France: Champagne All Around

Winemakers in Reims, Epernay, Tours-sur-Marne and other towns in the Champagne district of France last week observed a familiar three-century tradition. In antiseptic rooms, committees of tasters eyed, sniffed and sipped six-month-old white wine, neatly spit out each taste into marble basins. Testing 25 to 45 varieties, they matched the acidity of one with the sweetness of another, the weakness of one with another's strong alcoholic body. When they were done, the formula had been arrived at by which such famous champagne houses as Krug, Mumm, Moët et Chandon and Pol Roger will blend their 1965 product.

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