The house of Clicquot, established in the year 1798 by the husband of La Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, who died in 1866, in her 89th year, was indebted for much of the celebrity of its wine to the lucky accident of the Russians occupying Reims in 1814 and 1815, and freely requisitioning the sweet Champagne stored in the widow's capacious cellars. Madame Clicquot's wines were slightly known in Russia prior to this date; but the officers of the invading army, on their return home, proclaimed their merits throughout the length and breadth of the Muscovite Empire, and the fortune of the house was made. Madame Clicquot, as every one knows, amassed enormous wealth, and succeeded in marrying both her daughter and granddaughter to counts of the _ancien régime_.
The present head of the firm is M. Werlé, who comes of an old Lorraine family although born in the ancient free imperial town of Wetzlar on the Lahn, where Goethe lays the scene of his 'Sorrows of Werther,' the leading incidents of which really occurred there. M. Werlé entered the establishment which he has done so much to raise to its existing position so far back as the year 1821. His care and skill, exercised for nearly two-thirds of a century, have largely contributed to obtain for the Clicquot brand that high repute which it enjoys to-day all over the world. M. Werlé, who has long been naturalised in France, was for many years Mayor of Reims and President of its Chamber of Commerce, as well as one of the deputies of the Marne to the Corps Législatif. He enjoys the reputation of being the richest man in Reims, and, like his late partner, Madame Clicquot, he has also secured brilliant alliances for his children, his son, M. Alfred Werlé, having married the daughter of the Duc de Montebello, while his daughter espoused the son of M. Magne, Minister of Finance under the Second Empire.
[Illustration: HEADS OF PH[OE]BUS AND BACCHUS.]
Half-way down the narrow Rue du Temple is an ancient gateway, on which may be traced the half-effaced sculptured heads of Ph[oe]bus and Bacchus. Immediately in front is a green _porte-cochère_ forming the entrance to the Clicquot-Werlé establishment, and conducting to a spacious trim-kept courtyard, set off with a few trees, with some extensive stabling and cart-sheds on the left, and on the right hand the entrance to the cellars. Facing us is an unpretending-looking edifice, where the firm has its counting-houses, with a little corner tower surmounted by a characteristic weathercock consisting of a figure of Bacchus seated astride a cask beneath a vine-branch, and holding up a bottle in one hand and a goblet in the other. The old Remois Commanderie of the Knights Templars existed until the epoch of the Great Revolution, and today a few fragments of the ancient buildings remain adjacent to the 'celliers' of the establishment, which are reached through a pair of folding-doors and down a flight of stone steps. The date of the foundation of this Commanderie is uncertain, but it is known that a Templar's church occupied a portion of the site in 1170. In 1311 both the church and the Commanderie passed into possession of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, which held them until the epoch of the Revolution. Formerly the _échevins_ of Reims used to be elected in the ancient hall of the Commanderie, which at one period was a sanctuary for debtors, and also for criminals. Early in the present century the buildings were sold and demolished.