The Ay vineyards are mentioned in a charter of Edmund of Lancaster, son of our Henry II. and guardian of Jehanne, heiress of Henri le Gros, Count of Champagne, dated 1276, and confirming the right of the Abbey of Avenay to four hogsheads of wine from the terroir of Ay.[381] If faith, however, may be placed in monkish legends, their existence dates back to the sixth century, at which epoch St. Tresain, the patron saint of Avenay and a contemporary of St. Remi, emigrated to the Champagne from Scotland. Having given away all he possessed in charity, he became perforce a swineherd at Mutigny, a village on the summit of the hill overlooking Ay, Mareuil, and Avenay. One day the vine-growers of Ay, hearing that St. Remi was at Ville-en-Selve, sought him out, and clamorously accused St. Tresain of neglecting to look after his pigs, which had devastated the vineyards on the slopes, and so caused great loss to the community. When called upon for his defence, St. Tresain acknowledged that he was wont to listen in the church-porch to the celebration of mass, and to forget on these occasions all such sublunary matters as swine. St. Remi, finding him so deeply religious, not only forgave him his negligence and relieved him from his porcine charge for the future, but appointed him parish priest of Mareuil and Mutigny, the inhabitants of which, it is to be hoped, received more attention from him than his pigs had done. St. Tresain, although his promotion was brought about by the complaint of the men of Ay, retorted on the latter in a vindictive and unsaintly spirit, for he ill-naturedly cursed them, and declared that after thirty years of age not one of them or their posterity should prosper temporally or spiritually—a prophecy which, if it affected the vine-growers of that epoch, has proved harmless enough in the case of their descendants.[382]

At Ay we visited the pressoir of the principal producer of vin brut, who, although the owner of merely five hectares, or about twelve and a half acres of vines, expected to make as many as 1500 pièces of wine that year, mainly of course from grapes purchased from other growers.[383] On our way from Ay to Mareuil, along the lengthy Rue de Châlons, we looked in at the little auberge at the corner of the Boulevard du Sud, and found a crowd of coopers and others connected in some way with the vintage, taking their cheerful glasses round. The walls of the room were appropriately enough decorated with capering bacchanals squeezing bunches of purple grapes and flourishing their thyrsi about in a very tipsy fashion. All the talk—and there was an abundance of it—had reference to the yield of this particular vintage and the high rate the Ay wine had realised. Eight hundred francs the pièce of 200 litres, equal to 44 gallons, appeared to be the price fixed by the agents of the great Champagne houses, and at this figure the bulk of the vintage was disposed of before a single grape passed through the winepress.[384]

The Mareuil vinelands, which include the vineyard bequeathed some six hundred years ago by Canon John de Brie to the chapter of Reims cathedral, and possibly those vineyards bestowed in 1208 on the Abbey of Avenay by Alain de Jouvincourt, cover the slopes of two coteaux, the first a continuation of the Côte d’Ay, and the second a detached spur, known as the Mont de Fourche, overlooking the Marne canal. Owing to the steepness of the slopes and to the roads through the vineyards being impracticable for carts, the grapes were being conveyed to the press-houses in baskets slung across the backs of mules and donkeys, most of which, on account of their known partiality for the ripe fruit, were muzzled while thus employed. The wine yielded by the Mareuil vineyards possesses body and vinosity, and while of course regarded as inferior to that of Ay, found a ready market the year of our visit at from five to six hundred francs the pièce. Prior to the French Revolution, the produce of the winepresses of the Seigneurs of Mareuil and the Abbess of Avenay were almost as renowned as the best growths of Ay. The reputation of the wine was then shared by the inhabitants of the village; the popular local diction, ‘Les gens d’Ay, les messieurs de Mareuil, et les crottés d’Avenay,’ referring to the days when the first was inhabited by enriched wine-growers, the second by people of some position, and the third merely by peasants, simply from its being cut off, in a great measure, from outside intercourse through the badness of its approaches. It was not until after 1776, when the seigneurie of Louvois was purchased from the Marquis de Souvré by Madame Adelaïde, aunt of Louis XVI., that the road from Epernay to Louvois, which passes through Mareuil and Avenay, was, if not constructed, at any rate rendered practicable, in order to facilitate the visits of the princess to her new acquisition. These roads exist, though no traces remain of the ancient fort of Mareuil on the bank of the Marne, taken from the English in 1359 by Gaucher de Chatillon, captain of Reims, and alternately occupied by Leaguers and Royalists during the War of Religion in the sixteenth century. Nor does there seem any chance of identifying either the ‘vineyard called la Gibaudelle, lying next the vineyard of Oudet, surnamed Leclerc,’ in the territory of Mareuil, which Guillaume de Lafors and Marguerite his wife bestowed upon the Abbey of Avenay in 1273, or those from which, in the fourteenth century, Archbishop Richard Pique of Reims used to draw ten muids or hogsheads of wine annually for ‘droits de vinage.’

