Part 7
The disgorging at Messrs. Heidsieck's takes place, in accordance with the good old rule, in the cellars underground, where we noticed large stocks of wine three and five years old, the former in the first stage of _sur-pointe_, and the latter awaiting shipment. It is a speciality of the house to ship only matured wine, which is necessarily of a higher character than the ordinary youthful growths, for a few years have a wonderful influence in developing the finer qualities of champagne. At the time of our visit, in the spring of 1877, when the English market was being glutted with the crude, full-bodied wine of 1874, Messrs. Heidsieck were continuing to ship wines of 1870 and 1872, beautifully rounded by keeping and of fine flavour and great delicacy of perfume, and of which the firm estimated they had fully a year's consumption still on hand.
Messrs. Heidsieck and Co. have a handsome modern establishment in the Rue Coquebert--a comparatively new quarter of the city where champagne establishments are the rule--the courtyard of which, alive with workmen at the time of our visit, is broad and spacious, while the surrounding buildings are light and airy, and the cellars lofty, regular, and well ventilated. In a large cellier here, where the tuns are ranged side by side between the rows of iron columns supporting the roof, the firm make their _cuvée_; here too the bottling of their wine takes place, and considerable stocks of high-class reserve wines and more youthful growths are stored ready for removal when required by the central establishment. The bulk of Messrs. Heidsieck's reserve wines, however, repose in the outskirts of Reims, near the Porte Dieu-Lumière, in one of the numerous abandoned chalk quarries, which of late years the champagne manufacturers have discovered are capable of being transformed into admirable cellars.
In addition to shipping a rich and a dry variety of the Monopole brand, of which they are sole proprietors, Messrs. Heidsieck export to this country a rich and a dry Grand Vin Royal. It is, however, to their famous Monopole wine, and especially to the dry variety, which must necessarily comprise the finest growths, that the firm owe their principal celebrity.
[Illustration: STATUE OF LOUIS XIII. ON THE REIMS HÔTEL DE VILLE]
VII.--THE REIMS ESTABLISHMENTS (_continued_).
The Firm of G. H. Mumm and Co.-- Their Large Shipments to the United States-- Their Establishments in the Rue Andrieux and the Rue Coquebert-- Bottle-Washing with Glass Beads-- The Cuvée and the Tirage-- G. H. Mumm and Co.'s Vendangeoirs at Verzenay-- Their Various Wines-- The Gate of Mars-- The Establishment of M. Gustave Gibert on the Site of the Château des Archevêques-- His Cellars in the Vaults of St. Peter's Abbey and beneath the old Hôtel des Fermes in the Place Royale-- Louis XV. and Jean Baptiste Colbert-- M. Gibert's Wines-- Jules Mumm and Co., and Ruinart père et fils-- House of the Musicians-- The Counts de la Marck-- The Brotherhood of Minstrels of Reims-- Establishment of Périnet et fils-- Their Cellars of Three Stories in Solid Masonry-- Their Soft, Light, and Delicate Wines-- A Rare Still Verzenay-- M. Duchâtel-Ohaus's Establishment and Renaissance House-- His Cellars in the Cour St. Jacques and Outside the Porte Dieu-Lumière.
Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. have their chief establishment in the Rue Andrieux, in an open quarter of the city, facing the garden attached to the premises of M. Werlé, and only a short distance from the grand triumphal arch known as the Gate of Mars, by far the most important Roman remain of which the Champagne can boast. The head of the firm, Mr. G. H. Mumm, is the grandson of the well-known P. A. Mumm, the large shipper of hocks and moselles, and is the only surviving partner in the champagne house of Mumm and Co., established at Reims in 1825, and joined by Mr. G. H. Mumm so far back as the year 1838. The firm not only ship their wine largely to England, but head the list of shipments to the United States, where their brand is held in high repute, with nearly half a million bottles, being more than twice the quantity shipped by M. Louis Roederer--who comes third on the list in question--and a fourth of the entire shipments of champagne to the United States.
