<< previous..The Vines chiefly of the Pineau Variety—The Plant doré of Ay, the Plant vert doré, the Plant gris, and the Epinette—The Soil of the Vineyards—Close Mode of Plantation—The Operation of Provinage—The Stems of the Vines never more than Three Years Old—Fixing the Stakes to the Vines—Manuring and General Cultivation—Spring Frosts in the Champagne—Various Modes of Protecting the Vines against them—Dr. Guyot’s System—The Parasites that Prey upon the Vines.
In the Champagne the old rule holds good—poor soil, rich product; grand wine in moderate quantity. Four descriptions of vines are chiefly cultivated, three of them yielding black grapes, and all belonging to the Pineau variety, from which the grand Burgundy wines are produced, and so styled from the clusters taking the conical form of the pine. The first is the franc pineau, the plant doré of Ay, producing small round grapes, with thickish skins of a bluish black tint, and sweet and refined in flavour. The next is the plant vert doré, more robust and more productive than 43
the former, but yielding a less generous wine, and the berries of which are dark and oval, very thin skinned and remarkably sweet and juicy. The third variety is the plant gris, or burot, as it is styled in the Côte d’Or, a somewhat delicate vine, whose fruit has a brownish tinge, and yields a light and perfumed wine. The remaining species is a white grape known as the épinette, a variety of the pineau blanc, and supposed by some to be identical with the chardonnet of Burgundy, which yields the famous wine of Montrachet. It is met with all along the Côte d’Avize, notably at Cramant, the delicate and elegant wine of which ranks immediately after that of Ay and Verzenay. The épinette is a prolific bearer, and its round transparent golden berries, which hang in no very compact clusters, are both juicy and sweet. It ripens, however, much later than either of the black varieties... next >>
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