The vineyards of Avenay also date prior to the thirteenth century, mention being frequently made of them in the charters of that epoch.[385] Their best wine, which Saint Evremond extolled so highly, is vintaged to-day up the slopes of Mont Hurlé. Avenay itself is a tumbledown little village situated in the direction of Reims, and the year of our visit we found the yield from its vineyards had been scarcely more than the third of an average one, and that the wine produced at the first pressure of the grapes had been sold for 500 francs the pièce. We tasted there some very fair still red wine, made from the same grapes as Champagne, remarkably deep in colour, full of body, and possessing that slight sweet bitterish flavour which characterises certain of the better-class growths of the South of France.

Although at Avenay vineyards cover the slopes as of yore, when Marmontel used to wander amongst them in company with his inamorata Mademoiselle Hévin de Navarre, no traces remain of the ancient royal abbey—founded by St. Bertha in 660, on the martyrdom of her husband, St. Gombert, one of the early Christian missionaries to Scotland—where Charles V. took up his quarters when invading Champagne in 1544, and where the deputies of the Leaguers of Reims and of the Royalists of Châlons met in October 1592 to settle the terms of the ‘Traité des Vendanges,’ securing to both parties liberty to gather in the vintage unmolested.[386] The villagers still point out the house where Henri Quatre slept, and the window from which he harangued the populace during the visit paid by him to Madame Françoise de la Marck, the Abbess of Avenay,[387] in August of the same year. This, by the way, does not seem to have been the only occasion when the spot was honoured by the presence of Royalty; for a tradition, which, although unsupported by any documentary evidence, appears to be worthy of credence, is current to the effect that Marie Antoinette paid a visit to the Abbey of Avenay during her sojourn at Louvois as the guest of Madame Adelaïde in 1786. The spring which, according to the legend, gushed forth when St. Bertha, in imitation of Moses, struck the rock with her distaff, is still shown to travellers; and scandal has gone so far as to say that recourse is sometimes had to it to eke out the native vintage.

On leaving Avenay we ascended the hills to Mutigny, and wound round thence to Cumières, on the banks of the Marne, finding the vintage in full operation all throughout the route. The vineyards of Cumières—classed as a second cru—yield a wine which, though celebrated in the verses of Eustache Deschamps, a famous and prolific Champenois poet of the fourteenth century, varies to-day considerably in quality, the best coming from the ‘Côtes-à-bras,’ the property of the Abbey of Hautvillers in Dom Perignon’s day. The Cumières vineyards join those of Hautvillers on the one side and Damery on the other, the latter a cosy little river-side village, where the bon Roi Henri sought relaxation from the turmoils of war in the society of the fair Anne du Pay, sa belle hôtesse, as the gallant Béarnais was wont to style her. Damery also claims to be the birthplace of Adrienne Lecouvreur, the celebrated actress of the Regency, and mistress of the Maréchal de Saxe, who coaxed her out of her 30,000 l. of savings to enable him to prosecute his suit with the obese Anna Iwanowna, niece of Peter the Great, which, had he only been successful, would have secured the future hero of Fontenoy the coveted dukedom of Courland. From Cumières can be distinguished far away on the horizon the ruined tower of the bourg of Châtillon, the birthplace of Pope Urban II., preacher of the first Crusade, and a devotee of the wine of Ay.[388]

