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 as your vintner hath it, of a bottle of Volnay, to go no higher, will flood your chamber with the sweetness of an “unheard melody.” Time was, some two hundred years since, when Burgundy and strove together for precedence. The questionAn vinum Remense Burgundico suavius et salubrius was fought out in the schools between Physicians, grave and reverend, and Heads of Faculties.

Even as early as 1652 some fiery Burgundian had declared the wine of Beaune to be richer and wholesomer than any other, averring that Champagne predisposed to catarrh, gout, gravel, rheumatism, and such like disorders. Then rose up the men of Reims, and boasting the liquid purity, flavour and durability of the wine of their district, bravely asserted its unqualified superiority to all the wines of Burgundy. The