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<< previous...Passing beneath the cliff, one wound round to the left and dived into a picturesque wooded dell at the entrance to a mountain pass, then crossed the rocky bed of a dried-up stream and drove along an avenue of mulberry-trees, which in a few minutes conducted us to Saint-Péray, where one found the vintage in full operation. Carts laden with tubs filled with white and purple grapes, around which wasps without number swarmed, were arriving from all points of the environs and crowding the narrow streets. Any quantity of grapes were seemingly to be had for the asking, for all the pretty girls in the place were gorging themselves with the luscious-looking fruit. In the coopers’ yards bran-new casks were ranged in rows in readiness for the newly-made wine, and through open doorways, and in all manner of dim recesses, one caught sight of sturdy men energetically trampling the gushing grapes under their bare feet, and of huge creaking wine-presses reeking with the purple juice. It was chiefly common red wine, of an excellent flavour, however, that was being made in these nooks and corners, the sparkling white wine, known as Saint-Péray, being manufactured in larger establishments, and on more scientific principles. It is from a white species of grape known as the petite and grosse rousette—the same which yields the white Hermitage—that the champagne of the south is produced, and the vineyards where they are cultivated occupy all the more favourable slopes immediately outside the village, the most noted being the Coteau-Gaillard, Solignaes, Thioulet, and Hungary.

Although there is a close similarity between the manufacture of champagne and the effervescing wine of Saint-Péray, there are still one or two noteworthy variations. For a wine to be sparkling it is requisite that it should ferment in the bottle, a result obtained by bottling it while it contains a certain undeveloped proportion of alcohol and carbonic acid, represented by so much sugar, of which they are the component parts. This ingredient has frequently to be added to the Champagne wines to render them sparkling, but the wine of Saint-Péray in its natural state contains so much sugar that any addition would be deleterious. This excess of saccharine enables the manufacturer to dispense with some of the operations necessary to the fabrication of champagne, which, after fermenting in the cask, requires a second fermentation to be provoked in the bottle, whereas the Saint-Péray wine ferments only once, being bottled immediately it comes from the wine-press.... next >>