It was during the budding spring-time when we made our formal pilgrimage to Hautvillers across the swollen waters of the Marne at Epernay. Our way lay for a time along a straight level poplar-bordered road, with verdant meadows on either hand; then diverged sharply to the left, and we commenced ascending the vine-clad hills, on a narrow plateau of which the church and abbey remains are picturesquely perched. The closely-planted vines extend along the undulating slopes to the summit of the plateau, and wooded heights rise up beyond, affording shelter from the bleak winds that sweep over here from the north. Spite of the reputation which the wine of Hautvillers enjoyed a couple of centuries ago, and its association with the origin of vin mousseux, the vineyards to-day appear to have been relegated to the rank of a second cru, their produce ordinarily commanding less than two-thirds of the price obtained for the Ay and Verzenay growths.[389]

The church of Hautvillers and the remains of the abbey are situated at the farther extremity of the village, at the end of its one long street, named, pertinently enough, the Rue de Bacchus. Time, the iconoclasts of the great Revolution, and the quieter, yet far more destructive, labours of the Bande Noire, have spared but little of the royal abbey of St. Peter, where Dom Perignon lighted upon his happy discovery of the effervescent quality of Champagne. The quaint old church, scraps of which date back to the twelfth century, the remnants of the cloisters, and one of the abbey’s ancient gateways, are all that remain to testify to the grandeur of its past, when 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 celebrated monasteries.

Passing through an unpretentious gateway, we find ourselves in a spacious courtyard, bounded by buildings somewhat complex in character. On our right rises the tower of the church with the remains of the old cloisters, now walled-in and lighted by small square windows, and propped up by heavy buttresses. To the left stands the residence of the bailiff, and beyond it an eighteenth-century château on the site of the abbot’s house. Formerly the abbey precincts were bounded on this side by a picturesque gateway-tower leading to the vineyards, and known as the ‘Porte des Pressoirs,’ from its contiguity to the winepresses. The court is enclosed on its remaining sides by huge barn-like buildings, stables, and cart-sheds; while roaming about are numerous live stock, indicating that what remains of the once-famous royal abbey of St. Peter has degenerated into an ordinary farm. To-day the abbey buildings and certain of its lands are the property of M. Paul Chandon de Brialles, of the firm of Moët & Chandon, the great Champagne manufacturers of Epernay, who maintains them as a farm, keeping some six-and-thirty cows there, with the object of securing the necessary manure for the numerous vineyards which the firm own hereabouts.

The dilapidated cloisters, littered with old casks, farm implements, and the like, preserve ample traces of their former architectural character, changed as they are since the days when the sandalled feet of the worthy cellarer resounded through the echoing arches as he paced to and fro, meditating upon coming vintages and future marryings of wines. Vine-leaves and bunches of grapes decorate some of the more ancient columns inside the church, and grotesque mediæval monsters, such as monkish architects habitually delighted in, entwine themselves around the capitals of others. The stalls of the choir are elaborately carved with cherubs’ heads, medallions and figures of saints, cupids supporting shields, and free and graceful arabesques of the epoch of the Renaissance. In the chancel, close by the altar-steps, are a couple of black-marble slabs, with Latin inscriptions of dubious orthography, the one to Johannes Royer, who died in 1527, and the other, which has been already cited in detail, setting forth the virtues and merits of Dom Petrus Perignon, the discoverer of the effervescing qualities of Champagne. In the central aisle a similar slab marks the resting-place of Dom Thedoricus Ruynart—obit 1709—an ancestor of the Reims Ruinarts; and little square stones interspersed among the tiles with which the side aisles of the church are paved record the deaths of other members of the Benedictine brotherhood during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Several large pictures grace the walls of the church, the most interesting one representing St. Nivard, Bishop of Reims, and his friend, St. Berchier, designating to some mediæval architect the site which the contemplated Abbey of St. Peter is to occupy, as set forth in the legend already related.

