Part 10

Between 1750 and '60, parcels of wine were despatched to Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, Königsberg, Dantzig, Stettin, Brussels, and Amsterdam; but one found no mention of any sales to England till the year 1788, when the customers of the firm included "Milord" Farnham, of London, and Messrs. Felix Calvert and Sylvin, who had a couple of sample bottles sent to them, for which they were charged five shillings. In the same year Messrs. Carbonnell, Moody, and Walker (predecessors of the well-known existing firm of Carbonnell and Co.) wrote in French for two baskets, of ten dozens each, of vin de champagne "of good body, not too charged with liqueur, but of excellent taste, and not at all sparkling!" while the Chevalier Colebrook, writing from Bath, requests that 72 bottles of champagne may be sent to his friend the Hon. John Butler, Molesworth Street, Dublin, "who if contented with the wine will become a good customer, he being rich, keeping a good house, and receiving many amateurs of vin de champagne." Shortly afterwards the chevalier himself receives 50 bottles of still wine, vintage 1783. In 1789 120 bottles of champagne, vintage 1788, are supplied to "Milord" Findlater, of London—an ancestor, no doubt, of the wine-merchants of the same name carrying on business to-day, and whom the Moëts in their simplicity dubbed a "Milord"—and in 1790 the customers of the house include Power and Michel, of 44, Lamb Street, London, and Manning, of the St. Alban Tavern, the latter of whom is supplied on March 30th with 130 bottles of champagne at three livres, or two "schillings," per bottle; while a month later Mr. Lockart, banker, of 36, Pall Mall, is debited with 360 bottles, vintage 1788, at three shillings.

In this same year M. Moët despatches a traveller to England named Jeanson, and his letters, some two hundred in number, are all preserved in the archives of the house. On the 17th May, 1790, he writes from London as follows:—"As yet I have only gone on preparatory and often useless errands. I have distributed samples of which I have no news. Patience is necessary, and I endeavour to provide myself with it. How the taste of this country has changed since ten years ago! Almost everywhere they ask for dry wine, but at the same time require it so vinous and so strong that there is scarcely any other than the wine of Sillery which can satisfy them.... To-morrow I dine five miles from here, at M. Macnamara's. We shall uncork four bottles of our wine, which will probably be all right." In May, 1792, Jean Remi Moët is married, and thenceforward assumes the full management of the house. On December 20 of the year following, when the Reign of Terror was fairly inaugurated, we find the accounts in the ledger opened to this or the other "citoyen." The orthodox Republican formula, however, did not long continue, and "sieur" and "monsieur" resumed their accustomed places, showing that Jean Remi Moët had no sympathy with the Jacobin faction of the day. In 1805 he became Mayor of Epernay, and between this time and the fall of the Empire received Napoleon several times at his residence, as well as the Empress Josephine and the King of Westphalia. The Emperor, after recapturing Reims from the Allies, came on to Epernay, on which occasion he presented M. Moët with the cross of the Legion of Honour. In 1830 the latter was arbitrarily dismissed from his mayoralty by Charles X., but was speedily reinstated by Louis Philippe, though he did not retain his office for long, his advanced age compelling him to retire from active life in the course of 1833. At this epoch the firm, which, since 1807 had been known as Moët and Co., was remodelled under the style of Moët and Chandon, the two partners being M. Victor Moët, son of the outgoing partner, and M. P. G. Chandon, the descendant of an old ennobled family of the Mâconnais, who had married M. Jean Remi Moët's eldest daughter. The descendants of these gentlemen are to-day at the head of the business, the partners being on the one hand M. Victor Moët-Romont and M. C. J. V. Auban Moët-Romont; and on the other, MM. Paul and Raoul Chandon de Briailles.

Facing Messrs. Moët and Chandon's offices at Epernay is a range of comparatively new buildings, with its white façade ornamented with the well-known monogram M. and C., surmounted by the familiar star. It is here that the business of blending and bottling the wine is carried on. Passing through the arched gateway access is obtained to a spacious courtyard, where carts laden with bottles are being expeditiously lightened of their fragile contents by the busy hands of numerous workmen. Another gateway on the left leads into the spacious bottle-washing room, which from the middle of May until the middle of July presents a scene of extraordinary animation. Bottle-washing apparatus, supplied by a steam-engine with 20,000 gallons of water per diem, are ranged in fifteen rows down the entire length of this hall, and nearly 200 women strive to excel each other in diligence and celerity in their management, a practised hand washing from 900 to 1,000 bottles in the course of the day. To the right of this salle de rinçage, as it is styled, bottles are stacked in their tens of thousands, and lads furnished with barrows, known as diables, hurry to and fro, conveying these to the washers, or removing the clean bottles to the adjacent courtyard, where they are allowed to drain, prior to being taken to the salle de tirage or bottling room.

