Champange Part 4: How Champagne Was Made --- The Harvest

The book published in 1882 by Henry Vizetelly called CHAMPAGNE: with Notes on the Other Sparkling Wines of France was such an interesting read for me. It is freely available online and published by The Project Gutenberg and if you are a Champagne lover, this is a very good place to begin.
The author of this book, Henry Vizetelly, was interested in wine and Champagne. In the preface to his book, he wrote that he frequented Champagne for 10 years to learn what he could about how Champagne was made. He was also a wine juror for Great Britain at the Vienna and Paris Exhibitions of 1873 and 1878.¹
What intrigued me about reading this book was that it showed illustrations of many historical places that are still in existence today. It also documented how Champagne was made.
Vizetelly documented the harvest with wonderful illustrations that gives us a peak into how things were done in the 1800s. If the vintage was a good one, harvest could have begun as early as the third week in September.

The call was made and people from the neighboring villages would assemble at the marketplace adjacent to the vineyards and the price of a days labor was negotiated. In the 1800s, this was either a franc and a half, with food consisting of three meals, or two francs and a half, rising on exceptional occasions to three francs, without food, children being paid a franc and a half.
The grapes were harvested in the early morning. If the grapes were picked later in the day, the sunlight and heat on the grapes could cause the picked grapes to begin fermenting and this resulted in giving the juice an excess of color. (We do this today, trying to harvest the grapes as early in the morning as possible to prevent fermentation of our white grapes.)
The grapes are harvested with scissors or hooked knives, technically termed ‘serpettes,’ and in some vineyards all damaged, decayed, or unripe fruit are removed from the bunches before placing them in the baskets. (We still do this today, removing all of the damaged and decayed fruit in the vineyard before putting the cleaned grapes into the lugs.)

Large carts with railed open sides are continually passing backwards and forwards to pick these baskets up. When the cart was fully loaded, it was driven slowly to the neighboring pressoir (wine press).

Once at the press house, the grapes were stored in a cool place and then weighed or measured before being emptied onto the floor of the press.

In some places, the old-fashioned press, resembling an ordinary cider-press is used. But in other press houses, more powerful presses of a modern invention, worked by a large fly-wheel requiring four sturdy men to turn it, are employed.
The first pressing gives the best wine, but the presses are used twice and even three times to extract all the juice. After three pressures the grapes are usually worked about with peels, and subjected to a final squeeze known as the ‘rébêche,’ which produces a sort of piquette, given to the workmen to drink.
The must filters through a wicker basket into the reservoir beneath, whence, after remaining a certain time to allow of its ridding itself of the grosser lees, it is pumped through a tube into the casks. The fermentation begins after approximately 12 days. The wine is then left undisturbed until Christmas.
Here we come to the end of harvest in Champagne in the 1800s. This is not so different from the way we do things now.
References:
1. Illustration from Wikipedia on Henry Vizetelly.
2. Henry Vizetelly, CHAMPAGNE: with Notes on the Other Sparkling Wines of France, 1882, pg. 148-153.