Claret and Olives, from the Garonne to the Rhone. Angus B. Reach
good fare and of good-will. The ancient types and figures descriptive of the vintage are still literally true. The march of agricultural improvement seems never to have set foot amid the vines. As it was with the patriarchs in the East, so it is with the modern children of men. The goaded ox still bears home the high-pressed grape-tub, and the feet of the treader are still red in the purple juice which maketh glad the heart of man. The scene is at once full of beauty, and of tender and even sacred associations. The songs of the vintagers, frequently chorussed from one part of the field to the other, ring blithely into the bright summer air, pealing out above the rough jokes and hearty peals of laughter shouted hither and thither. All the green jungle is alive with the moving figures of men and women, stooping among the vines or bearing pails and basketfuls of grapes out to the grass-grown crossroads, along which the labouring oxen drag the rough vintage carts, groaning and cracking as they stagger along beneath their weight of purple tubs heaped high with the tumbling masses of luscious fruit. The congregation of every age and both sexes, and the careless variety of costume, add additional features of picturesqueness to the scene. The white-haired old man labours with shaking hands to fill the basket which his black-eyed imp of a grandchild carries rejoicingly away. Quaint broad-brimmed straw and felt hats—handkerchiefs twisted like turbans over straggling elf locks—swarthy skins tanned to an olive-brown—black flashing eyes—and hands and feet stained in the abounding juices of the precious fruit—all these southern peculiarities of costume and appearance supply the vintage with its pleasant characteristics. The clatter of tongues is incessant. A fire of jokes and jeers, of saucy questions, and more saucy retorts—of what, in fact, in the humble and unpoetic but expressive vernacular, is called "chaff,"—is kept up with a vigour which seldom flags, except now and then, when the butt-end of a song, or the twanging close of a chorus strikes the general fancy, and procures for the morceau a lusty encore. Meantime, the master wine-grower moves observingly from rank to rank. No neglected bunch of fruit escapes his watchful eye. No careless vintager shakes the precious berries rudely upon the soil, but he is promptly reminded of his slovenly work. Sometimes the tubs attract the careful superintendent. He turns up the clusters to ascertain that no leaves nor useless length of tendril are entombed in the juicy masses, and anon directs his steps to the pressing-trough, anxious to find that the lusty treaders are persevering manfully in their long-continued dance.
Thither we will follow. The wine-press, or cuvier de pressoir, consists, in the majority of cases, of a massive shallow tub, varying in size from four square feet to as many square yards. It is placed either upon wooden trestles or on a regularly-built platform of mason-work under the huge rafters of a substantial outhouse. Close to it stands a range of great butts, their number more or less, according to the size of the vineyard. The grapes are flung by tub and caskfuls into the cuvier. The treaders stamp diligently amid the masses, and the expressed juice pours plentifully out of a hole level with the bottom of the trough into a sieve of iron or wickerwork, which stops the passage of the skins, and from thence drains into tubs below. Suppose, at the moment of our arrival, the cuvier for a brief space empty. The treaders—big, perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up trowsers—spattered to the eyes with splatches of purple juice, lean upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads. But their respite is short. The creak of another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately the waggon is backed up to the broad open window, or rather hole in the wall, above the trough. A minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub, and to tilt their already half-mashed clusters splash into the reeking pressoir. Then to work again. Jumping with a sort of spiteful eagerness into the mountain of yielding quivering fruit, the treaders sink almost to the knees, stamping and jumping and rioting in the masses of grapes, as fountains of juice spurt about their feet, and rush bubbling and gurgling away. Presently, having, as it were, drawn the first sweet blood of the new cargo, the eager trampling subsides into a sort of quiet, measured dance, which the treaders continue, while, with their wooden spades, they turn the pulpy remnants of the fruit hither and thither, so as to expose the half-squeezed berries in every possible way to the muscular action of the incessantly moving feet. All this time, the juice is flowing in a continuous stream into the tubs beneath. When the