The Champagne Vine Country and Champagne Wine

Item Details

France, Heidsieck, 1920s

very good as shown

1920s Georges Chappaz & Alexandre Henriot, The Champagne Vine Country and Champagne Wine, with manuscript notes by an American visiting the cellars. 34 pages plus wraps, with photogravures of the Heidsieck production, map of the region, illustration of the champagne bottle and distinctive cork. “The Heidsieck wine cellar 4 miles of tunnels! Ceiling supported by anchorage. 4,000,000 bottles of wine stored. Kept 4 years before being used. The wine is kept in wood from November or October to June then bottled. Piled above four years then placed in frames above cork down for ten weeks. Turned and checked to cause the sediment to settle on the cork. Then saw a man taking the cork out quickly. Just as the melted wax cork in his candle about to fly he turns it upward this way [sketch] and grip the cork and sediment. He then hands it to another man who preps the cork with machine and it is sealed. Sugar is added to the best wine here. Bottles kept one side, cork must always be kept wet. Temperatures of cellar 45 degrees.”