the summit of an isolated crag, stands out grandly against the clear sky and dominates the town, the older houses of which crouch at the foot of the lofty hill and climb its steepest sides. The restored antique Hôtel de Ville, in the Pointed style, with its elegant windows, graceful belfry, and florid wrought-iron balconies, stands back from the quay bordering the Loire. In the rear is the Rue des Payens, whither the last of the Huguenots of this 'metropolis of Protestantism,' as it was formerly styled, retired, converting their houses into so many fortresses to guard against being surprised by their Catholic adversaries. Adjacent is the steep tortuous Grande Rue, of which Balzac--himself a Tourangeau--has given such a graphic picture in his _Eugénie Grandet_, the scene of which is laid at Saumur. To-day, however, only a few of its ancient carved-timber houses, quaint overhanging corner turrets, and fantastically studded massive oak doors, have escaped demolition.

The vineyards of the Coteau de Saumur, yielding the finest wines, are reached by the road skirting the river, the opposite low banks of which are fringed with willows and endless rows of poplars, which at the time of our visit were already golden with the fading tints of autumn. Numerous fantastic windmills crown the heights, the summit of which is covered with vines, varied by dense patches of woodland. Here, as elsewhere along the banks of the Loire, the many abandoned quarries along the face of the hill have been turned by the peasants into cosy dwellings by simply walling-up the entrances, while leaving, of course, the necessary apertures for doors and windows. Dampierre, the first village reached, has many of these cave-dwellings, and numbers of its houses are picturesquely perched up the sides of the slope. The holiday costumes of the peasant women encountered in the neighbourhood of Saumur are exceedingly quaint, their elaborate and varied headdresses being counterparts of _coiffures_ in vogue so far back as three and four centuries ago.

[Illustration: PEASANT WOMEN OF THE ENVIRONS OF SAUMUR.]

Quitting the banks of the river, we ascend a steep tortuous road, shut in on either side by high stone walls--for hereabouts all the best vineyards are scrupulously enclosed--and finally reach the summit of the heights, whence a view is gained over what the Saumurois proudly style the grand valley of the Loire. Everywhere around the vintage is going on. The vines are planted rather more than a yard apart, and those yielding black grapes are trained, as a rule, up tall stakes, although some few are trained espalier fashion. Women dexterously detach the bunches with pruning-knives and throw them into the _seilles_--small squat buckets with wooden handles--the contents of which are emptied from time to time into baskets--the counterpart of the chiffonnier's _hotte_, and coated with pitch inside so as to close all the crevices of the wickerwork--which the _portes-bastes_ carry slung to their backs. When white wine is being made from black grapes for sparkling Saumur, the grapes are conveyed in these baskets to the underground pressoirs in the neighbouring villages before their skins get at all broken, in order that the wine may be as pale as possible in colour.

The black grape yielding the best wine in the Saumur district is the breton, said to be the same as the carbinet-sauvignon, the leading variety in the grand vineyards of the Médoc. Other species of black grapes cultivated around Saumur are the varennes, yielding a soft and insipid wine of no kind of value, and the liverdun, or large gamay, the prevalent grape in the Mâconnais, and the same which in the days of Philippe-le-Hardi the _parlements_ of Metz and Dijon interdicted the planting and cultivation of. The prevalent white grapes are the large and small pineau blanc, the bunches of the former being of an intermediate size, broad and pyramidal in shape, and with the berries close together. These have fine skins, are oblong in shape, and of a transparent yellowish-green hue tinged with red, are very sweet and juicy, and as a rule ripen late. As for the small pineau, the bunches are less compact, the berries are round and of a golden tint, are finer as well as sweeter in flavour, and ripen somewhat earlier than the fruit of the larger variety.

We noticed as we drove through the villages of Champigny and Varrains--the former celebrated for its fine red wines, and more especially its cru of the Clos des Cordeliers--that hardly any of the houses had windows looking on to the narrow street, but that all were provided with low openings for shooting the grapes into the cellar, where, when making red wine, they are trodden, but when making white wine, whether from black or white grapes, they are invariably pressed. Each of the houses had its ponderous porte-cochère and low narrow portal leading into the large enclosed yard at its side, and over the high blank walls vines were frequently trained, pleasantly varying their dull gray monotony.