Before, however, the washing of bottles on this gigantic scale commences, the "marrying" or blending of the wine is accomplished in a vast apartment, 250 feet in length and 100 feet broad, during the early spring. The casks of newly-vintaged wine which have been stowed away during the winter months, in the extensive range of cellars hewn out of the chalk underlying Epernay, where they have slowly fermented, are mixed together in due proportions in huge vats, each holding upwards of 12,000 gallons. Some of this wine is the growth of Messrs. Moët and Chandon's own vineyards, of which they possess as many as 900 acres (giving constant employment to 800 labourers and vinedressers) at Ay, Avenay, Bouzy, Cramant, Champillon, Chouilly, Dizy, Epernay, Grauves, Hautvillers, Le Mesnil, Moussy, Pierry, Saran, St. Martin, Verzy, and Verzenay, and the average annual cost of cultivating which is about £40 per acre. At Ay the firm own 210 acres of vineyards; at Cramant and Chouilly, nearly 180 acres; at Verzy and Verzenay, 120 acres; at Pierry and Grauves, upwards of 100 acres; at Hautvillers, 90 acres; at Le Mesnil, 80 acres; at Epernay, nearly 60 acres; and at Bouzy, 55 acres. Messrs. Moët and Chandon, moreover, possess vendangeoirs, or pressing-houses, at Ay, Bouzy, Cramant, Epernay, Hautvillers, Le Mesnil, Pierry, Saran, and Verzenay, in which the large number of 40 presses are installed. At these vendangeoirs no less than 5,450 pièces of fine white wine, sufficient for 1,360,000 bottles of champagne, are annually made—that is, 1,200 pièces at Ay, 1,100 at Cramant and Saran, 800 at Verzy and Verzenay, and smaller quantities at the remaining establishments. All these establishments have their celliers and their cellars, together with cottages for the accommodation of the numerous vinedressers in the employment of the firm.

Extensive as are the vineyards owned by Messrs. Moët and Chandon, the yield from them is utterly inadequate to the enormous demand which the great Epernay firm are annually called upon to supply, and large purchases have to be made by their agents from the growers throughout the Champagne. The wine thus secured, as well as that grown by the firm, is duly mixed together in such proportions as will ensure lightness with the requisite vinosity, and fragrance combined with effervescence, a thorough amalgamation being effected by stirring up the wine with long poles provided with fan-shaped ends. If the vintage be indifferent in quality the firm have scores of huge tuns filled with the yield of more favoured seasons to fall back upon to ensure any deficiencies of character and flavour being supplied.

The casks of wine to be blended are raised from the cellars, half a dozen at a time, by means of a lift provided with an endless chain, and worked by the steam-engine of which we have already spoken. They are emptied, through traps in the floor of the room above, into the huge vats which, standing upon a raised platform, reach almost to the ceiling. From these vats the fluid is allowed to flow through hose into rows of casks stationed below. Before being bottled the wine reposes for a certain time, is next duly racked and again blended, and is eventually conveyed through silver-plated pipes into oblong reservoirs, each fitted with a dozen syphon-taps, so arranged that directly the bottle slipped on to one of them becomes full the wine ceases to flow.

Upwards of 200 workpeople are employed in the salle de tirage at Messrs. Moët and Chandon's, which, while the operation of bottling is going on, presents a scene of bewildering activity. Men and lads are gathered round the syphon-taps briskly removing the bottles as they become filled, and supplanting them by empty ones. Other lads hasten to transport the filled bottles on trucks to the corkers, whose so-called "guillotine" machines send the corks home with a sudden thud. The corks being secured with agrafes the bottles are placed in large flat baskets called manettes, and wheeled away on tracks, the quarts being deposited in the cellars by means of lifts, while the pints slide down an inclined plane by the aid of an endless chain, which raises the trucks with the empty baskets at the same time the full ones make their descent into the cellars. What with the incessant thud of the corking machines, the continual rolling of iron-wheeled trucks over the concrete floor, the rattling and creaking of the machinery working the lifts, the occasional sharp report of a bursting bottle, and the loudly-shouted orders of the foremen, who display the national partiality for making a noise to perfection, the din becomes at times all but unbearable. The number of bottles filled in the course of the day naturally varies, still Messrs. Moët and Chandon reckon that during the month of June a daily average of 100,000 are taken in the morning from the stacks in the salle de rinçage, washed, dried, filled, corked, wired, lowered into the cellars and carefully arranged in symmetrical order. This represents a total of two and a half million bottles during that month alone.

