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"THE BOY"
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May I confess to the belief that I should never
make a good, reliable, valuable disgorger ?
Of course there is art, or knack, in it. The
degager takes a bottle, cuts the string of the cork,
expels the sediment —occasionally without
spilling more than a drop or two—and passes the
bottle to his neighbour, who fills it up with a
liqueur, composed of sugar-candy dissolved in
cognac, and flavoured, and with some bright,
clarified wine. The bottle is then recorked, by
machinery, wired, labelled, and sent about its
business.
The fermentation being incomplete at the
first bottling of the wine, the carbonic acid gas
generated in a confined space—this part comes
unadorned, out of a book—exerts pressure on
itself, and it thus remains as a liquid in the wine.
When this pressure is removed it expands into
gas, and thus communicates the sparkling property
to champagne. Hence the bombardments.
How do I know all this ? I once paid a visit
to the cellars of Pommery et C'^- ; and my
dearest friend asked subsequently what sort of
writ of ejectment had to be drawn up to rid
them of my presence and thirst. But all joking
apart the time was well spent, and the industry
is deserving of all the encouragement which it
receives. The head cellarman is, literally a host
in himself, an old gentleman of aristocratic mien,
and portly—or, rather, champagne-ly—presence 3
and oneof the. formulae to be gone through before
quitting the premises is to drink a glass of the
very best with that charming old gentleman, who
I hope still flourishes amid his bottles and his