Note 415 — PART II. (continued 2)

As the real origin of this system is a matter which has excited no small amount of controversy, and as several claimants to the honour of its discovery have had their names put forward by different writers, the following extracts from a letter from M. Alfred Werlé, of the house founded by Madame Clicquot, may serve to render honour where it is really due: ‘Already, in 1806 (I am unable to speak of an earlier period with absolute certainty), the bottles were placed on tables, like to-day, with their heads downwards; each bottle being taken out of its hole, raised in the air, and shaken with the hand, so as to cause the cream of tartar and the deposit it contained to fall upon the cork, the holes being round, and the bottles placed straight downwards. This lasted till 1818, when a man named Müller, an employé of Madame Clicquot, suggested to her that the bottles should be left in the table whilst being shaken, and that the holes should be cut obliquely, so that the bottles might remain inclined. He maintained that one would thus obtain a wine of far greater limpidity. The trial was made, and every day, with a view of keeping this new process a secret, Müller and Madame Clicquot shut themselves up alone in the cellars, and shook the bottles unperceived. In 1821 Müller was assisted by a workman named Mathieu Binder; and in 1823 or 1824, Madame Clicquot having purchased from M. Morizet a cuvée of wine which was shaken and prepared in this merchant’s cellars, one of his employés named Thomassin became acquainted with the new method, and resolved to practise it; since when it gradually spread, and eventually was generally adopted. M. Werlé senior recollects perfectly well that when he arrived at Madame Clicquot’s in 1821 it was only at her establishment that the bottles were shaken in this manner. The practice of shaking the bottles was a very old one, and no more invented by Müller than by Thomassin; but the former certainly effected great improvements by employing the system of oblique holes, and shaking the bottles in the table and not in the air.’