At a short distance from the abbey farm, Messrs. Moët & Chandon have erected a tower, whence a splendid view, extending over the vineyards of Cumières, Hautvillers, Dizy, and Ay, with those lying on the opposite bank of the river, is to be obtained. Gazing from here, it is easy to imagine the scene presented in the days when the Abbey of St. Peter still reared its stately walls, when Louis Chaumejan de Tourille wore the abbatial insignia, and Dom Perignon displayed with equal pride as the badge of his office the key of the abbey cellars. Over these slopes on a dewy autumn morning the latter’s eyes, ere sealed in blindness, must have often wandered, and an unctuous chuckle must have welled up from between his lips as he marked the grapes steadily advancing towards maturity. We can fancy him pausing from time to time

although in those halcyon days there was neither oïdium nor phylloxera to be dreaded, and an extra taper or so to St. Vincent, the patron of vine-dressers, sufficed to secure the crop from ordinary accidents of flood and field.

When the epoch of the vintage arrived, and the slopes were all alive with bands of vintagers engaged in stripping the ripened purple bunches from the vines, and carefully transporting them to the winepress, one can picture Dom Perignon smiling contentedly at the report of the gray-haired bailiff that no such crop had been garnered for years before. And when the must began to gush forth as the stalwart bare-armed peasants tugged at the levers of the huge press on which M. de Tourille had placed the glorifying inscription elsewhere cited, with what satisfaction must Perignon have recognised a foreshadowing of that divine aroma which lends so exquisite a charm to the choice vintages of the Champagne! Later on we can imagine him entering the abbey cellar, stored with the results of his careful labours, as a

and softly chanting to himself, as he draws off a flagon of the best and choicest vintage which the gloomy vaults contain:

The vineyards of the Côte d’Epernay, on the southern bank of the Marne, extend eastward from beyond Boursault, on whose wooded height stands the fine château built by Madame Clicquot, and in which her granddaughter, the Comtesse de Mortemart, to-day resides. They then follow the course of the river, and, after winding round behind Epernay, diverge towards the south-west. Amongst them are the slopes of Pierry, Mardeuil, Moussy, Vinay, Ablois, and Chouilly, the last named situate somewhat apart from the rest to the east of Epernay, and yielding a light wine, qualified as slightly purgative. The vines of the Côte d’Epernay produce only black grapes, and many of the vineyards are of great antiquity, the one known as the Closet, near Epernay, having been bequeathed under that name by a canon of Laon named Parchasius to the neighbouring Abbey of St. Martin six and a half centuries ago.

A short drive along the high-road leading from Epernay to Orleans brings us to the village of Pierry, cosily nestling amongst groves of poplars in the valley of the Cubry, with some half-score of châteaux of the last century, belonging to well-to-do wine-growers of the neighbourhood, screened from the road by umbrageous gardens. Vines mount the slopes that rise around, the higher summits being crowned with forest, while here and there some pleasant village shelters itself under the brow of a lofty hill. Near Pierry many cellars have been excavated in the chalky soil, to the flints so prevalent in which the village is said to owe its name. The entrances to these cellars are closed by iron gateways, and on the skirts of the vineyards we come upon whole rows of them picturesquely overgrown with ivy, and suggestive in appearance of catacombs. Early in the last century the wine vintaged here in the Clos St. Pierre, belonging to an abbey of this name at Châlons, acquired a high reputation through the care bestowed upon it by Brother Jean Oudart, whose renown almost rivalled that of Dom Perignon himself; and to-day the Pierry vineyards, producing exclusively black grapes, hold a high rank among the second-class crus of the Marne.[390]

