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ling the sediment. This, with millions of bottles, of
course would mean the sacrifice of a vast deal of wine.
The disgorgers are therefore the best paid men in the
champagne vaults. AtHeidsieck's a method is in vogue
which freezes the sediment so that it comes out as a
lump of ice. The bottle is then passed by the disgorger
to another man who fills the vacuum caused by the
removal of this substance with champagne liqueur.
Some people suppose that brandy is used for this pur
pose, hut this is a popular error.
"With all possible speed the bottle passes finally
to the corker,who soon solves the riddle of how a cork
with a natural diameter of an inch and a quarter can
be got into a bottle mouth haviug a diameter of hut
three-quarters of an inch. Fifty years ago the corking
was done in the old-fashioned way,with a strong arm
and a mallet. The bottles then sometimes broke to
pieces under the vigorous blows they had to hear, and
the bottler bottled at his peril. It still happens, of
course,that in disgorging its sediment occasionally a
bottle flies to pieces and endangers the disgorger. But
upon the whole the risks are much less than they were.
Improvements in the processes of champagne making
are not infrequent: yet there is still an opening for the
.inventive mind. There is, as the phrase runs,a fortune