The grapes on being shot into the openings just mentioned fall through a kind of tunnel into a reservoir adjacent to the heavy press, which is invariably of wood and of the old-fashioned cumbersome type. They are forthwith placed beneath the press and usually subjected to five separate squeezes, the must from the first three being reserved for sparkling wine, while that from the two latter, owing to its being more or less deeply tinted, only serves for table-wine. The must is at once run off into casks, in order that it may not ferment on the grape-skins and imbibe any portion of their colouring matter. Active fermentation speedily sets in, and lasts for a fortnight or three weeks, according to whether the temperature chances to be high or low.

The vintaging of the white grapes takes place about a fortnight later than the black grapes, and is commonly a compound operation, the best and ripest bunches being first of all gathered just as the berries begin to get shrivelled and show symptoms of approaching rottenness. It is these selected grapes that yield the best wine. The second gathering, which follows shortly after the first, includes all the grapes remaining on the vines, and yields a wine perceptibly inferior in quality. The grapes on their arrival at the press-house are generally pressed immediately, and the must is run off into tuns to ferment. At the commencement these tuns are filled up every three or four days to replace the fermenting must which has flowed over; afterwards any waste is made good at the interval of a week, and then once a fortnight, the bungholes of the casks being securely closed towards the end of the year, by which time the first fermentation is over.

It should be noted that the Saumur sparkling wine manufacturers draw considerable supplies of the white wine, required to impart lightness and effervescence to their _vin préparé_, from the Vouvray vineyards. Vouvray borders the Loire a few miles from the pleasant city of Tours, which awakens sinister recollections of truculent Louis XI., shut up in his fortified castle of Plessis-lez-Tours, around which Scott has thrown the halo of his genius in his novel of _Quentin Durward_. A succession of vineyard slopes stretch from one to another of the many historic châteaux along this portion of the Loire, the romantic associations of which render the Touraine one of the most interesting provinces of France. Near Tours, besides the vineyards of Saint-Cyr are those of Joué and Saint-Avertin; the two last situate on the opposite bank of the Cher, where the little town of Joué, perched on the summit of a hill in the midst of vineyards, looks over a vast plain known by the country-people as the Landes de Charlemagne, the scene, according to local tradition, of Charles Martel's great victory over the Saracens. The Saint-Avertin vineyards extend towards the east, stretching almost to the forest of Larçay, on the borders of the Cher, where Paul Louis Courier, the famous vigneron pamphleteer of the Restoration, noted alike for his raillery, wit, and satire, fell beneath the balls of an assassin. A noticeable cru in the neighbourhood of Tours is that of Cinq Mars, the ruined château of which survives as a memorial of the vengeance of Cardinal Richelieu, who, after having sent its owner to the scaffold, commanded its massive walls and towers to be razed '_à hauteur d'infamie_,' as we see them now.

Touraine, from its central position, its pleasant air, and its fertile soil, was ever a favourite residence of the earlier French monarchs, and down to the days of the Bourbons the seat of government continually vacillated between the banks of the Seine and those of the Loire. The vintages that ripen along the river have had their day of court favour too; for if Henri of Andelys sneeringly describes the wine of Tours as turning sour, in his famous poem of the _Bataille des Vins_, the sweet white wines of Anjou were greatly esteemed throughout the Middle Ages, and, with those of Orleans, were highly appreciated in Paris down to the seventeenth century. The cult of the 'dive Bouteille' and the fashion of Pantagruelic repasts have always found favour in the fat and fertile 'garden of France;' and the spectacle of citizens, courtiers, and monks staggering fraternally along, 'waggling their heads,' as Rabelais describes them, after a night of it at the tavern, was no uncommon one in the streets of its old historic towns during the period of the Renaissance.

[Illustration: TAVERN ROYSTERERS AT EARLY MORNING IN THE TOURAINE.]

