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About your favourite Wines
CHAMPAGNE
C H AM P A G N E is a sparkling white wine made from grapes
grown within the former boundaries of the ancient province of
Champagne. The quantity available each year is limited, and no wine
may be sold under the name of Champagne other than the produce
of a limited number of particularly favoured vineyards, the best
Champagne being that which is blended best.
There are two reasons why it should be blended, the first being
that the wines from different vineyards, although similar in type,
are different in style and it is only by judicious blending thai
individual wines are improved, their individual qualities being
merged into a more harmonious whole. The second reason is that
the quantity of wine made each year from individual vineyards is so
small that shippers must blend the wine of a number of vineyards
in order to have " Cuve e s , " Champagne Cuvee being a blend of
wines from different vineyards within the officially delimited
Champagne area and made either in any one year or mostly in one
year and partly in previous years.
A " Vintage '- Champagne is one bearing on both its cork and
label the date of the particular year when the grapes were gathered,
from which most, if not the whole, of the Cuvee was made.
1926 and 1928 were good vintage years, also 1929 and 1933.
There are two sorts of sparkling wines—wines with carbonic
acid gas pumped into them and the others. The first cost less but
are worthless, the " others " produce their own carbonic acid gas
through the natural process of fermentation.
An y and every natural wine that is bottled before its power of
fermentation is over, that is whilst it contains sugar and ferments
and not t oo much alcohol, will become sparkling; its sugar will be
transformed into alcohol and carbonic gas by fermentation and the
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