The establishment of Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co., in the Rue Andrieux, is of comparatively modern construction. A large _porte-cochère_ conducts to a spacious courtyard, bordered with sheds, beneath which huge stacks of new bottles are piled and having a pleasant garden lying beyond. On the left is a large vaulted cellier, where the operations of disgorging, liqueuring, and corking the wine are performed, and which communicates with the vast adjoining packing department. From this cellier entrance is gained to the cellars beneath, containing a million bottles of _vin brut_ in various stages of development. This forms, however, merely a portion of the firm's stock, they having another three millions of bottles stored in the cellars of their establishment in the Rue Coquebert, where a scene of great animation presented itself at the time of our visit, several scores of women being engaged in washing bottles for the _tirage_, which, although it was early in May, had already commenced. The bottles, filled with water, and containing a certain quantity of glass beads in lieu of the customary shot, which frequently leave minute particles of lead--deleterious alike to health and the flavour of the wine--adhering to the inside surface of the glass, are placed horizontally in a frame, and by means of four turns of a handle are made to perform sixty-four rapid revolutions. The beads are then transferred to other bottles, which are subjected in their turn to the same revolving process.
The _cuvée_, commonly composed of from two to three thousand casks of wine from various vineyards, with a due proportion of high-class vintages, is made in a vat holding 4,400 gallons. The _tirage_ or bottling is effected by means of two large tuns placed side by side, and holding twelve hogsheads of wine each. Pipes from these tuns communicate with a couple of small reservoirs, each of them provided with half-a-dozen self-acting syphon taps, by means of which a like number of bottles are simultaneously filled. Only one set of these taps are set running at a time, as while the wine is being drawn off from one tun the other is being refilled from the casks containing the _cuvée_ by means of a pump and leathern hose, which empties a cask in little more than a couple of minutes. Three gangs of eight men each can fill, cork, and secure with _agrafes_ from 35,000 to 40,000 bottles during the day. The labour is performed partly by men regularly employed by the house and
## partly by hands engaged for the purpose, who work, however, under the
constant inspection of overseers appointed by the firm.
At Messrs. G. H. Mumm's the champagne destined for shipment has the heads of the corks submerged in a kind of varnish, with the object of protecting them from the ravages of insects, and preventing the string and wire from becoming mouldy for several years. In damp weather, when this varnish takes a long time to dry, after the bottles have been placed in a rack with their heads downwards to allow of any superfluous varnish draining from the corks, the latter are subjected to a moderate heat in a machine pierced with sufficient holes to contain 500 bottles, and provided with a warming apparatus in the centre. Here the bottles remain for about twenty minutes.
[Illustration: THE TIRAGE OR BOTTLING OF CHAMPAGNE AT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MESSRS. G. H. MUMM & CO. (p. 76.)]
[Illustration: MESSRS. G. H. MUMM & CO.'S VENDANGEOIR AT VERZENAY. (p. 77)]
Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. have a capacious vendangeoir at Verzenay, near the entrance to the village when approaching it from Reims. The building contains four presses, three of which are worked with large fly-wheels requiring several men to turn them, while the fourth acts with a screw applied by means of a long pole. At the vintage 3,600 kilogrammes, or nearly 8,000lbs., of grapes are put under each press, a quantity sufficient to yield eight to ten hogsheads of wine of forty-four gallons each, suitable for sparkling wine, besides three or four hogsheads of inferior wine given to the workmen to drink. The pressing commences daily at six in the morning, and lasts until midnight; yet the firm are often constrained to keep their grapes in the baskets under a cool shed for a period of two days. This cannot, however, be done when they are very ripe, as the colouring matter from the skins would become extracted and give a dark and objectionable tint to the wine.
Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. ship four descriptions of champagne--Carte Blanche, a pale, delicate, fragrant wine of great softness and refined flavour; a perfectly dry variety of the foregoing, known as their Extra Dry; also an Extra Quality and a First Quality--both high-class wines, though somewhat lower in price than the two preceding.