On proceeding to Vouvray from Tours, we skirt a succession of poplar-fringed meadows, stretching eastward in the direction of Amboise along the right bank of the Loire; and after a time a curve in the river discloses to view a range of vine-clad heights, extending some distance beyond the village of Vouvray. Our route lies past the picturesque ruins of the abbey of Marmoûtier, immortalised in the piquant pages of the _Contes Drôlatiques_, and the Château des Roches--one of the most celebrated castles of the Loire--the numerous excavations in the soft limestone ridge on which they are perched being converted as usual into houses, magazines, and wine-cellars. We proceed through the village of Rochecorbon, and along a road winding among the spurs of the Vouvray range, past hamlets, half of whose inhabitants live in these primitive dwellings hollowed out of the cliff, and finally enter the charming Vallé Coquette, hemmed in on all sides with vine-clad slopes. Here a picturesque old house, half château, half homestead, was pointed out to us as a favourite place of sojourn of Balzac, who held the wine of Vouvray in high esteem, and who speaks of this rocky ridge as 'inhabited by a population of vine-dressers, their houses of several stories being hollowed out in the face of the cliff, and connected by dangerous staircases hewn in the soft stone. Smoke curls from most of the chimneys which peep above the green crest of vines, while the blows of the cooper's hammer resound in several of the cellars. A young girl trips to her garden over the roofs of these primitive dwellings, and an old woman, tranquilly seated on a ledge of projecting rock, supported solely by straggling roots of ivy spreading itself over the disjointed stones, leisurely turns her spinning-wheel, regardless of her dangerous position.' The foregoing picture, sketched by the author of _La Comédie Humaine_ forty years ago, has scarcely changed at the present day.

At the point where the village of Vouvray climbs half-way up the vine-crested ridge the rapid-winding Cise throws itself into the Loire, and on crossing the bridge that spans the tributary stream we discern on the western horizon, far beyond the verdant islets studding the swollen Loire, the tall campaniles of Tours Cathedral, which seem to rise out of the water like a couple of Venetian towers. Vouvray is a trim little place, clustered round about with numerous pleasant villas in the midst of charming gardens. The modern château of Moncontour here dominates the slope, and its terraced gardens, with their fantastically-clipped trees and geometric parterres, rise tier above tier up the face of the picturesque height that overlooks the broad fertile valley, with its gardens, cultivated fields, patches of woodland, and wide stretches of green pasture which, fringed with willows and poplars, border the swollen waters of the Loire. Where the river Brenne empties itself into the Cise the Coteau de Vouvray slopes off towards the north, and there rise up the vine-clad heights of Vernou, yielding a similar but inferior wine to that of Vouvray. The village of Vernou is nestled under the hill, and near the porch of its quaint little church a venerable elm-tree is pointed out as having been planted by Sully, Henry IV.'s able Minister. Here, too, an ancient wall, pierced with curious arched windows, and forming part of a modern building, is regarded by popular tradition as belonging to the palace in which Pépin-le-Bref, father of Charlemagne, lived at Vernou.

The communes of Dampierre, Souzay, and Parnay, in the neighbourhood of Saumur, produce still red wines rivalling those of Champigny, besides which all the finest white wines are vintaged hereabouts--in the Perrière, the Poilleux, and the Clos Morain vineyards, and in the Rotissans vineyard at Turquant. Wines of very fair quality are also grown on the more favourable slopes extending southwards along the valley of the Thouet, and comprised in the communes of Varrains, Chacé, St. Cyr-en-Bourg, and Brézé. The whole of this district, by the way, abounds with interesting archæological remains. While visiting the vineyards of Varrains and Chacé we came upon a couple of dolmens--vestiges of the ancient Celtic population of the valley of the Loire singularly abundant hereabouts. Brézé, the marquisate of which formerly belonged to Louis XVI.'s famous grand master of the ceremonies--immortalised by the rebuff he received from Mirabeau--boasts a noble château on the site of an ancient fortress, in connection with which there are contemporary excavations in the neighbouring limestone, designed for a garrison of 500 or 600 men. Beyond the vineyards of Saint-Florent, westward of Saumur and on the banks of the Thouet, is an extensive plateau, partially overgrown with vines, where may be traced the remains of a Roman camp. Moreover, in the southern environs of Saumur, in the midst of vineyards producing exclusively white wines, is one of the most remarkable dolmens known. This imposing structure, perfect in all respects save that one of the four enormous stones which roof it in has been split in two, and requires to be supported, is no less than 65 feet in length, 23 feet in width, and 10 feet high.

