Evening star., 1901-04-02
CHAMPION CHAMPAGNE HANDLERS.
Men Who Turn $4,000 Bottles a
Day.
From Tit Bits.

from 1lt-BltS.
Even to the non-bIbulous there is some
thing novel and impressive in the spectacls
of vast underground world "peopled"
with millions Of bottles of champagne, on
the contents OF which a fleet might noat
and where thousands of pounds worth of
| rare wines run along the cutters as little
| regarded as much water.
! These underground temples of Bacchus"
| are seen at their best under the old-world
| town of Epernay OF the Roman architec-
ture of Rheims, where the corridors, hewn
out of the Solid rock. stretch in all 3i5sc-
tions for miles, and where the floors de-
scend one below another, like the different
levels of mine. TO depth of 40 feet
Along these miles of corridors are stacked
| hundreds of thousands of bottles OF wine,
undergoing the processes of refining and
maturing; and a walk along them may be
as fraught with danger as to cross the line
of fire In a battle: for at any moment
bottle may burst and hurl its fragments at
you with something Of the force Of a shrap-
mel
Into these vaults hundreds OF workmen dis
appear at O'Clock every morning. only TO
emerge into the upper air twelve hours later.
Unfortunately. the conditions that are best
for the wine are almost as uncomfortable as
one could conceive for the human pOpua-
ton of the vaults. All the, year round,
whether in the height of summer or the
depth OF winter, uniform temperature of
40 degrees must De maintained, ana the air
Is so saturated with moisture that IL runs
in rivulets down the walls, and the screens
which separate the cellars are heavy with it.
In the damp, dark corridors behind these
screens are men whose sole duty II is to
turn the thousands Of bottles, one by one.
and give them a slight shake so as to dis
lodge any sediment that has formed; and
this process. probably the most monotonous
and, under the conditions of cold. moisture
and darkness the most dreary that falls
to the lot Of working man, is repeated hour
after hour and day after day for whole
lieftime
An expert worker will turn as many as
sixty bottles minute and maintain this
rate for ten hours a day. handling 5000
bottles In days work Is II any wonder
that after years Of this monotonous drudg-
cry these men develop all kinds of strange
moods and fancies2 They become gloomy
and taciturn. and get the strangest ideas
into their heads, Some of them persist
that the vaults are haunted, and profess to
see eyes glaring at them from obscure cor
ners and figures fitting past them-possibly
the eyes and figures OF men who have turn
ed bottles before them. and cannot refrain
from reyisiting the haunts of their earthly
days.
But naturally all the work In these under
ground worlds Of Bacchus is not of this
iugubrious description. for here small
army OF men and girls are engaged in
corking, putting on the tinfoii which makes
the bottles SO pleasing to the eye, and
labelling
bic rate OF hundred bottles an hour The
bottles are handed in rapid succession by
boy to the "disgorger," who with mar
veious dexterity whsks out the corks, dis
charging any sediment that may have col
iected. fills them up with champagne and
passes them on to the corker. The corking
has for many years been done by ma
chinery. the machine seizing the cork, com
pressing II to the proper size, and pushing
1T into the neck of the bottle. The bottles
are then ready for the girls who nut on the
finishing touches with tinfoil and labels
As may be expected, these processes, es-
pecially that of disgorging. are not free
from DANGER; for at this stage a bottle of
champagne may be risky a thing to ham
die as live bomb. and accidents more or
less severe are fairly common II is esti-
mated that at Rheims alone 10000 worth
OF champagne is wasted every year through
the bursting of bottles.
Although these hundreds and thousands
OF workmen are allowed a practically IN
limited supply of ordinary wine. some Of
them drinking as many as three bottles a
day. II lie remarkable that drunkenness is
almost unknown among them.