Within a few minutes' walk of Messrs. G. H. Mumm's--past the imposing Gate of Mars, in the midst of lawns, parterres, and gravel-walks, where coquettish nursemaids and their charges stroll, accompanied by the proverbial _piou-piou_--is the principal establishment of M. Gustave Gibert, whose house claims to-day half a century of existence. On this spot formerly stood the feudal castle of the Archbishops of Reims, demolished nearly three centuries ago. By whom this stronghold was erected is somewhat uncertain. The local chronicles state that a château was built at Reims by Suelf, son of Hincmar, in 922, and restored by Archbishop Henri de France two and a half centuries later. War or other causes, however, seems to have rendered the speedy rebuilding of this castle necessary, as a new Château des Archevêques appears to have been erected at Reims by Henri de Braine between 1228 and 1230. The circumstance of the Archbishops of Reims being dukes and peers as well as primates of the capital of the Champagne accounts for their preference for a fortified place of residence at this turbulent epoch.
On the investiture of a new archbishop it was the custom for him to proceed in great pomp from the château to the church of Saint Remi, with a large armed guard and a splendid retinue of ecclesiastical, civil, and military dignitaries escorting him. The pride of the newly-created "duke and peer" having been thus gratified, the "prelate" had to humble himself, and on the morrow walked barefooted from the church of St. Remi to the cathedral. After the religious wars the château was surrendered to Henri IV., and in 1595 the Remois, anxious to be rid of so formidable a fortress, which, whether held by king or archbishop, was calculated to enforce a state of passive obedience galling to their pride, purchased from the king the privilege to demolish it for the sum of 8,000 crowns. Tradition asserts that the Remish Bastille was destroyed in a single day, but this is exceedingly improbable. Its ruins certainly were not cleared away until the close of the century.
When the old fortress was razed to the ground its extensive vaults were not interfered with, but many long years afterwards were transformed into admirable cellars for the storage of champagne. Above them are two stories of capacious celliers where the wine is blended, bottled, and packed, the vaults themselves comprising two tiers of cellars which contain wine both in cask and bottle. M. Gibert's remaining stocks are stored in the ancient vaults of the abbey of St. Peter, in the heart of the city, and in the roomy cellars which underlie the old Hôtel des Fermes in the Place Royale, where in the days of the _ancien régime_ the farmers-general of the province used to receive its revenues. On the pediment of this edifice is a bas-relief with Mercury, the god of commerce, seated beside a nymph and surrounded by children engaged with the vintage and with bales of wool, and evidently intended to symbolise the staple trades of the capital of the Champagne. 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 16th-century house claiming to be the birthplace of Jean Baptiste Colbert, son of a Reims wool-merchant, and the famous minister who did so much to consolidate the finances which the royal voluptuary, masquerading at Reims in Roman garb, afterwards made such dreadful havoc of.
[Illustration: THE CELLIERS AND CELLARS OF M. GUSTAVE GIBERT. (_Near the Porte de Mars, Reims_.) (p. 78.)]
[Illustration: THE PLACE ROYALE AT REIMS, SHOWING THE ENTRANCE TO THE CELLARS OF M. GUSTAVE GIBERT. (p. 79)]
M. Gustave Gibert possesses pressing-houses at Ay and Bouzy, and has moreover at both these places accommodation for large reserve stocks of wine in wood. As all the wines which he sends into the market are vintaged by himself, he can ensure their being of uniform high quality. His _Vin du Roi_ is notable for perfume, delicacy, perfect effervescence, and that fine flavour of the grape which characterises the grand wines of the Champagne. It is a great favourite with the King of Sweden and Norway, and the labels on the bottles bear his name and arms. M. Gibert's brand has acquired a high reputation in the North of Europe, and having of late years been introduced into England, is rapidly making its way there. The merits of the wines have been again and again publicly recognised, no less than ten medals having been successively awarded M. Gibert at the Exhibitions of Toulouse in 1858, Bordeaux in 1859, Besançon in 1860, Metz and Nantes in 1861, London in 1862, Bayonne and Linz in 1864, and Oporto and Dublin in 1865. This long list of awards has led to the wines being placed "_hors concours_," nevertheless M. Gibert continues to submit them to competition whenever any Exhibition of importance takes place. The wines are shipped to England, Germany, Russia, and Northern Europe, Spain and Portugal, Calcutta, Java, Melbourne, and Hong-Kong, besides being largely in request for the Paris market.