[Illustration: DOLMEN AT BAGNEUX, NEAR SAUMUR.]

At Saint-Florent, the pleasant little suburb of Saumur, skirting the river Thouet, and sheltered by steep hills formed of soft limestone, which offers great facilities for the excavation of extensive cellars, the largest manufacturer of Saumur sparkling wines has his establishment. Externally this offers but little to strike the eye. A couple of pleasant country houses, half hidden by spreading foliage, stand at the two extremities of a spacious and well-kept garden, beyond which one catches a glimpse of some outbuildings sheltered by the vine-crowned cliff, in which a labyrinth of gloomy galleries has been hollowed out. Here M. Ackerman-Laurance, the extent of whose business ranks him as second among the sparkling wine manufacturers of the world, stores something like 10,000 casks and several million bottles of wine.

At the commencement of the present century, in the days when, as Balzac relates in his _Eugénie Grandet_, the Belgians bought up entire vintages of Saumur wine, then largely in demand with them for sacramental purposes, the founder of the Saint-Florent house commenced to deal in the ordinary still wines of the district. Nearly half a century ago he was led to attempt the manufacture of sparkling wines, but his efforts to bring them into notice failed; and he was on the point of abandoning his enterprise, when an order for one hundred cases revived his hopes, and led to the foundation of the present vast establishment. As already mentioned, for many miles all the heights along the Loire have been more or less excavated for stone for building purposes, so that every one hereabouts who grows wine or deals in it has any amount of cellar accommodation ready to hand. It was the vast extent of the galleries which M. Ackerman _père_ discovered already excavated at Saint-Florent that induced him to settle there in preference to Saumur. Extensive, however, as the original vaults were, considerable additional excavations have from time to time been found necessary; and to-day the firm is still further increasing the area of its cellars, which already comprise three principal avenues, each the third of a mile long, and no fewer than sixty transverse galleries, the total length of which is several miles. One great advantage is that the whole are on the ordinary level.

Ranged against the black uneven walls of the more tortuous ancient vaults which give access to these labyrinthine corridors are thousands of casks of wine--some in single rows, others in triple tiers--forming the reserve stock of the establishment. As may be supposed, a powerful vinous odour permeates these vaults, in which the fumes of wine have been accumulating for the best part of a century. After passing beneath a massive stone arch which separates the old cellars from the new, a series of broad and regularly proportioned galleries are reached, having bottles stacked in their tens of thousands on either side. Overhead the roof is perforated at regular intervals with circular shafts, affording both light and ventilation, and enabling the temperature to be regulated to a nicety. In these lateral and transverse galleries millions of bottles of wine in various stages of preparation are stacked.

[Illustration: THE CELLARS OF M. ACKERMAN-LAURANCE AT SAINT-FLORENT. LABELLING AND PACKING SPARKLING SAUMUR.]

We have explained that in the Champagne it is the custom for the manufacturers of sparkling wine to purchase considerable quantities of grapes from the surrounding growers, and to press these themselves, or have them pressed under their own superintendence. At Saumur only those firms possessing vineyards make their own _vin brut_, the bulk of the wine used for conversion into sparkling wine being purchased from the neighbouring growers. On the newly-expressed must arriving at M. Ackerman-Laurance's cellars it is allowed to rest until the commencement of the ensuing year, when half of it is mixed with wine in stock belonging to last year's vintage, and the remaining half is reserved for mingling with the must of the ensuing vintage. The blending is accomplished in a couple of colossal vats hewn out of the rock, and coated on the inside with cement. Each of these vats is provided with 200 paddles for thoroughly mixing the wine, and with five pipes for drawing it off when the amalgamation is complete. Usually the cuvée will embrace 1600 hogsheads, or 80,000 gallons of wine, almost sufficient for half a million bottles. A fourth of this quantity can be mixed in each vat at a single operation, and this mixing is repeated again and again until the last gallon run off is of precisely the same type as the first. For the finer qualities of sparkling Saumur the proportion of wine from the black grapes to that from white is generally at the rate of three or four to one. For the inferior qualities more wine from white than from black grapes is invariably used. Only in the wine from white grapes is the effervescent principle retained to any particular extent; but, on the other hand, the wine from black grapes imparts both quality and vinous character to the blend.

