[Illustration: THE POMMERY AND GRENO ESTABLISHMENT IN THE OUTSKIRTS OF REIMS.]
At the farther end of the hall a Gothic door, decorated with ornamental ironwork, leads to the long broad flight of steps, 116 in number, and nearly twelve feet in width, conducting to the suite of lofty subterranean chambers, where bottles of _vin brut_ repose in their hundreds of thousands in slanting racks or solid piles, passing leisurely through those stages of development necessary to fit them for the _dégorgeur_. Altogether there are 130 large shafts, 90 feet in depth and 60 feet square at their base, which were originally quarries, and are now connected by spacious galleries. This side of Reims abounds with similar chalk quarries, commonly believed to have served as places of refuge for the Protestants at the time of the League and after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and it is even conjectured that the early Christians--the followers of St. Sixtus and St. Sinicus--here hid themselves from their persecutors. Since the cellars within the city have no longer sufficed for the storage of the immense stocks required through the development of the Champagne trade, these vast subterranean galleries have been successfully utilised by various firms. Messrs. Pommery, after filling up the chambers above the water level, proceeded to excavate the connecting tunnels, shore up the cracking arches, and repair the flaws in the chalk with masonry, finally converting these abandoned quarries into magnificent cellars for the storage of Champagne. No less than 60,000_l._ was spent upon them and the castellated structure aboveground. Several millions of bottles of Champagne can be stored in these capacious vaults, the area of which is nearly 450,000 square feet.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF MESSRS. POMMERY AND GRENO'S CELLIER.]
Madame Pommery made a great mark with her splendid cuvées of 1868 and 1874, the result being that her brand has become widely popular, and that it invariably realises exceptionally high prices.
On leaving Messrs. Pommery's we retrace our steps down the Avenue Gerbert, bordered on either side with rows of plane-trees, until we reach the treeless Avenue de Sillery, where Messrs. de St. Marceaux & Co.'s new and capacious establishment is installed. Simple and without pretension, the establishment, which covers an area of upwards of 18,000 feet, is distinguished for its perfect appropriateness to the industry for which it was designed. The principal block of building is flanked by two advanced wings enclosing a garden-court, set off with flowers and shrubs, and from the centre of which rises a circular shaft, covered in with glass, and admitting light and air to the cellars below. In the building to the left the wine is received on its arrival from the vineyard, and here are ranged large quantities of casks replete with the choice crus of Verzenay, Ay, Cramant, and Bouzy, while thousands of bottles ready for labelling are stacked in massive piles at the end of the packing-hall in the corresponding wing of the establishment. Here, too, a tribe of workpeople are arraying the bottles with gold and silver headdresses, and robing them in pink paper, while others are filling, securing, marking, and addressing the cases or baskets destined to Hong-Kong, San Francisco, Yokohama, Bombay, London, New York, St. Petersburg, Berlin, or Paris.