jet begins to slacken, the heap is well tumbled with the wooden spades, and, as though a new force had been applied, the juice-jet immediately breaks out afresh. It takes, perhaps, half or three-quarters of an hour thoroughly to squeeze the contents of a good-sized cuvier, sufficiently manned. When at length, however, no further exertion appears to be attended with corresponding results, the tubfuls of expressed juice are carried by means of ladders to the edges of the vats, and their contents tilted in; while the men in the trough, setting-to with their spades, fling the masses of dripping grape-skins in along with the juice. The vats sufficiently full, the fermentation is allowed to commence. In the great cellars in which the juice is stored, the listener at the door—he cannot brave the carbonic acid gas to enter further—may hear, solemnly echoing in the cool shade of the great darkened hall, the bubblings and seethings of the working liquid—the inarticulate accents and indistinct rumblings which proclaim that a great metempsychosis is taking place—that a natural substance is rising higher in the eternal scale of things, and that the contents of these great giants of vats are becoming changed from floods of mere mawkish, sweetish fluid to noble wine—to a liquid honoured and esteemed in all ages—to a medicine exercising a strange and potent effect upon body and soul—great for good and evil. Is there not something fanciful and poetic in the notion of this change taking place mysteriously in the darkness, when all the doors are locked and barred—for the atmosphere about the vats is death—as if Nature would suffer no idle prying into her mystic operations, and as if the grand transmutation and projection from juice to wine had in it something of a secret and solemn and awful nature—fenced round, as it were, and protected from vulgar curiosity by the invisible halo of stifling gas? I saw the vats in the Chateau Margaux cellars the day after the grape-juice had been flung in. Fermentation had not as yet properly commenced, so access to the place was possible; still, however, there was a strong vinous smell loading the atmosphere, sharp and subtle in its influence on the nostrils; while, putting my ear, on the recommendation of my conductor, to the vats, I heard, deep down, perhaps eight feet down in the juice, a seething, gushing sound, as if currents and eddies were beginning to flow, in obedience to the influence of the working Spirit, and now and then a hiss and a low bubbling throb, as though of a pot about to boil. Within twenty-four hours, the cellar would be unapproachable.
Of course, it is quite foreign to my plan to enter upon anything like a detailed account of wine-making. I may only add, that the refuse-skins, stalks, and so forth, which settle into the bottom of the fermentation vats, are taken out again after the wine has been drawn off and subjected to a new squeezing—in a press, however, and not by the foot—the products being a small quantity of fiery, ill-flavoured wine, full of the bitter taste of the seeds and stalks of the grape, and possessing no aroma or bouquet. The Bordeaux press for this purpose is rather ingeniously constructed. It consists of a sort of a skeleton of a cask, strips of daylight shining through from top to bottom between the staves. In the centre works a strong perpendicular iron screw. The rape, as the refuse of the treading is called, is piled beneath it; the screw is manned capstan fashion, and the unhappy seeds, skins, and stalks, undergo a most dismal squeezing. Nor do their trials end there. The wine-makers are terrible hands for getting at the very last get-at-able drop. To this end, somewhat on the principle of rinsing an exhausted spirit bottle, so as, as it were, to catch the very flavour still clinging to the glass, they plunge the doubly-squeezed rape into water, let it lie there for a short time, and then attack it with the press again. The result is a horrible stuff called piquette, which, in a wine country, bears the same resemblance to wine as the very dirtiest, most wishy-washy, and most contemptible of swipes bears to honest porter or ale. Piquette, in fact, may be defined as the ghost of wine!—wine minus its bones, its flesh, and its soul!—a liquid shadow!—a fluid nothing!—an utter negation of all comfortable things and associations! Nevertheless, however, the peasants swill it down in astounding quantities, and apparently with sufficient satisfaction.
And now a word as to wine-treading. The process is universal in France, with the exception of the cases of the sparkling wines of the Rhone and Champagne, the grapes for which are squeezed by mechanical means, not by the human foot. Now, very venerable and decidedly picturesque as is the process of wine-treading, it is unquestionably rather a filthy one; and the spectacle of great brown horny feet, not a whit