Three times the grapes are subjected to this remorseless squeeze. Once, to extract the best of the juice, the tête de cuvee； a second time, for juice that can be used for blending； and finally, for the remains that will be distilled to make the local eau de vie, the marc de Champagne which they say grows hairs on your chest. Not a drop is wasted, and it is extraordinary to think that a single batch of grapes can be turned into two such different drinks, one delicate and light, the other—well, I happen to like marc, but you could never accuse it of being delicate.
We followed the route of the juice back to the fermentation casks in Epernay, and here I should offer a word of warning. If anyone should ever suggest that you inhale the bouquet of champagne in its formative period, decline politely if you value your sinuses. I made the mistake of leaning over an open cask to take a connoisseur’s sniff, and very nearly fell backward off the platform to the floor ten feet below. It felt like a noseful of needles. With head swimming and eyes watering, I asked to be led away to a less volatile part of the production line, and we left the casks for an expedition into the bowels of the earth.
Beneath the two famous towns of Reims and Epernay are literally miles of cellars and passageways, some of them three or four stories deep, all of them filled with champagne. In these cool, dim caverns the temperature never varies, and the bottles can doze in perfect conditions, mountain after dark green mountain of them, a champagne lover’s foretaste of paradise.