yield that which is of a very inferior quality. Presuming that our readers, at least, would scarcely thank us for the sour grapes of Picardy, we shall introduce them, without farther preface, into Champagne and Burgundy.

The sparkling white wines, which are so generally and so highly prized, are chiefly procured from the neighbourhood of Rheims and Epernay; viz. at Sillery, Ay, Mareuil, Hautvillers, Pierry, and Disy. These are usually obtained from a mixture of the black and the white grape; the former chiefly consisting of varieties provincially denominated morillons and pineaux, and the latter of the plantes dorées and the épinettes. The most esteemed red Champagnes are those of Versy, Versenay, Mailly, Saint-Basle, and Bouzy; which are denominated de la Montagne, and the Clos de Saint-Thierry.

The grapes destined to the manufacture of the rose-coloured wine are gathered with the same precaution as those which are employed in preparing the white wine, and they receive the same treatment under the press: but they are previously plucked from the stalks, and lightly trodden in vessels appropriated to the purpose; in which they remain until the incipient fermentation, by dissolving a portion of the colouring resin, imparts to the must the pink tint that is wanted.

In making this rosy wine, they have sometimes recourse to a liquor known in the country by the appellation of Fismes-wine.* It is extracted from the berries of the elder, which are boiled with cream of tartar, and then passed through a filter. A few drops of this liquor will communicate the rose-tint to a bottle of white wine, without altering its flavour or wholesomeness; yet, as this composition is extraneous to the wine, it would be desirable to dispense with it.

The high price of the sparkling Champagne wines is owing not merely to the quality of the wines selected, and the excessive attention which they require before they are in a marketable state, but also to the considerable losses and advances to which the proprietors and merchants, who speculate on the commodity, are liable; as well as to the capricious phænomena which determine or destroy the sparkling property. With regard to loss, the owners generally reckon on the breaking of fifteen or twenty bottles in the hundred, and the number sometimes amounts to thirty or forty. To this original loss of liquor and bottles, should be added the waste incurred at each separation of the wine from its precipitates, by disgorging; an operation which they undergo at least twice before they are consigned to conveyance.

As to those phænomena which determine or destroy the sparkling quality of this wine, they are quite surprizing and inex

* *Prepared in the town of that name, at six leagues from Rheims.'

This is a process by which the lees of the bottle are removed, and the wine left perfectly clear.' Hh 2

plicable;

plicable; for the same wine, bottled on the same day, in bottles. from the same glass-house, deposited in the same cellar, and placed on the same heap, sparkles at a given height in a particular direction, while it exhibits the same property in a much fainter degree, or is even quite dead, in another position, as near a door or under an air-hole. Some wines, again, which at first sparkle with the utmost vivacity, are observed to lose this property entirely on a change of seasons. The dearness of frothy wines, therefore, results from the combination of all these accidents; which are so various and so extraordinary, that the most practised dealers cannot always either foresee or guard against them.

6 The quality of the ingredients employed in the manufacture of the bottles, and perhaps also the degree of heat to which they have been subjected, contribute to diminish or preserve the vivacity of the Champagne wines. We have been assured that even the glasses used in drinking them may produce similar effects; and that, in some, all effervescence is arrested as soon as the wine is poured into them, while in others, filled at the same time, it is kept alive.* Hence we need not be surprized to find, in the same basket, bottles of which the contents sparkle with more or less briskness, and others which give no indication of such a property.

Frothy wines should be bottled in the month of March that succeeds the vintage. The fermentation usually commences in the month of May, and continues throughout the summer; and it is particularly strong in June, during the flowering of the vine, and in August, when the grape begins to ripen. These are the periods at which the proprietors suffer most from the breaking of the bottles; when it is imprudent to walk through a well-stocked cellar without being protected by a wire-mask, by neglecting which precaution work-people have been severely wounded by, splinters of bottles. The fermentation abates in Autumn, and serious accidents rarely occur in the second year.'

It has been observed that the frothy quality of these wines is most generally manifested in seasons which have proved unfavourable to the complete maturation of the grape; the quantity of carbonic acid gas contained in the liquor being, apparently, in the inverse ratio of its spirit, or body: but, if the grapes happen to be slightly affected by frost, when almost at the ripening point, the wine obtained will unite in an eminent degree the qualities of strength and liveliness. In this last case, the cold, by closing the pores of the fruit, is supposed to intercept its insensible transpiration, and to concentrate its fermentable principles.

It is probable that the glasses, which produce this effect, are those in which there is either an excess or an improper combination of alkaline parts; which, in that case, absorb the carbonic` acid that is contained in the wine,'.

• The

The principal traffic in the wines of Champagne is carried on at Rheims, Avize, and Epernay. The last-mentioned town is advantageously situated in the centre of the best vineyards, and in a soil favourable to the establishment of good cellars; which, excavated in a rock of tufa, are spacious, excellently adapted to the preservation and improvement of wines, and as solid as if they were supported by arches of stone. Those of M. Moët are especially remarkable on account of their extent, and form a sort of labyrinth from which it would be difficult to escape without a guide. The walls are lined to the height of six feet with bottles tastefully arranged; which, depositaries of the precious juice of the best vineyards of Champagne, await in this abode orders for their departure to distant countries. Few travellers pass this way without going to see these cellars, and even sovereigns have had the curiosity to visit them.'

M.JULLIEN includes Burgundy and Beaujolais in the same chapter, notwithstanding their geographical difference, because the wines of both have common qualities, and are sold not only by the same measurement but often under the same name. On a like principle, he has been induced to detach the arrondissement of Châlons-sur-Saône, and to consider it in conjunction with the department of the Côte-d'Or; so that the districts particularized in his eleventh chapter are, the department of the Yonne, that of the Côte-d'Or, including the arrondissement of Châlons-sur-Saône, the remainder of the departments of the Saône and Loire, and the arrondissement of Villefranche, in the department of the Rhône.

