of Champagne in Prance, 147 



If the wine is not muddy the operation is very simple : 

 % it consists in emptying the bottle witheare, keeping it in the 

 precise direction in which it lay : the workman with a small 

 hook removes the iron wire which fixes the cork ; he then 

 uncorks the bottle, and presents in a perpendicular direction 

 another bottle to it quite empty and well rinsed, and pours 

 out all the wine, leaving the sediment, which, if the bottle 

 has not been shaken, will remain at the bottom* 



Some persons make use of a syphon, when the wifie is 

 not thick, in order to avoid all shaking. 



When the wine is thick the operation is more tedious and 

 more delicate : wooden planks are made use of, in which 

 holes are made at proper distances, in order to receive the 

 bottles : these planks being arranged, adjoining to the col- 

 lection of bottles, an intelligent and experienced work- 

 man carefully takes a bottle from the heap, keeping it in 

 the same position in which it lay : he then gives it a slight 

 shake, and by a regular and long- continued movement he 

 brings into the side, of the bottle the sediment which is de- 

 tached, and, without scattering it through the liquor, makes 

 it slowly descend to the neck : he then places his bottle 

 upon the plank which lies ready to his hand, inclining it in a 

 sloping direction : he afterwards does the same by a second, 

 a third bottle, &c, which he places in the same. sloping 

 direction. 



Four-and-twenty hours afterwards the workman returns 

 to the plank where he has deposited his bottles ; he once 

 more ^ives them a slight shake, and slopes them a little 

 more, in order to bring the sediment nearer to the cork : it* 

 i he sediment has then completely fallen down, and the wine 

 ft limpid, the workman holds the bottle perpendicularly ele- 

 vated, and does the same with all the rest of the bottles 

 placed upon the planks : he returns with -his hook, uncorks 

 the bottles, and with a dexterous motion of the wrUt turns 

 them upside down : the fixed air escapes and pushes out the 

 sediment, which falls into a receiver: the workman then 

 dexterously replaces the bottle upon its end, after allowing 

 nothing to escape, except what is necessary to render it lim- 



K <2 pid. 



