Part 1 (1/2)
Facts About Cha Wines
by Henry Vizetelly
I--THE ORIGIN OF CHAMPAGNE
The Early Vineyards of the Chas, Courtiers and Prelates-- Controversy regarding the rival Merits of the Wines of Burgundy and the Cha Wine-- Its Patrons under Louis Quatorze and the Regency-- The Ancient Church and Abbey of Hautvillers-- Farre and Co's Chane Cellars-- The Abbey of St
Peter now a Fars-- The To-Place of Done the Result of Labour, Skill, Minute Precaution, and Careful Observation
Strongasbefore the days of the sagacious Doe known under the now familiar nanised as offering special advantages for the culture of the vine The priests and monks, whose vows of sobriety certainly did not lessen their appreciation of the good things of this life, and the produce of whose vineyards usually enjoyed a higher reputation than that of their lay neighbours, were clever enough to seize upon the ible sites, and quick to spread abroad the fame of their wines St
Re in France, at the end of the fifth century left by will, to various churches, the vineyards which he owned at Reiether with the ”vilains” employed in their cultivation Some three and a half centuries later we find worthy Bishop Pardulus of Laon i Archbishop Hincmar to drink of the wines of Epernay and Rei Pope, Urban II, as born ane, dearly loved the wine of Ay; and his energetic appeals to the princes of Europe to take up arms for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre e
The red wine of the Chaes when they sat at hty beakers to the confusion of the Payni in his _fabliau_ of the ”Bataille des Vins,” hohen stout Philip Augustus and his chaplain constituted themselves the earliest knoine-jury, the _crus_ of Espernai, Auviler, Chaalons, and Reist those which found h nearly a couple of centuries elapsed before Eustace Deschamps recorded in verse the rivalWenceslaus of Boheot so royally drunk day after day upon the vintages of the Chaot all about the treaty with Charles VI, that had formed the pretext of his visit to France, and would probably have lingered, goblet in hand, in the old cathedral city till the day of his death, but for the presentation of a little account for wine consumed, which sobered him to repentance and led to his abrupt departure Dunois, Lahire, Xaintrailles, and their fellohen they rode with Joan of Arc to the coronation of Charles VII, drank the sah hellish from the soil of France
The vin d'Ay--_vinuly styled it--was, according to old Pauls and princes of his day It fostered bluff King Hal's fits of passion and the tenth Leo's artistic extravagance; consoled Francis I for the field of Pavia, and solaced his great rival in his retirement at St Just All of them had their commissioners at Ay to secure the best wine for their own consueoir_ is still shown in the village, held the wine in such honour that he ont to style hineur d'Ay, just as Jaeich When his son, Louis XIII, was crowned, the wines of the Charace the board at the royal banquet Freely too did they flow at the coronation feast of the Grand Monarque, when the crowd of assembled courtiers, who quaffed them in his honour, hailed them as the finest wines of the day
But the wines which drew forth all these encone of modern tiundy and as flat as port; for at the close of the sixteenth, century some of them were of a _fauve_ or yellowish hue, and of the intermediate tint between red and white which the French call _clairet_, and which our old writers translate as the ”coe's eye” But, as a rule, the wines of the Chane up to this period closely resembled those produced in the adjacent province, where Charles the Bold had once held sway; a resereattheir respectiveural thesis, and in the firm faith that
”None but a clever dialectician Can hope to becoic plays an i art,”
propounded the theory that the wines of Burgundy were preferable to those of the Cha to the nerves and conducive to gout The faculty of medicine at Reims naturally rose in arms at this insolent assertion They seized their pens and poured forth a deluge of French and Latin in defence of the wines of their province, eulogising alike their purity, their brilliancy of colour, their exquisite flavour and perfueneral superiority to the Burgundy growths The partisans of the latter were equally pro in their defence, and the faculty of ether, enunciated their views and handled their opponents without mercy The dispute spread to the entireeach other with pa after the bones of the original disputants were dust and their lancets rust--the faculty of Paris, to whoave a final and forne
Meanwhile an entirely new kind of wine, which was to carry the na it to the uttermost corners of the earth, had been introduced On the picturesque slopes of the Marne, about fifteen miles from Reims, and some four or five miles from Epernay, stands the little hamlet of Hautvillers, which, in pre-revolutionary days, was a mere dependency upon a spacious abbey dedicated to St Peter Here the worthy monks of the order of St Benedict had lived in peace and prosperity for several hundred years, carefully cultivating the acres of vineland extending around the abbey, and religiously exacting a tithe of all the other wine pressed in their district The revenue of the coe, it was natural that the post of ”celerer” should be one of importance It happened that about the year 1688 this office was conferred upon a worthy non Poets and roasters, we know, are born, and not made; and the monk in question see head and a discri cultivators was of all qualities--good, bad, and indifferent; and with the spirit of a true Benedictine, Do” the produce of one vineyard with that of another He had noted that one kind of soil ienerosity, and discovered that a white wine could be ood, instead of turning yellow and degenerating like the wine obtained froht occurred to him that a piece of cork was a much more suitable stopper for a bottle than the flax dipped in oil which had heretofore served that purpose