The blending having been satisfactorily accomplished, the wine is stored in casks, never perfectly filled, yet with their bungholes tightly closed, and slowly continues its fermentation, eating up its sugar, purging itself, and letting fall its lees. Three months later it is fined. It is rarely kept in the wood for more than a year, though sometimes the superior qualities remain for a couple of years in cask. Occasionally it is even bottled in the spring following the vintage; still, as a rule, the bottling of sparkling Saumur takes place during the ensuing summer months, when the temperature is at the highest, as this insures to it a greater degree of effervescence. At the time of bottling its saccharine strength is raised to a given degree by the addition of the finest sugar-candy, and henceforward the wine is subjected to precisely the same treatment as is pursued with regard to Champagne.

It is in a broad but sombre gallery of the more ancient vaults--the roughly-hewn walls of which are black from the combined action of alcohol and carbonic acid gas--that the processes of disgorging the wine of its sediment, adding the syrup, filling up the bottles with wine to replace that which gushes out when the disgorging operation is performed, together with the re-corking, stringing, and wiring of the bottles, are carried on. The one or two adjacent shafts impart very little light, but a couple of resplendent metal reflectors, which at a distance one might fancy to be some dragon's flaming eyes, combined with the lamps placed near the people at work, effectually illuminate the spot.

[Illustration: THE CELLARS OF M. LOUIS DUVAU AÎNÉ AT THE CHÂTEAU OF VARRAINS.]

Another considerable manufacturer of sparkling Saumur is M. Louis Duvau aîné, owner of the château of Varrains, in the village of the same name, at no great distance from the Coteau de Saumur. His cellars adjoin the château, a picturesque but somewhat neglected structure of the last century, with sculptured medallions in high relief above the lower windows, and florid vases surmounting the mansards in the roof. In front is a large rambling court shaded with acacia and lime trees, and surrounded by outbuildings, prominent among which is a picturesque dovecot, massive at the base as a martello tower, and having an elegant open stone lantern springing from its bell-shaped roof. The cellars are entered down a steep incline under a low stone arch, the masonry above which is overgrown with ivy in large clusters and straggling creeping plants. We soon come upon a deep recess to the right, wherein stands a unique cumbersome screw-press, needing ten or a dozen men to work the unwieldy capstan which sets the juice flowing from the crushed grapes into the adjacent shallow trough. On our left hand are a couple of ancient reservoirs, formed out of huge blocks of stone, with the entrance to a long vaulted cellar filled with wine in cask. We advance slowly in the uncertain light along a succession of gloomy galleries, with moisture oozing from their blackened walls and roofs, picking our way between bottles of wine stacked in huge square piles and rows of casks raised in tiers. Suddenly a broad flood of light shooting down a lofty shaft throws a Rembrandtish effect across a spacious and most melodramatic-looking cave, roughly hewn out of the rock, and towards which seven dimly-lighted galleries converge. On all sides a scene of bustling animation presents itself. From one gallery men keep arriving with baskets of wine ready for the disgorger; while along another bottles of wine duly dosed with syrup are being borne off to be decorated with metal foil and their distinctive labels. Groups of workmen are busily engaged disgorging, dosing, and re-corking the newly-arrived bottles of wine; corks fly out with a succession of loud reports, suggestive of the irregular fire of a party of skirmishers; a fizzing, spurting, and spluttering of the wine next ensues, and is followed by the incessant clicking of the various apparatus employed in the corking and wiring of the bottles.

Gradual inclines conduct to the two lower tiers of galleries, for the cellars of M. Duvau consist of as many as three stories. Down below there is naturally less light, and the temperature, too, is sensibly colder. Advantage is taken of this latter circumstance to remove the newly-bottled wine to these lower vaults whenever an excessive development of carbonic acid threatens the bursting of an undue proportion of bottles, a casualty which among the Saumur sparkling wine manufacturers ranges far higher than with the manufacturers of Champagne. For the economy of time and labour, a lift, raised and lowered by means of a capstan worked by horses, is employed to transfer the bottles of wine from one tier of cellars to another.