On quitting M. Gibert's central establishment we proceed along the winding, ill-paved Rue de Mars, past the premises of Messrs. Jules Mumm and Co., an offshoot from the once famous firm of P. A. Mumm and Co., to the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville, in one corner of which stands a massive and somewhat pretentious-looking house, dating back to the time of Louis Quatorze. Here are the offices of Ruinart père et fils, who claim to rank as the oldest existing house in the Champagne. The head of the firm, the Vicomte de Brimont, is a collateral descendant of the Dom Ruinart, whose remains repose nigh to those of the illustrious Dom Perignon in the abbey church of Hautvillers. From the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville we proceed through the narrow Rue du Tambour, originally a Roman thoroughfare, and during the Middle Ages the locality where the nobility of Reims principally had their abodes. Half-way up this street, in the direction of the Place des Marchés, stands the famous House of the Musicians, one of the most interesting architectural relics of which the capital of the Champagne can boast. It evidently dates from the early part of the fourteenth century, but by whom it was erected is unknown. Some ascribe it to the Knights Templars, others to the Counts of Champagne, while others suppose it to have been the residence of the famous Counts de la Marck, who in later times diverged into three separate branches, the first furnishing Dukes of Cleves and Julich to Germany and Dukes of Nevers and Counts of Eu to France, while the second became Dukes of Bouillon and Princes of Sedan, titles which passed to the Turennes when Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, married the surviving heiress of the house. The third branch comprised the Barons of Lumain, allied to the Hohenzollerns. Their most famous member slew Louis de Bourbon, Archbishop of Liège, and flung his body into the Meuse, and subsequently became celebrated as the Wild Boar of the Ardennes, of whom all readers of _Quentin Durward_ will retain a lively recollection.
To return, however, to the House of the Musicians. A probable conjecture ascribes the origin of the quaint mediæval structure to the Brotherhood of Minstrels of Reims, who in the thirteenth century enjoyed a considerable reputation, not merely in the Champagne, but throughout the North of France. The house takes its present name from five seated statues of musicians, larger than life-size, occupying the Gothic niches between the first-floor windows, and resting upon brackets ornamented with grotesque heads. It is thought that the partially-damaged figure on the left-hand side was originally playing a drum and a species of clarionet. The next one evidently has the remnants of a harp in his raised hands. The third or central figure is supposed merely to have held a hawk upon his wrist; whilst the fourth seeks to extract harmony from a dilapidated bagpipe; and the fifth, with crossed legs, strums complacently away upon the fiddle. The ground floor of the quaint old tenement is to-day an oil and colour shop, the front of which is covered with chequers in all the tints of the rainbow.
[Illustration]
Leading from the Rue du Tambour is the Rue de la Belle Image, thus named from a handsome statuette of the Virgin which formerly decorated a corner niche; and beyond is the Rue St. Hilaire, where Messrs. Barnett et fils, trading under the designation of Périnet et fils, and the only English house engaged in the manufacture of champagne, have an establishment which is certainly as perfect as any to be found in Reims. Aboveground are several large store-rooms, where vintage casks and the various utensils common to a champagne establishment are kept, and a capacious cellier, upwards of 150 feet in length, with its roof resting on huge timber supports. Here new wine is stored preparatory to being blended and bottled, and in the huge tun, holding nearly 3,000 gallons, standing at the further end, the firm make their _cuvée_, while adjacent is a room where stocks of corks and labels, metal foil, and the like are kept.