The white, or, as it was sorew fahout the province, but that of Hautvillers held the predonon the abbey's well-stocked cellar was a far cheerfuller place than the cell Nothing delighted hi this brotherhood Dwelling for ever underground, Silent, contemplative, round and sound, Each one old and broith mould, But filled to the lips with the ardour of youth, With the latent power and love of truth, And with virtues fervent andhis vats and presses, barrels and bottles, Perignon alighted upon a discovery destined to be most i an effervescent wine--a wine that burst out of the bottle and overflowed the glass, that ice as dainty to the taste, and twice as exhilarating in its effects It was at the close of the seventeenth century that this discovery was lory of the Roi Soleil was on the wane, and with it the splendour of the Court of Versailles Louis XIV, for whose especial benefit liqueurs had been invented, recovered a glea vintage that enlivened his dreary _tetes-a-tetes_ with theof Scarron It found its chief patrons however, a roysterers, the future _roues_ of the Regency, whoathered round them, at the Palais Royal and at Anet It was at one of the famous _soupers_ d'Anet that the Marquis de Sillery--who had turned his sword into a pruning-knife, and applied himself to the cultivation of his paternal vineyards on the principles inculcated by the celerer of St
Peter's--first introduced the sparkling wine bearing his nanal, a dozen of bloouise of Bacchanals placed upon the table, were hailed with rapture, and thenceforth sparkling as an indispensable adjunct at all the _petits soupers_ of the period In the highest circles the popping of cha the knell of sadness, and the victories of Marlborough were in a measure compensated for by this happy discovery
Why the wine foamed and sparkled was a mystery even to the very makers themselves; for as yet Bauar and carbonic acid undrearee of effervescence depended upon the ti of the sap in the vine had everything to do with it Certain wiseacres held that it was influenced by the age of the ht the effervescence could be best secured by the addition of spirit, alum, and various nastinesses It was this belief in the use and efficacy of drugs that led to a teainst the wine about 1715, in which year Dorown blind, but his discrie his duties with unabated efficiency to the end Many of the tall tapering glasses invented by him have been emptied to the memory of the old Benedictine, whose remains repose beneath a black marble slab in the chancel of the archaic abbey church of Hautvillers
[Illustration: THE VINEYARDS AND ABBEY OF HAUTVILLERS (p 14)]
[Illustration: THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MESSRS CHARLES FARRE & CO, AT HAUTVILLERS
(p 15)]
Tireat Revolution have spared but little of the royal abbey of St Peter where Dohted upon his happy discovery of the effervescent quality of chane The quaint old church, scraps of which date back to the 12th century, the reateways,the limits of the abbey precincts, are all that rerandeur of its past It was the proud boast of the brotherhood that it had given nine archbishops to the see of Reims, and two-and-twenty abbots to various celebratedfa been the cradle of the sparkling vintage of the Chatie to Hautvillers across the swollen waters of the Marne at Epernay Our way lay for a tiht level poplar-bordered road, with verdant ed sharply to the left and we co the vine-clad hills, on a narrow plateau of which the church and abbey re slopes to the suhts rise up beyond, affording shelter fro over froe of Hautvillers we notice on our left hand a couple of isolated buildings overlooking a s in the sunlight These prove to be a branch establishne firrassy space beyond, dotted over with low stone shafts giving light and ventilation to the cellars beneath, is alive orkne bottles, while under a neighbouring shed is a crowd of wo the bottles as they are brought to theround, known as the _cellier_, contains wine in cask already blended, and to bottle which preparations are now beinginto the cellars, which, excavated in the chalk and of regular construction, coalleries, we find thee compact piles ready for transport to the head establisho their final manipulation The cellars consist of two stories, the lower with the ravine alreadyup behind we see the buildings perched so vines
[Illustration: THE PORTE DES PRESSOIRS, HAUTVILLERS]
The church of Hautvillers and the re abbey are situated at the farther extre street, nah an unpretentious gatee find ourselves in a spacious courtyard, bounded by buildings soht rises the tower of the church with the rehted by small square s, and propped up by heavy buttresses To the left stands the residence of the bailiff, and beyond it an 18th-century chateau on the site of the abbot's house, the abbey precincts being bounded on this side by a picturesque gateway tower leading to the vineyards, and known as the ”porte des pressoirs,” froe barn-like buildings, stables, and cart-sheds inclose the court on its re about are nu that what reenerated into an ordinary fars and certain of its lands are the property of Messrs Moet and Chandon, the great chaneso the necessary manure for the numerous vineyards which they own hereabouts