[Illustration]

The demand for sparkling Saumur is evidently on the increase, for M. Duvau, at the time of our visit, was excavating extensive additional cellarage. The subsoil at Varrains being largely composed of marl, which is much softer than the tufa of the Saint-Florent coteau, necessitated the roofs of the new galleries being worked in a

## particular form in order to avoid having recourse to either brickwork

or masonry. Tons of this excavated marl were being spread over the soil of M. Duvau's vineyard in the rear of the château, greatly, it was said, to the benefit of the vines, whose grapes were all of the black variety; indeed, scarcely any wine is vintaged from white grapes in the commune of Varrains.

At M. Duvau's we went through a complete scale of sparkling Saumurs, commencing with the younger and less matured samples, and ascending step by step to wines a dozen and more years old. Every year seemed to produce an improvement in the wine, the older varieties gaining greatly in delicacy and softening very perceptibly in flavour.

Finding that sparkling wines were being made in most of the wine-producing districts of France, where the growths were sufficiently light and of the requisite quality, Messrs. E. Normandin & Co. conceived the idea of laying the famous Bordeaux district under contribution for a similar purpose, and, aided by a staff of experienced workmen from Epernay, they have succeeded in producing a sparkling Sauternes. Sauternes, as is well known, is one of the finest of white wines, soft, delicate, and of beautiful flavour, and its transformation into a sparkling wine has been very successfully accomplished. Messrs. Normandin's head-quarters are in the thriving little town of Châteauneuf, in the pleasant valley of the Charente, and within fifteen miles of Angoulême, a famous old French town, encompassed by ancient ramparts and crumbling corner-towers; and which, dominated by the lofty belfry of its restored semi-Byzantine cathedral, rising in a series of open arcades, spreads itself picturesquely out along a precipitous height, watered at its base by the rivers Anguienne and Charente. Between Angoulême and Châteauneuf vineyard plots dotted over with walnut-trees, or simple rows of vines divided by strips of ripening maize, and broken up at intervals by bright green pastures, line both banks of the river Charente. The surrounding country is undulating and picturesque. Poplars and elms fringe the roadsides, divide the larger fields and vineyards, and screen the cosy-looking red-roofed farmhouses, which present to the eyes of the passing tourist a succession of pictures of quiet rural prosperity.

Châteauneuf communicates with the Sauternes district by rail, so that supplies of wine from there are readily obtainable. Vin de Colombar--a famous white growth which English and Dutch cruisers used to ascend the Charente to obtain cargoes of when the Jerez wines were shut out from England by the Spanish War of Succession--vintaged principally at Montignac-le-Coq, also enters largely into Messrs. Normandin & Co.'s sparkling Sauternes cuvée. This colombar grape is simply the semillon--one of the leading varieties of the Sauternes district--transported to the Charente. The remarkably cool cellars where the firm store their wine, whether in wood or bottle, have been formed from some vast subterranean galleries whence centuries ago stone was quarried, and which are situated about a quarter of an hour's drive from Châteauneuf, in the midst of vineyards and cornfields. The wine is invariably bottled in a cellier at the head establishment, but it is in these cellars where it goes through the course of careful treatment similar to that pursued with regard to Champagne.

[Illustration]

In order that the delicate flavour of the wine may be preserved, the liqueur is prepared with the finest old Sauternes, without any addition of spirit, and the dose is administered with the most improved modern appliance, constructed of silver, and provided with crystal taps. At the Concours Régional d'Angoulême of 1877, the jury, after recording that they had satisfied themselves by the aid of a chemical analysis that the samples of sparkling Sauternes submitted to their judgment were free from any foreign ingredient, awarded to Messrs. Normandin & Co. the only gold medal given in the Group of Alimentary Products.

Encouraged, no doubt, by the success obtained by Messrs. Normandin & Co. with their sparkling Sauternes, the house of Lermat-Robert & Co., of Bordeaux, introduced a few years ago a sparkling Barsac, samples of which were submitted to the jury at the Paris Exhibition of 1878.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: VINTAGER OF THE CÔTE D'OR.]

[Illustration: VINTAGER OF THE JURA.]