双语时尚生活 之每天读一点英文之那些光影飞华的魅惑 26 Conjuring with Grapes 香槟是怎样“炼”成的 It is a tribute to the stimulating qualities of really good champagne that by 2:30 we were not only awake, but clearheaded enough to look forward to the afternoon and our studies of the grape’s progress, from bunches to bottles. We began in the white-grape country of the Cotes des Blancs.The vines, which for long periods of the year are empty except for those few slow-moving and patient figures who check to see how nature is getting on, were bristling with people, the narrow green corridors crowded with their autumn population of pickers.It was fine weather for the vendange, mild and dry, and the frosts of late spring had caused less havoc than predicted.This would be a good, plentiful year. The baskets of grapes were passed up to collection points at the end of the vines and ferried by truck or tractor to the village of Cramant, and the waiting pressoirs. These presses, vast round wooden instruments of torture with slatted sides, are big enough to take tons of grapes at a single gulp.From above, very, very slowly, a giant wooden grill descends on them, bursts them, and crushes them.The glorious juice runs off into subterranean vats. Three times the grapes are subjected to this remorseless squeeze.Once, to extract the best of the juice, the tête de cuvee; a second time, for juice that can be used for blending; and finally, for the remains that will be distilled to make the local eau de vie, the marc de Champagne which they say grows hairs on your chest. Not a drop is wasted, and it is extraordinary to think that a single batch of grapes can be turned into two such different drinks, one delicate and light, the other—well, I happen to like marc, but you could never accuse it of being delicate. We followed the route of the juice back to the fermentation casks in Epernay, and here I should offer a word of warning.If anyone should ever suggest that you inhale the bouquet of champagne in its formative period, decline politely if you value your sinuses.I made the mistake of leaning over an open cask to take a connoisseur’s sniff, and very nearly fell backward off the platform to the floor ten feet below.It felt like a noseful of needles. With head swimming and eyes watering, I asked to be led away to a less volatile part of the production line, and we left the casks for an expedition into the bowels of the earth. Beneath the two famous towns of Reims and Epernay are literally miles of cellars and passageways, some of them three or four stories deep, all of them filled with champagne.In these cool, dim caverns the temperature never varies, and the bottles can doze in perfect conditions, mountain after dark green mountain of them, a champagne lover’s foretaste of paradise. We were in the Perrier-Jouet caves, not enormous by Champagne standards, but sufficiently big to lose yourself in quite easily. (And very enjoyably, as you would be lost in the middle of twelve million bottles.) The oldest caves, those immediately under the Perrier-Jouet offices, had been hacked out of the chalky earth by hand, and you can see the scars, made by picks and now blackened with age, in the rough arches that lead from one cave to the next.Onward and downward we went, until we came to the angular ranks of tent-shaped wooden racks, each of them sprouting dozens of bottles. The racks, as tall as a man, were invented in the nineteenth century to solve the problem of the sediment that forms in the bottle as a result of fermentation.The bottles are stuck, neck first, into oval holes set at a steep angle that allows the sediment to slide up to the cork. To make sure this happens completely and evenly, the process needs a little assistance from time to time.The bottles have to be lifted gently, given a slight clockwise turn, and replaced.This is remuage, and despite experimenting with ingenious mechanical methods, progress has yet to find a totally satisfactory replacement for the human hand.Cold and lonely work it must be, too, but an experienced remueur can twist as many as 3,000 bottles an hour. After remuage comes dégorgement.(You’ll have to forgive the French words, but their English equivalents don’t sound nearly elegant enough to describe the making of champagne.) The neck of the bottle is frozen so that the sediment, trapped in ice, can be removed.The bottle is topped up, recorked, labeled, et voilà! What started as grapes in a muddy field has been turned into the most famous drink in the world. Should you drink it immediately, or lay it down for a year or two? Or even longer, if it’s a vintage champagne? Experts disagree, as experts tend to do, and there are those who say that champagne kept too long will lose its sparkle and character, and become a flat shadow of its former self.It depends, of course, on the quality of the wine, and I can personally vouch for the benefits of age that we enjoyed on our last night. We had been invited to dinner at the hotel particulier of Mumm in Reims.There was our old friend, the Man with the Magnum, and as the courses came and went so did the’85 Cordon Rouge and the’85 Grand Cordon Rose. For the finale, another magnum, this time unlabeled, was nursed to the table as carefully as though it were an extremely rich old aunt from whom one was hoping to inherit.I looked at the menu and saw that it was simply noted as a Very Old Vintage. I held my glass up to the light and watched the whispers of tiny bubbles rising from the bottom.Whatever else the years had done, they hadn’t subdued the sparkle. They had, however, given the wine a very slightly toasted bouquet, the pain grillé nose of a truly venerable champagne.It tasted rich and delicate and dry, and it was thirty years old.There and then, I made up my mind never to drink cheap champagne again.Life is too short. 实战提升 Practising&Exercise quality ['kw?l?ti] n. 质量,品质;特性;才能 实用句型&词组 学习更多: |
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