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<< previous..The Firm of G. H. Mumm and Co.—Their Large Shipments to the United States—Their Establishments in the Rue Andrieux and the Rue Coquebert—Bottle-Washing with Glass Beads—The Cuvée and the Tirage—G. H. Mumm and Co.’s Vendangeoirs at Verzenay—Their Various Wines—The Gate of Mars—The Establishment of M. Gustave Gibert on the Site of the Château des Archevêques—His Cellars in the Vaults of St. Peter’s Abbey and beneath the old Hôtel des Fermes in the Place Royale—Louis XV. and Jean Baptiste Colbert—M. Gibert’s Wines—Jules Mumm and Co., and Ruinart père et fils—House of the Musicians—The Counts de la Marck—The Brotherhood of Minstrels of Reims—Establishment of Périnet et fils—Their Cellars of Three Stories in Solid Masonry—Their Soft, Light, and Delicate Wines—A Rare Still Verzenay—M. Duchâtel-Ohaus’s Establishment and Renaissance House—His Cellars in the Cour St. Jacques and Outside the Porte Dieu-Lumière.

Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co. have their chief establishment in the Rue Andrieux, in an open quarter of the city, facing the garden attached to the premises of M. Werlé, and only a short distance from the grand triumphal arch known as the Gate of Mars, by far the most important Roman remain of which the Champagne can boast. The head of the firm, Mr. G. H. Mumm, is the grandson of the well-known P. A. Mumm, the large shipper of hocks and moselles, and is the only surviving partner in the champagne house of Mumm and Co., established at Reims in 1825, and joined by Mr. G. H. Mumm so far back as the year 1838. The firm not only ship their wine largely to England, but head the list of shipments to the United States, where their brand is held in high repute, with nearly half a million bottles, being more than twice the quantity shipped by M. Louis Roederer—who comes third on the list in question—and a fourth of the entire shipments of champagne to the United States.

The establishment of Messrs. G. H. Mumm and Co., in the Rue Andrieux, is of comparatively modern construction. A large porte-cochère conducts to a spacious courtyard, bordered with sheds, beneath which huge stacks of new bottles are piled and having a pleasant garden lying beyond. On the left is a large vaulted cellier, where the operations of disgorging, liqueuring, and corking the wine are performed, and which communicates with the vast adjoining packing department. From this cellier entrance is gained to the cellars beneath, containing a million bottles of vin brut in various stages of development. This forms, however, merely a portion of the firm’s stock, they having another three millions of bottles stored in the cellars of their establishment in the Rue Coquebert, where a scene of great animation presented itself at the time of our visit, several scores of women being engaged in washing bottles for the tirage, which, although it was early in May, had already commenced. The bottles, filled with water, and containing a certain quantity of glass beads in lieu of the customary shot, which frequently leave minute particles of lead—deleterious alike to health and the flavour of the wine—adhering to the inside surface of the glass, are placed horizontally in a frame, and by means of four turns of a handle are made to perform sixty-four rapid revolutions. The beads are then transferred to other bottles, which are subjected in their turn to the same revolving process.... next >>