Crossing the Sourdon, a little stream which, after bubbling up in the midst of huge rocks in the forest of Epernay, rushes down the hills, and then changes its name to the Cubry, we soon reach Moussy, where vineyards have been in existence for something like eight centuries; for we find enumerated in the list of bequests made to the hospital of St. Mary at Reims in the eleventh and twelfth centuries sundry ‘vineas in Moiseio’ devised by such long-forgotten notabilities as Pontius, priest and canon, Tebaldus Papilenticus, Johannes de Germania, and Macela, wife of Pepinus. Spite, however, of their long pedigree and advantageous southern aspect, the Moussy vineyards rank to-day merely as a second cru. Continuing to skirt the vine-clad slopes we come to Vinay, noted for an ancient grotto[391]—the former comfortless abode of some rheumatic anchorite—and a pretended miraculous spring to which fever-stricken pilgrims to-day credulously resort. The water may possibly merit its renown; but the wine here produced is very inferior, due no doubt to the class of vines, the meunier being the leading variety cultivated. At Ablois St. Martin, once a fief of Mary Queen of Scots, and picturesquely perched partway up a slope in the midst of hills covered with vines and crowned with forest trees, the Côte d’Epernay ends, and the produce becomes of a choicer character.

As the Côte d’Avize lies to the south-east, to reach it we have to retrace our steps to Pierry, and follow the road which there branches off, leaving on our right hand the vineyards of Chavot, Monthelon, and Grauves, now of no particular note, although of undoubted antiquity, Blanche of Castille, Countess of Champagne, having endowed the Abbey of Argensolles, on its foundation in 1224, with sundry strips of vineland, including one at Grauves, possibly the vineyard of Les Roualles, which yields a wine not unlike certain growths of the Mountain of Reims. After passing through Cuis, where the slopes, planted with both black and white varieties of vines, are extremely abrupt, and where Simon la Bole, man-at-arms of Epernay, and his wife Basile gave, in 1210, ‘four hogsheads of vinage to be taken annually’ to Hugo, Abbot of St. Martin at Epernay, we eventually reach Cramant, one of the grand premiers crus of the Champagne. From the vineyards around this picturesque little village, and extending along the somewhat precipitous Côte de Saran—a prominent object, on which is M. Moët’s handsome château—there is vintaged a wine from white grapes, especially remarkable for lightness and delicacy and the richness of its bouquet, and an admixture of which is essential to every first-class Champagne cuvée.

From Cramant the road runs direct to Avize, a large thriving village, lying at the foot of vineyard slopes, where numerous Champagne firms have established themselves. Its prosperity dates from the commencement of the last century (1715), when the Count de Lhery, its feudal lord, cleared away the remains of its ancient ramparts, filled up the moat, and planted the ground with vines, the produce of which proved admirably suited for the sparkling wines then coming into vogue. Prior to this the Avize wine, made almost entirely from white grapes, fetched only from 25 to 30 francs the queue; but being found well adapted for the manufacture of the strongly-effervescent wine known as saute-bouchon, it soon commanded as much as 300 francs, and the arpent of vineyard rose in value from 250 to 2000 francs.[392] To-day the light delicate wine of Avize is classed, like that of Cramant, as a premier cru, and it is the same with the wine of Oger,[393] lying a little to the south, while the neighbouring growths of Le Mesnil hold a slightly inferior rank. The latter village and its gray Gothic church lie under the hill in the midst of vines that almost climb the forest-crowned summit. The stony soil hereabouts is said to be better adapted to the cultivation of white than of black grapes; besides which, the wines of Le Mesnil are remarkable for their effervescent properties.

