Champagne

Épernay, Monday 17 August

Today is our third and final day in Épernay, a city of about 25,000 located in the center of the Champagne region. It has been cloudy and cool here with high temps struggling to reach 70F each day, though with little actual rain.

We arrived on Saturday afternoon at the Hôtel de Champagne, a grandly named small hotel not far from the center of the city. We can walk to many restaurants and also to many of the grand champagne estates, though some of the most prestigious ones in Épernay are not open for tasting by the general public. 

France is famous for its cuisine but so far we seem to be eating lots of pasta, which seems very Italian. I guess pasta's the concessionary item for vegetarians on the French menu. French or Italian, we had some wonderful pasta Saturday night at a little restaurant called Le Sardaigne on the main city square, along with a half-bottle of blanc-de-blanc from one of the hundreds of small champagne producers in the region.

On Sunday we traveled 20 miles north to Reims (dodging football traffic---more about football below) to visit the famous cathedral on the site where the kings of France were crowned beginning with Clovis, the very first one to become Christian, in 496. The current building, Notre Dame de Reims, is a massive and imposing Gothic structure dating from the early 1200s with many rebuilds over the centuries, most recently after damage from shelling in World War I. Our luck this summer seems to be to visit churches that are covered with scaffolding! They are in the final months of a thorough cleaning and restoration of the sculpture and facade (you can see how clean the portals on both sides look), and the huge rose windows above the entrance is being renovated as well.

We didn't get to see the big windows, but Wikipedia has this picture :)

Many of the other windows were quite lovely, including both classical ones many centuries old and the famous modern set by Chagall. 

After walking about the cathedral, its grounds, and touring the adjoining Palais de Tau, we lunched at a little bistro just off the square. I managed by good luck to persuade the waiter in French to bring us food. (He sympathetically spoke to us in English for the rest of the meal, probably to avoid having to attempt to comprehend my French!) Even more good luck: my seat afforded a view of a television in another room that was tuned to a football match between the local Stade de Reims side and southern powerhouse Olympique Marseilles. I got to see the wonderful first-half goal that led Stade de Reims to a famous 1-0 victory over their renowned opponent. (Strange: there was no cheering in the restaurant at the goal, presumably because locals never go to tourist restaurants on the main square.)

After lunch, how could we resist an afternoon visit to one of the major, historic champagne producers? We toured the Pommery cellars and learned a lot about the history of wine-making in the region and about the process of making champagne. This particular cellar was built to prominence by a woman, Mme Louise Pommery, following the death of her husband in the mid-19th century. The exterior of the buildings are amazing: truly a palace in the finest English style!

While we waited for a tour of the caves, we enjoyed the rather large barrel on display in the entry gallery, big enough to age 100,000 bottles worth of wine!

The tour took us down 116 steps into the maze of more than a dozen miles of caves and tunnels that are a signature point of pride of every champagne producer. The caves are easily carved into the chalky rock and are (we are told) the perfect place for millions (and I do mean millions) of bottles of bubbly to rest: 58-60 degrees, dark, and 90% humidity. 

Mme Pommery wanted to fancy up her caves, so she commissioned four massive bas reliefs depicting classical scenes related to viticulture.

Back to the surface (and yes, back up the 116 stairs), I enjoyed a wonderful glass of 1999 Cuvée Louise Brut.

By the time we got back to Épernay last night, we were too tired to go out to dinner, so we devoured a loaf of bread and wedge of cheese in our room.

This morning we visited a second major champagne house, Eugene Mercier, which lies down the road in Épernay. (Our hotel is on Avenue Eugene Mercier.) Despite being right on the edge of Épernay, Mercier's winery lies right beside the vineyards that produce over half its grapes.

Again, we got a nice tour of the caves (which also featured bas reliefs), but this time we had an elevator and a train! Once again, we saw hundreds of tunnels each with tens of thousands of bottles of bubbly coming of age. Mercier also has a giant barrel (but not quite as large as Pommery's):

After lunch and a laundry adventure (We did it! With all the instructions en français!), we returned to the hotel and under-the-weather Suzanne crashed for a nap. That gave me an opportunity to walk around a bit and get photos (if not tastes) of some of the great champagne houses in the neighborhood:

Perrier-Jouet

Moet et Chandon

Pol Roger

Tomorrow, we head south to Beaune and switch gears from bubbly pinot noir and chardonnay to the still varieties. I'll  post again later in the week from there before we head for Lyon on the weekend. Until then, au revoir!