Part 3 (1/2)
[Illustration: DEVICES FROM THE COMMANDERIE AT REIMS]
VI--THE REIMS CHAMPAGNE ESTABLISHMENTS
Messrs Werle and Co, successors to the Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin-- Their Offices and Cellars on the site of a Forin of the Celebrity of Madame Clicquot's Wines-- M Werle and his Son-- The Forty-five Cellars of the Clicquot-Werle Establish Machine-- An Explosion and its Consequences-- M Werle's Gallery of Paintings-- Madame Clicquot's Renaissance House and its Picturesque Bas-reliefs-- The Werle Vineyards and Vendangeoirs-- M Louis Roederer's Establishment-- Heidsieck and Co and their Famous ”Monopole” Brand-- The Firm Founded in the Last Century-- Their various Establishments Inside and Outside Reims-- The Matured Wines shi+pped by thereat chane manufacturers of Reims are scattered in all directions over the historical old city They undernificant streets, its broad and handsome boulevards, and on the eastern side extend to its more distant outskirts Messrs Werle and Co, the successors of the famous Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, have their offices and cellars on the site of a former Commanderie of the Teers passing by the spot would scarcely iine that under their feet hundreds of busy hands are incessantly at work, disgorging, dosing, shaking, corking, storing, wiring, labelling, capsuling, waxing, tinfoiling, and packing hundreds of thousands of bottles of chane destined for all parts of the civilised world
The house of Clicquot, established in the year 1798 by the husband of La Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, who died in 1866, in her 89th year, was indebted for much of the celebrity of its wine to the lucky accident of the Russians occupying Rei the sweet chane stored in the 's capacious cellars Madahtly known in Russia prior to this date, but the officers of the invading arhout the length and breadth of the Muscovite Empire, and the fortune of the house was made Madame Clicquot, as every one knows, a both her daughter and granddaughter to counts of the _ancien regime_
The present head of the firh born in the ancient free imperial town of Wetzlar on the Lahn, where Goethe lays the scene of his ”Sorrows of Werther,” the leading incidents of which really occurred here M Werle entered the establish position, so far back as the year 1821 His care and skill, exercised over ely contributed to obtain for the Clicquot brand that high repute which it enjoys to-day all over the world M Werle, who has long been naturalised in France, was for many years Mayor of Reims and President of its Chamber of Commerce, as well as one of the deputies of the Marne to the Corps Legislatif He enjoys the reputation of being the richest man in Reims, and, like his late partner, Mada brilliant alliances for his children, his son, M Alfred Werle, having hter espoused the son of M Magne, Minister of Finance under the Second Empire
[Illustration: MADAME VEUVE CLICQUOT AT EIGHTY YEARS OF AGE
(_Fronet_) (p 64)]
[Illustration: THE CLICQUOT-WERLe ESTABLISHMENT AT REIMS (p 65)]
Half-way down the narrow tortuous Rue du Teateway, on which may be traced the half-effaced sculptured heads of Phbus and Bacchus I the entrance to the Clicquot-Werle establish to a spacious trim-kept courtyard, set off with a few trees, with so and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the fir-houses, with a little corner tower surure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other The old Rehts Templars existed until the epoch of the Great Revolution, and to-day a few frags remain adjacent to the ”celliers” of the establish-doors and down a flight of stone steps, and whence, after being furnished with lighted candles, we set out on our tour of inspection, entering first of all the vast cellar of St Paul, where the thousands of bottles requiring to be daily shaken are reposing necks doards on the large perforated tables which crowd the apartment It is a peculiarity of the Clicquot-Werle establishment that each of the cellars--forty-five in number, and the smallest a vast apart cellar of St Matthew other bottles are sied, and here wine in cask is likewise stored We pass rows of huge tuns, each holding its twelve or thirteen hundred gallons of fine reserved wine designed for blending withour way between seees, and anon are passing s the syrup hich the _vin prepare_ is dosed At intervals we coh which bottles of wine are being hauled up from the cellars beneath in readiness to receive their requisite adorn to the country to which they are destined to be despatched To Russia the Clicquot cha sixty bottles, while the cases for China contain as many as double that number
[Illustration: REMAINS OF THE COMMANDERIE AT REIMS]
The ae which the house possesses has enabled M Werle to make many experiments which firms with less space at their command would find it difficult to carry out on the same satisfactory scale Such, for instance, is the systeoes its diurnal shaking Instead of these racks being, as they coles, they are perfectly horizontal, which, in M Werle's opinion, offers a e, inas at the sa ready before those above, as is the case when the ancient syste less shaken than the others
After perfor the round of the celliers we descend into the _caves_, a coround corridors excavated in the bed of chalk which underlies the city, and roofed and walled with solid e In one of these cellars we catch sight of rows of work-people engaged in the operation of dosing, corking, securing, and shaking the bottles of hich have just left the hands of the _degorgeur_ by the diht of half-a-dozen tallow candles The latest invention for liqueuring the wine is being eas escaping fro on, it was necessary to press a gutta-percha ball connected with the as back The new as by its oer and co itself back into the wine