The bottles on being lowered into the cellars, either by means of the incline or the lifts, are placed in a horizontal position, and with their uppermost side daubed with white chalk, are stacked in layers from two to half-a-dozen bottles deep with narrow oak laths between. The stacks are usually about six or seven feet high and 100 feet and upwards in length. Whilst the wine is thus reposing in a temperature of about 55° Fahrenheit, fermentation sets in, and the ensuing month is one of much anxiety. Thanks, however, to the care bestowed, Messrs. Moët and Chandon's annual loss from bottles bursting rarely exceeds three per cent., though fifteen was once regarded as a respectable and satisfactory average. The broken glass is a perquisite of the workmen, the money arising from its sale, which at the last distribution amounted to no less than 20,000 francs, being divided amongst them every couple of years.

The usual entrance to Messrs. Moët and Chandon's Epernay cellars—which, burrowed out in all directions, are of the aggregate length of nearly seven miles, and have usually between 11,000,000 and 12,000,000 bottles and 25,000 casks of wine stored therein—is through a wide and imposing portal, and down a long and broad flight of steps. It is, however, by the ancient and less imposing entrance, through which more than one crowned head has condescended to pass, that we set forth on our lengthened tour through these intricate underground galleries—this subterranean city with its miles of streets, crossroads, open spaces, tramways, and stations devoted solely to champagne. A gilt inscription on a black marble tablet testifies that "on the 26th July, 1807, Napoleon the Great, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, honoured commerce by visiting the cellars of Jean Rémi Moët, Mayor of Epernay, President of the Canton, and Member of the General Council of the Department," within three weeks of the signature of the treaty of Tilsit. Passing down the flight of steep slippery steps traversed by the victor of Eylau and Jena, access is gained to the upper range of vaults, brilliantly illuminated by the glare of gas, or dimly lighted by the flickering flame of tallow-candles, upwards of 60,000lbs. of which are annually consumed. Here group after group of the small army of 350 workmen employed in these subterranean galleries are encountered engaged in the process of transforming the vin brut into champagne. At Messrs. Moët and Chandon's the all-important operation of liqueuring the wine is effected by aid of machines of the latest construction, which regulate the quantity administered to the utmost nicety. The corks are branded by being pressed against steel dies heated by gas, by women who can turn out 3,000 per day apiece, the quantity of string used to secure them amounting to nearly ten tons in the course of the year.

There is another and a lower depth of cellars to be explored to which access is gained by trapholes in the floor—through which the barrels and baskets of wine are raised and lowered—and by flights of steps. From the foot of the latter there extends an endless vista of lofty and spacious passages hewn out of the chalk, the walls of which, smooth as finished masonry, are lined with thousands of casks of raw wine, varied at intervals by gigantic vats. Miles of long, dark-brown, dampish-looking galleries stretch away to the right and left, and though devoid of the picturesque festoons of fungi which decorate the London Dock vaults, exhibit a sufficient degree of mouldiness to give them an air of respectable antiquity. These multitudinous galleries, lit up by petroleum-lamps, are mostly lined with wine in bottles stacked in compact masses to a height of six or seven feet, only room enough for a single person to pass being left. Millions of bottles are thus arranged, the majority on their sides, in huge piles, with tablets hung up against each stack to note its age and quality; and the rest, which are undergoing daily evolutions at the hands of the twister, at various angles of inclination. In these cellars there are nearly 11,000 racks in which the bottles of vin brut rest sur pointe, as many as 600,000 bottles being commonly twisted daily.

The way runs on between regiments of bottles of the same size and shape, save where at intervals pints take the place of quarts; and the visitor, gazing into the black depths of the transverse passages to the right and left, becomes conscious of a feeling that if his guide were suddenly to desert him he would feel as hopelessly lost as in the catacombs of Rome. There are two galleries, each 650 feet in length, containing about 650,000 bottles, and connected by 32 transverse galleries, with an aggregate length of 4,000 feet, in which nearly 1,500,000 bottles are stored. There are, further, eight galleries, each 500 feet in length, and proportionably stocked; also the extensive new vaults, excavated some five or six years back, in the rear of the then-existing cellarage, and a considerable number of smaller vaults. The different depths and varying degrees of moisture afford a choice of temperature of which the experienced owners know how to take advantage. The original vaults, wherein more than a century ago the first bottles of champagne made by the infant firm were stowed away, bear the name of Siberia, on account of their exceeding coldness. This section consists of several roughly-excavated low winding galleries, resembling natural caverns, and affording a striking contrast to the broad, lofty, and regular-shaped corridors of more recent date.