Vertus forms the southern limit of the Côte d’Avize, and the vineyard slopes subsiding at their base into a broad expanse of fertile fields, and crested as usual with dense forest, rise up behind the picturesque old town, which is mentioned in a letter of the Emperor Louis and a charter of Charles the Bald in the ninth century. It was once strongly fortified, though a dilapidated gateway is all that to-day remains of the ancient ramparts, which failed to secure it in 1380, when the English, under the ‘Comte de Bouquingouan,’ presumably Buckingham, burnt the whole of the town except the Abbey of St. Martin, and elicited from the native poet, Eustache Deschamps, dit Morel, ‘huissier d’armes’ to Charles VI. and castellan of Fismes, a lamentation, wherein he fails not to mention the high renown of the local vintage.[394]

Vertus can still boast a curious old church of the eleventh century, with solid Romanesque towers, elaborate mouldings, and richly ornamented capitals; also a picturesque promenade, shaded with centenarian trees, together with several quaint old houses, including one with a florid Gothic window surrounded by a border of grapes and vine-leaves, and another with a quaintly projecting corner turret, dominated by a conical roof. The Vertus vineyards are mentioned in a charter of the Abbey of Ste. Marie, dated 1151. They were originally planted with vines from Beaune in Burgundy, and in the fourteenth century yielded a red wine held in high repute, of pleasant flavour, and rich in perfume,[395] but which would appear to have been imbued with those purgative properties[396] traceable in other growths of the Champagne. The red wine of Vertus formed the favourite beverage of William III. of England, and was long in high repute. To-day, however, the growers find it more profitable to make white instead of red wine from their crops of black grapes, the former commanding a good price for conversion into vin mousseux, from being in the opinion of some manufacturers especially valuable for binding a cuvée together. The Vertus growths rank among the second-class Champagne crus.[397]

II.
THE CHAMPAGNE VINELANDS—THE VINEYARDS OF THE MOUNTAIN.

THE vineyards of the Mountain of Reims may be divided into two zones, one of which, known as the Basse Montagne, is situate north-west of Reims, and comprises the vineyards of St. Thierry, Marsilly, Hermonville, and others; whilst the more important zone lies to the south of the old cathedral city, and includes the better-known crus of Sillery, Verzy, Verzenay, Mailly, Ludes, Chigny, and Rilly. The vinelands of Bouzy and Ambonnay are also reckoned within it, though situate somewhat apart on a southern slope of the Mountain some few miles from the Marne.

The smallest of the Champagne vineyards are those of Sillery, and yet no wine of the Marne enjoys a greater renown, due originally to the intelligence and energy of the family of the Brularts, Marquises of Sillery and Puisieux, to whom the estate originally belonged, and who seem to have devoted great attention to viticulture from certainly the middle of the seventeenth century. The reputation of the still wine of Sillery, ‘the highest manifestation of the divinity of Bacchus in all France,’ was firmly established at this epoch. ‘As to M. de Puyzieux,’ writes St. Evremond to his friend Lord Galloway in August 1701, ‘he acts wisely to fall in with the bad taste now in fashion concerning Champagne in order to sell his own the better;’ but at the same time he counsels his correspondent to get the marquis to make him ‘a little barrel after the fashion in which it was made forty years before, prior to the existing depravation of taste.’[398] The marquis here referred to was Roger Brulart, Governor of Epernay, who was himself a joyous bon vivant, and died from over-indulgence in the good things provided at a dinner given by the Chartreux in 1719.[399] He was succeeded by his nephew, Louis Philogène Brulart, Marquis de Sillery et de Puisieux, to whom, in 1727, on the occasion of his marriage with Mademoiselle de Souvré, granddaughter of Louvois, the Sieurs Quatresous and Chertemps presented at his château of Sillery, on behalf of the town of Epernay, a basket of one hundred flasks of wine.[400] He died in 1771, leaving an only daughter, Adelaïde Félicité Brulart de Sillery, married, in 1744, to Louis César le Tellier, Maréchal Duc d’Estrées.