In the adjoining cellar of St Charles are stacks of bottles awaiting the eur_, while in that of St Ferdinand hted candles to ed and the wine perfectly clear before the disgorgeing of the newly-disgorged wine are going on Another flight of steps leads to the second tier of cellars, where the y walls, and save the diht thrown out by the candles we carried, and by so taper stuck in a cleft stick to direct the workive a twist to the bottles, all is darkness On every side bottles are reposing in various attitudes, the e square piles on their sides, others in racks slightly tilted, others, again, alh over-inflation have corief, litter the floor and crunch beneath our feet
Tablets are hung against each stack of wine indicating its age, and froht to show us how the sediment commences to form, or explain how it eventually works its way down the neck of the bottle, and finally settles on the cork Suddenly we are startled by a loud report reseh the vaulted cha out its heavy bottoh it had been cut by a dia in the sides of its ihbours The wine trickles down, and eventually finds its way along the sloping sides of the slippery floor to the narrow gutter in the centre
Ventilating shafts pass fro the teulated, and thereby obviate an excess of breakage M Werle estihteen months of a _cuvee_ amounts to 7 per cent, but subsequently is considerably less In 1862 one chane manufacturer lost as es The Clicquot _cuvee_ is sheads of wine are hauled up byas the operation lasts The _tirage_ or bottling of the wine ordinarily commences in the middle of May, and occupies fully a month
[Illustration: RENAISSANCE HOUSE AT REIMS, IN WHICH MADAME CLICQUOT RESIDED (p 69)]
M Werle's private residence is close to the establishallery of high-classMeissonnier's ”Card-players,” Delaroche's ”Beatrice Cenci on her way to Execution,”
Fleury's ”Charles V picking up the brush of titian,” various works by the brothers Scheffer, Knaus's highly-characteristic _genre_ picture, ”His Highness on a Journey,” and several fine portraits, anet, when she was eighty years of age, and another of M Werle by the saarded as a _chef-d'uvre_ Before her father's death Madame Clicquot used to reside in the Rue de Marc, some short distance from the cellars in which her whole existence centered, in a handsome Renaissance house, said to have had some connection with the row of palaces that at one ti and then fashi+onable Rue du Tambour This, however, is extre and well-preserved bas-reliefs decorate one of the facades of the house looking on to the court The figures are of the period of Francois Pren with a co that blaspheues pierced with red-hot irons, and heretics to be burnt alive, and who had the ill-luck to lose his eye and life through a lance-thrust of the Couards, whilst jousting with hihter Isabelle with the gloouinary fame
[Illustration]
The first of these bas-reliefs represents two soldiers of the Swiss guard, the next a Turk and a Slav tilting at each other, and then comes a scroll entwined round a thistle, and inscribed with this enigmatical motto: ”Giane le sur ou rien” In the third bas-relief a couple of passionate Italians are winding up a ga dispute with a hand-to-hand coot cantered over; the fourth presenting us with two French knights, ared in a tourney; while in the fifth and last a couple of Ger and dangerous weapons Several years back a tablet was discovered in one of the cellars of the house, inscribed ”Ci-gist venerable religieux ie, jadis prieur de ceans Priez Dieu pour luy 1486,” which would alious character, although the warlike spirit of the bas-reliefs decorating it renders any such supposition with regard to the existing building untenable
The Messrs Werle own nu the very finest situations in the well-known districts of Verzenay, Bouzy, Le Mesnil, and Oger, at all of which places they have vendangeoirs or pressing-houses of their own Their establishht, at Le Mesnil six, and at Oger two, in addition to which grapes are pressed under their own supervision at Ay, Avize, and Cra to their friends
Since the death of Madaal style of the firm has been Werle and Co, successors to Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, the mark, of which M Werle and his son are the sole proprietors, still re ”Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin,” while the corks of the bottles are branded with the words ”V Clicquot-P Werle,” encircling the figure of a coant, and fragrant--is fane What, however, is not equally well known is that within the last few years the fir taste, have introduced a perfectly dry wine of corresponding quality to the richer hich made the fortune of the house
The house of M Louis Roederer, founded by a plodding German named Schreider, pursued the sleepy tenor of its way for years, until all at once it felt proe to the Muscovite connection of La Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin and secure aIt next opened up the United States, and finally introduced its brand into England The house possesses cellars in various parts of Reims, and has its offices in one of the oldest quarters of the city--namely, the Rue des elus, or ancient Rue des Juifs, records of which date as far back as 1103 These offices are at the farther end of a courtyard beyond which is a second court, where carts being laden with cases of chane see business of the house is here carried on