The extent of territory allotted to the culture of the vine, since the Revolution, is remarkably increased; many of the proprietors having converted low and mashy grounds into vineyards; others having applied manure to the sloping surfaces, or invested them with new soil, in order to obtain more abundant crops; while others, again, have substituted young stocks for those which had grown old, and even those of an ordinary for those of a superior quality. Persons who purchase the produce of these degenerated vineyards, or who are furnished with the wines of 'a bad year for those of a good, suppose that the wines of Burgundy are no longer what they formerly were: but this opinion is founded on certain abuses, which are equally practised in all other winecountries; and we shall see, in the course of this chapter,. that, if Burgundy produces a much greater quantity of common wines than it did thirty years ago, the number of its good crops, so far from having diminished, has been augmented by the addition of many hills of which the products equal, if they do not surpass, both in quality and quantity, those which rapacity has been enabled to destroy or defame."

The Burgundy wines have been commonly ranged under three distinct denominations; namely, those of Lower Burgundy, of

Hh 3

Upper

Upper Burgundy, and of Macon. The first are grown in the department of the Yonne, which is formed of Lower Burgundy and a portion of Champagne; the second are peculiar to the Côte-d'Or, comprizing the arrondissemens of Châlonssur-Saône, Dijon, Beaume, Chatillon-sur-Seine, and Semur; and the third are the products of the department of Saône and Loire, formed of a part of Upper Burgundy, and divided into the arrondissemens of Macon, Autun, Charolles, Louhans, and Villefranche. These three sorts of wine have also their appropriate qualities. Those of Lower Burgundy have, in general, less alcohol, aromatic flavour, and odour, than those of the upper parts of the province: but they are more lively, and retain, for a considerable length of time, that faint degree of harshness which characterizes claret. Those of the upper districts accord with the French ideas of perfect wine, possessing all the requisite qualities blended in the requisite proportions. The Macon varieties, again, have an inferior perfumé, a coarser unctuousness, and a considerable degree of consistency, without being clammy.

In some parts of Lower Burgundy, particularly in the Auxerrois, the vine appears to have been cultivated when the Romans invaded Gaul. Some of the existing plants, which are mostly of the varieties called black and white Pineau, Tresseau, Rongain, and Gammé, are ascertained to be upwards of a hundred years of age. The last, however, though it yields an abundant crop of fruit, deteriorates the quality of the wine; and the author says that it would be desirable to renew the edict of Charles IX., which prohibited the planting of the infamous Gammé in vineyards of the first order. Among the celebrated red wines of this district are those of Danemoine, Tonnerre, and Auxerre; and, among the white, those of Tonnerre and Chablis, the latter including Le Clos, Valmur, Vaudesir, &c.

The red grapes produced in the department of the Côted'Or, for the purpose of obtaining the first-rate wines, are the Noirien and Pineau; and the white, also of the first quality, are the Chaudenay, Melon blanc, and Chasselas. The best red wines which the district yields are the Romanée Conti, Chambertin, Richebourg, Clos Vougeot, Romanée de Saint-Vivant, Tâche, and Saint-George; and the white, of the first quality, are those of Puligny and Mont-Rachet.-The best red grapes cultivated in the department of the Saône and Loire are the Bourguignon and Chanay; and the best white are the Chardonnat and Bourguignon. To the first class of red wines, furnished by this department, belong those of the Windmill, Torins, and Chenas; and, to the first of the white, those of Pouilly and Fuissey.

M. JUL

M. JULLIEN has detailed, with much specialty of local nomenclature, the great diversities of Burgundy wine of the inferior classes; and we have only to express our regret that he has not bestowed equal attention on the modes of preparing those which are most in request. In his systematic exposition of the wines of Franche Comté, he makes the following observations on those of Arbois ::

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These wines would be much more highly prized, and would more frequently grace the banquets of our capital, if they were more carefully managed; and if the proprietors, following the example of the Champenois, would deliver them freed from all particles capable of affecting their transparency. With this view they should be fined, drawn off, not bottled till perfectly limpid, and allowed to repose a sufficient length of time, in order to insure them against muddiness; or, if any deposition should take place, it should be removed by disgorging *; an operation which the Champagne wines often undergo several times before they are delivered, and which renders them perfectly clear, and preserves them so for many years; whereas the Arbois wines are rarely clear, and soon form large depositions which alter their transparency and flavour. The owners and dealers in this tract of country do not sufficiently estimate the strength and frothy qualities of their wines; some of them frothing too much, and breaking the bottles, while others are not sufficiently sprightly, or are even destitute of the sparkling property, and must be kept a long time before they acquire the good qualities of still wines. These defects proceed, perhaps, from the nature of the wine. Though I am ignorant whether the necessary experiments have been made to ascertain this particular, I know that the Champenois have many difficulties to overcome, and that, in some years, they still suffer enormous losses by the breaking of the bottles: but their care and persevering activity maintain the reputation of their wines, which are the best of the sparkling kind known, as their white varieties hold the first rank among those of the still sorts."

Though the wines of Charente are of very inferior reputation for the table, they yield the most esteemed brandy in Europe: the grape from which they are obtained, called the Folle blanche, being far from grateful to the palate, and producing a white wine that is destitute of pleasant flavour, but is very spirituous. The brandy distilled from the red wines is of inferior quality. In good years, the white wine yields a fifth of its bulk in brandy: but, in bad seasons, nine, ten, or even eleven parts of wine, are required for one of brandy. The proprietors distil on their own premises; and the bran dies of the whole department pass, in trade, under the denomination of Cognac..

* For the manner of disgorging the sparkling wines of Champagne, see the Butler's Manual.