Part 3 (2/2)
M. Louis Roederer refused our request for permission to visit his establishments, so that it is only of their external appearance that we are able to speak. One of them--the facade of which is rather imposing, and which has a carved head of Bacchus surmounting the _porte-cochere_--is situated in the Boulevard du Temple, while the princ.i.p.al establishment, a picturesque range of buildings of considerable extent, is in the neighbouring Rue de la Justice.
The old-established firm of Heidsieck and Co., which has secured a reputation in both hemispheres for its famous Monopole and Dry Monopole brands, has its cellars scattered about Reims, the central ones, where the wine is prepared and packed, being situated in the narrow winding Rue Sedan, at no great distance from the Clicquot-Werle establishment.
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 and Co. purveyors of champagne to Friedrich 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 pa.s.sing through the large _porte-cochere_ giving entrance to Messrs.
Heidsieck's princ.i.p.al 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 s.p.a.cious 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 fete 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 pa.s.sed 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 downwards 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.
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 s.h.i.+pment. It is a speciality of the house to s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.cious, 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 _cuvee_; here too the bottling of their wine takes place, and considerable stocks of high-cla.s.s 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-Lumiere, 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 princ.i.p.al celebrity.
[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF LOUIS XIII. ON THE REIMS HoTEL DE VILLE]
VII.--THE REIMS ESTABLISHMENTS (_continued_).
The Firm of G. H. Mumm and Co.-- Their Large s.h.i.+pments to the United States-- Their Establishments in the Rue Andrieux and the Rue Coquebert-- Bottle-Was.h.i.+ng with Gla.s.s Beads-- The Cuvee 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 Chateau des Archeveques-- His Cellars in the Vaults of St. Peter's Abbey and beneath the old Hotel des Fermes in the Place Royale-- Louis XV. and Jean Baptiste Colbert-- M. Gibert's Wines-- Jules Mumm and Co., and Ruinart pere et fils-- House of the Musicians-- The Counts de la Marck-- The Brotherhood of Minstrels of Reims-- Establishment of Perinet et fils-- Their Cellars of Three Stories in Solid Masonry-- Their Soft, Light, and Delicate Wines-- A Rare Still Verzenay-- M. Duchatel-Ohaus's Establishment and Renaissance House-- His Cellars in the Cour St.
Jacques and Outside the Porte Dieu-Lumiere.
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. Werle, 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 s.h.i.+pper 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 s.h.i.+p their wine largely to England, but head the list of s.h.i.+pments to the United States, where their brand is held in high repute, with nearly half a million bottles, being more than twice the quant.i.ty s.h.i.+pped by M. Louis Roederer--who comes third on the list in question--and a fourth of the entire s.h.i.+pments 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-cochere_ conducts to a s.p.a.cious 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 was.h.i.+ng bottles for the _tirage_, which, although it was early in May, had already commenced. The bottles, filled with water, and containing a certain quant.i.ty of gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s, 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 _cuvee_, commonly composed of from two to three thousand casks of wine from various vineyards, with a due proportion of high-cla.s.s 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 _cuvee_ 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 s.h.i.+pment 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TIRAGE OR BOTTLING OF CHAMPAGNE AT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MESSRS. G. H. MUMM & CO. (p. 76.)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 quant.i.ty 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. s.h.i.+p 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-cla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 chateau 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 Chateau des Archeveques appears to have been erected at Reims by Henri de Braine between 1228 and 1230. The circ.u.mstance 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 invest.i.ture of a new archbishop it was the custom for him to proceed in great pomp from the chateau 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 chateau 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 pa.s.sive obedience galling to their pride, purchased from the king the privilege to demolish it for the sum of 8,000 crowns.
Tradition a.s.serts 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 Hotel des Fermes in the Place Royale, where in the days of the _ancien regime_ the farmers-general of the province used to receive its revenues. On the pediment of this edifice is a bas-relief with Mercury, the G.o.d 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 Ceres, 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.
<script>