The wine attained its apogee under the fostering care of the Maréchale d’Estrées, to whom not only this cru, but those of Mailly, Verzy, and Verzenay belonged, and who concentrated their joint produce in the capacious cellars of her château, afterwards sending it forth with her own guarantee, under the general name of Sillery, which, like Aaron’s serpent, thus swallowed up the others. The Maréchale’s social position enabled her to secure for her wines the recognition they really merited, being made with the utmost care and a rare intelligence, shown by the removal of every unripe, rotten, or imperfect grape from the bunches before pressing, so that the Vin de la Maréchale, as it was styled, became famous throughout Europe.[401] This lady is not to be confounded with that other Maréchale d’Estrées mentioned by St. Simon, noted for her exquisite and magnificent although rare entertainments, and so sordid that when her daughter, who was covered with jewels, fell down at a ball, her first cry was, not like Shylock’s, ‘My daughter!’ but ‘My diamonds!’ as, rushing forward, she strove to pick up, not the fallen dancer, but her scattered gems.

Later owners of the famous Sillery cru did their best to sustain its reputation, and Arthur Young, who stopped here in 1787, speaks of the Marquis de Sillery as ‘the greatest wine-farmer in the Champagne,’ having on his own hands 180 arpents of vines, and cellar-room for a couple of hundred pièces of wine.[402] Among more recent appreciation of the merits of Sillery sec may be mentioned the Cossacks, who pillaged the district in 1814, and who, not being able to carry off all the wine from the cellar of the Count de Valence at Sillery, stove in some thirty pièces of the best, and set the place afloat.[403]

The drive from Reims to Sillery has nothing attractive about it. A long, straight, level road bordered by trees intersects a broad tract of open country, skirted on the right by the Petite Montagne of Reims, with antiquated villages nestled among the dense woodland. After crossing the Châlons line of railway—near where one of the new forts constructed for the defence of Reims rises up behind the villages and vineyards of Cernay and Nogent l’Abbesse—the country becomes more undulating. Poplars border the broad Marne canal, and a low fringe of foliage marks the course of the languid river Vesle, on the banks of which is Taissy, famous in the old days for its wines, great favourites with Sully, and which almost lured Henri Quatre from his allegiance to the vintages of Ay and Arbois that he loved so well.[404]

To the left rises Mont de la Pompelle, where the first Christians of Reims suffered martyrdom, and where, in 1658, the Spaniards under Montal, when attempting to ravage the vineyards of the district, were repulsed with terrible slaughter by the Rémois militia, led on by Grandpré. A quarter of a century ago the low ground on our right near Sillery was planted with vines by the late M. Jacquesson, the then owner of the Sillery estate, and a large Champagne manufacturer at Châlons, who was anxious to resuscitate the ancient reputation of the domain. Under the advice of Dr. Guyot, the well-known writer on viticulture, he planted the vines in deep trenches, which led to the vineyards being punningly termed Jacquesson’s celery beds. To shield the vines from hailstorms prevalent in the district, and the more dangerous spring frosts, so fatal to vines planted in low-lying situations, long rolls of straw-matting were stored close at hand with which to roof them over when needful. These precautions were scarcely needed, however; the vines languished through moisture at the roots, and eventually were mostly rooted up.

After again crossing the railway we pass the trim restored turrets of the famous château of Sillery, with its gateways, moats, and drawbridges, flanked by trees and floral parterres. It was here that the stout squire Laurent Pichiet kept watch and ward over the ‘forte maison de Sillery’ on behalf of the Archbishop of Reims at the close of the fourteenth century, that the Maréchale d’Estrées carried on her successful business as a marchande de vins, and that the pragmatic and pedantic Comtesse de Genlis, governess of the Orleans princes, spent, as she tells us, the happiest days of her life. The few thriving vineyards of Sillery cover a gentle eminence which rises out of the plain, and present on the one side an eastern and on the other a western aspect. They have fallen somewhat from their high estate since the days when old Coffin of Beauvais University sang their praises in Latin:

To-day the Vicomte de Brimont and M. Fortel of Reims, the latter of whom cultivates some forty acres of vines, yielding ordinarily about 300 hogsheads, are the only wine-growers at Sillery. Before pressing his grapes—of course for sparkling wine—M. Fortel has them thrown into a trough, at the bottom of which are a couple of grooved cylinders, each about eight inches in diameter, and revolving in contrary directions, the effect of which, when set in motion, is to disengage the grapes partially from their stalks. Grapes and stalks are then placed under the press, which is on the old cider-press principle, and the must runs into a reservoir beneath, whence it is pumped into large vats, each holding from 250 to 500 gallons. Here it remains from six to eight hours, and is then run off into casks, the spigots of which are merely laid lightly over the holes, and in the course of twelve days the wine begins to ferment. It now rests until the end of the year, when it is drawn off into new casks and delivered to the buyer, invariably one or other of the great Champagne houses, who willingly pay an exceptionally high price for it. The second and third pressures of the grapes yield an inferior wine, and from the husks and stalks eau-de-vie, worth about five shillings a gallon, is distilled.

Beyond Sillery the vineyards of Verzenay unfold themselves, spreading over the extensive slopes and stretching to the summit of the steep height to the right, where a windmill or two are perched. Everywhere the vintagers are busy detaching the grapes with their little hook-shaped serpettes, the women all wearing projecting close-fitting bonnets, as though needlessly careful of their anything but blonde complexions. Long carts laden with baskets of grapes block the narrow roads, and donkeys, duly muzzled, with panniers slung across their backs, toil up and down the steeper slopes. Half-way up the principal hill, backed by a dense wood and furrowed with deep trenches, whence soil has been removed for manuring the vineyards, is the village of Verzenay—where in the Middle Ages the Archbishop of Reims had a fief—overlooking a veritable sea of vines. Rising up in front of the old gray cottages, encompassed by orchards or gardens, are the white walls and long red roofs of the vendangeoirs belonging to the great Champagne houses—Moët & Chandon, Clicquot, G. H. Mumm, Roederer, Deutz & Geldermann, and others—all teeming with bustle and excitement, and with the vines almost reaching to their very doors. Messrs. Moët & Chandon have as many as eight presses in full work, and own no less than 120 acres of vines on the neighbouring slopes, besides the Clos de Romont—in the direction of Sillery, and yielding a wine of the Sillery type—belonging to M. Raoul Chandon. Verzenay ranks as a premier cru, and for three years in succession—1872, 3, and 4—its wines fetched a higher price than either those of Ay or Bouzy. In 1873 the vin brut commanded the exceptionally large sum of 1050 francs the hogshead of 44 gallons. All the inhabitants of Verzenay are vine-proprietors, and several million francs are annually received by them for the produce of their vineyards from the manufacturers of Champagne. The wine of Verzenay, remarkable for its body and vinosity, has always been held in high repute,[406] which is apparently more than can be said of the probity of the inhabitants, for, according to an old Champagne saying, ‘Whenever at Verzenay “Stop thief” is cried every one takes to his heels.’

Just over the Mountain of Reims is the village of Verzy, the vine-growers of which distinguished themselves in the fifteenth century by their resistance to the officials sent to levy the ‘aide en gros’ of two sols per queue, imposed by Louis XI. on all wine made within a radius of four miles of Reims. The Verzy vineyards—ranked to-day as a second cru—date at least from the days of the Knights Templars, when the Commanderie of Reims had ‘two vineyards near the abbey’ here. They adjoin those of Verzenay, and are almost exclusively planted with white grapes, the only instance of the kind to be met with in the district. In the Clos St. Basse, however—taking its name from the Abbey of St. Basle, of which the village was a dependency, and where Edward III. of England had his head-quarters during the siege of Reims—black grapes alone are grown, and its produce is almost on a par with the wines of Verzenay.

Immediately prior to the Revolution, one-fourth of the inhabitants of Verzy were landholders, each cultivating about five arpents of vines, and obtaining therefrom, on an average, twenty poinçons, out of which the abbey exacted one and three-quarters for ‘droits de dimes et de banalité de pressoir.’ Southwards of Verzy are the third-class crus of Villers-Marmery and Trépail, the former of which was of some repute in the Middle Ages.