There are three stories of cellars--an exceedingly rare thing anywhere in the Champagne--all constructed in solid masonry on a uniform plan--namely, two wide galleries running parallel with each other and connected by means of transverse passages. Spite of the great depth to which these cellars descend they are perfectly dry; the ventilation, too, is excellent, and their different temperatures render them especially suitable for the storage of champagne, the temperature of the lowest cellar being 6° Centigrade (43° Fahrenheit), or one degree Centigrade below the cellar immediately above, which, in its turn is two degrees below the uppermost one of all. The advantage of this is that when the wine develops an excess of effervescence any undue proportion of breakages can be checked by removing the bottles to a lower cellar and consequently into a lower temperature.
[Illustration: THE CELLIER AND CELLARS OF PÉRINET ET FILS AT REIMS. (p. 82)]
The first cellars we enter are closely stacked with wine in bottle, which is gradually clearing itself by the formation of a deposit, while in an adjoining cellar on the same level the operations of disgorging, liqueuring, and corking are going on. In the cellars immediately beneath bottles of wine repose in solid stacks ready for the _dégorgeur_, while others rest in racks in order that they may undergo their daily shaking. In the lowest cellars reserved wine in cask is stored, as it best retains its natural freshness and purity in a very cool place. All air is carefully excluded from the casks, any ullage is immediately checked, and as evaporation is continually going on the casks are examined every fortnight, when any deficiency is at once replenished. At Messrs. Périnet et fils', as at all the first-class establishments, the _vin brut_ is a _mélange_ comprising the produce of some of the best vineyards, and has every possible attention paid to it during its progressive stages of development.
Champagnes of different years were here shown to us, all of them soft, light, and delicate, and with that fine flavour and full perfume which the best growths of the Marne alone exhibit. Among several curiosities submitted to us was a still Verzenay of the year 1857, one of the most delicate red wines it was ever our fortune to taste. Light in body, rich in colour, of a singularly novel and refined flavour, and with a magnificent yet indefinable bouquet, the wine was in every respect perfect. Not only was the year of the vintage a grand one, but the wine must have been made with the greatest possible care and from the most perfect grapes for so delicate a growth to have retained its flavour in such perfection, and preserved its brilliant ruby colour for such a length of time.
From the samples shown to us of Périnet et fils' champagne, we were prepared to find that at some recent tastings in London, the particulars of which have been made public, their Extra Sec took the first place at each of the three severe competitions to which it was subjected.
M. Duchâtel-Ohaus's central establishment is in the Rue des Deux Anges, one of the most ancient streets of Reims, running from the Rue des Élus to the Rue de Vesle, and having every window secured by iron gratings, and every door thickly studded with huge nails. These prison-like façades succeed each other in gloomy monotony along either side of the way, the portion of M. Duchâtel-Ohaus's residence which faces the street being no exception to the general rule. Once within its court, however, and quite a different scene presents itself. Before us is a pleasant little flower-garden with a small but charming Renaissance house looking on to it, the windows ornamented with elaborate mouldings, and surmounted by graceful sculptured heads, while at one corner rises a tower with a sun-dial displayed on its front. Here and in an adjoining house the canons of the Cathedral were accustomed to reside in the days when four-fifths of Reims belonged to the Church.
[Illustration]
From the garden we enter a capacious cellier where the blending and bottling of the wine takes place, and in the neighbouring packing-room encounter a score of workpeople filling, securing, and branding a number of cases about to be despatched by rail. From the cellier we pass to the cellars situated immediately underneath, and which, capacious though they are, do not suffice for M. Duchâtel's stock, portions of which are stored in some ancient vaults near the market-place, and in the Rue de Vesle behind the church of St. Jacques. This church, originally built at the close of the twelfth century, is hemmed in on all sides by old houses, above which rises its tapering steeple surmounted by a medieval weathercock in the form of an angel. A life-size statue of the patron saint decorates the Gothic gateway leading to the church, from which a troop of Remish urchins in the charge of some Frères de la Doctrine Chrétienne emerge as we pass by.