We were in the Perrier-Jouet caves, not enormous by Champagne standards, but sufficiently big to lose yourself in quite easily. (And very enjoyably, as you would be lost in the middle of twelve million bottles.) The oldest caves, those immediately under the Perrier-Jouet offices, had been hacked out of the chalky earth by hand, and you can see the scars, made by picks and now blackened with age, in the rough arches that lead from one cave to the next. Onward and downward we went, until we came to the angular ranks of tent-shaped wooden racks, each of them sprouting dozens of bottles.
The racks, as tall as a man, were invented in the nineteenth century to solve the problem of the sediment that forms in the bottle as a result of fermentation. The bottles are stuck, neck first, into oval holes set at a steep angle that allows the sediment to slide up to the cork. To make sure this happens completely and evenly, the process needs a little assistance from time to time. The bottles have to be lifted gently, given a slight clockwise turn, and replaced. This is remuage, and despite experimenting with ingenious mechanical methods, progress has yet to find a totally satisfactory replacement for the human hand. Cold and lonely work it must be, too, but an experienced remueur can twist as many as 3,000 bottles an hour.
第一章 Conjuring with Grapes (2) (1)
After remuage comes dégorgement. (You’ll have to forgive the French words, but their English equivalents don’t sound nearly elegant enough to describe the making of champagne.) The neck of the bottle is frozen so that the sediment, trapped in ice, can be removed. The bottle is topped up, recorked, labeled, et voilà！ What started as grapes in a muddy field has been turned into the most famous drink in the world.
Should you drink it immediately, or lay it down for a year or two? Or even longer, if it’s a vintage champagne? Experts disagree, as experts tend to do, and there are those who say that champagne kept too long will lose its sparkle and character, and become a flat shadow of its former self. It depends, of course, on the quality of the wine, and I can personally vouch for the benefits of age that we enjoyed on our last night.