When the proper period arrives for the bottles to emerge once more into the upper air they are conveyed to the packing-room, a spacious hall 180 feet long and 60 feet broad. In front of its three large double doors waggons are drawn up ready to receive their loads. The seventy men and women employed here easily foil, label, wrap, and pack up some 10,000 bottles a day. Cases and baskets are stacked in different parts of this vast hall, at one end of which numerous trusses of straw used in the packing are piled. Seated at tables ranged along one side of the apartment women are busily occupied in pasting on labels or encasing the necks of bottles in gold or silver foil, whilst elsewhere men, seated on three-legged stools in front of smoking caldrons of molten sealing-wax of a deep green hue, are coating the necks of other bottles by plunging them into the boiling fluid. When labelled and decorated with either wax or foil the bottles pass on to other women, who swathe them in pink tissue-paper and set them aside for the packers, by whom, after being deftly wrapped round with straw, they are consigned to baskets or cases, to secure which last no less than 10,000lbs. of nails are annually used. England and Russia are partial to gold foil, pink paper, and wooden cases holding a dozen or a couple of dozen bottles of the exhilarating fluid, whereas other nations prefer waxed necks, disdain pink paper, and insist on being supplied in wicker baskets containing fifty bottles each.

Some idea of the complex character of so vast an establishment as that of Messrs. Moët and Chandon may be gathered from a mere enumeration of their staff, which, in addition to twenty clerks and 350 cellarmen proper, includes numerous agrafe-makers and corkcutters, packers and carters, wheelwrights and saddlers, carpenters, masons, slaters and tilers, tinmen, firemen, needlewomen, &c., while the inventory of objects used by this formidable array of workpeople comprises no fewer than 1,500 distinct heads. A medical man attached to the establishment gives gratuitous advice to all those employed, and a chemist dispenses drugs and medicines without charge. While suffering from illness the men receive half-pay, but should they be laid up by an accident met with in the course of their work full salary is invariably awarded to them. As may be supposed, so vast an establishment as this is not without a provision for those past work, and all the old hands receive liberal pensions from the firm upon retiring. Every year Messrs. Moët and Chandon give a banquet or a ball to the people in their employ—usually after the bottling of the wine is completed—when the hall in which the entertainment takes place is handsomely decorated and illuminated with myriads of coloured lamps.

It is needless to particularise Messrs. Moët and Chandon's wines, which are familiar to all drinkers of champagne. Their famous "star" brand is known in all societies, figures equally at clubs and mess-tables, at garden parties and picnics, dinners and soirées, and has its place in hotel cartes all over the world. One of the best proofs of the wine's universal popularity is found in the circumstance that as many as 1,000 visitors from all parts of the world come annually to Epernay and make the tour of Messrs. Moët and Chandon's spacious cellars.

A little beyond Messrs. Moët and Chandon's, in the broad Rue du Commerce, we encounter a heavy, ornate, pretentious-looking château, the residence of M. Perrier-Jouët, which presents a striking contrast to the almost mean-looking premises opposite, where the business of the firm is carried on. M. Perrier-Jouët is the fortunate grandson of the Sieur Perrier Fissier, a little Epernay grocer, who some eighty years or so ago used to supply corks, candles, and string to the firm of Moët and Co., and who, when the profits arising from this connection warranted his doing so, discarded his grocer's sleeves and apron and blossomed forth as a competitor in the champagne trade. Perrier-Jouët and Co.'s offices are situated on the left-hand side of a courtyard surrounded by low buildings, which serve as celliers, store-houses, packing-rooms, and the like. From an inner courtyard where piles of bottles are stacked under open sheds, the cellars themselves are reached. Previous to descending into these we passed through the various buildings, in one of which a party of men were engaged in disgorging and preparing wine for shipment. In another we noticed one of those heavy beam presses for pressing the grapes which the more intelligent manufacturers regard as obsolete, while in a third was the cuvée vat, holding no more than 2,200 gallons. In making their cuvée the firm commonly mix one part of old wine to three parts of new. An indifferent vintage, however, necessitates the admixture of a larger proportion of the older growth. The cellars, like all the more ancient ones at Epernay, are somewhat straggling and irregular, still they are remarkably cool, and on the lower floor remarkably damp as well. This, however, would appear to be no disadvantage, as the breakage in them is calculated never to exceed 2½ per cent.