A lot of people get to experience the joys of champagne - its bubbles, its aura of luxury, its beautiful propensity to pop up during celebrations and other happy moments. Dom Pérignon provided the title of this entry when he discovered this fantastic potion, and who would disagree with him? But how many get to experience the joys of Champagne? You know, the region where this bottled beatitude is conceived? Well, (humble brag alert!) Des and I are now lucky enough to be counted in that number. And, well, I'm going to tell you about it.
Reims is the largest city in the Champagne region, and the first stop of our champagne trail - and we absolutely loved it. In fact, I think I'd be a rather convincing travel marketer for Champagne, especially for Reims; that's how highly I think of the place. It's exactly the right size: not too big, not too small, with enough good restaurants and nightlife to hold you over between champagne house visits. Our stay started on a great note and provided the perfect launching point for the rest of our trip.
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| From our hotel room balcony |
We arrived during the early afternoon on a beautiful spring day, taking an hour long TGV ride from Charles de Gaulle Airport straight into the Champenois countryside. It's an amazing sight to see miles and miles of rolling green farmland, with brown, gnarly vines becoming more predominant as you approach Reims. Good Feeling #1 was soon replaced by Good Feeling #2, when we realized that our hotel was right on the main square in town, la Place d'Erlon. Our room was cozy and simple, and for the price we paid it was more than worth the value. I don't remember seeing an air conditioning unit (doesn't mean it wasn't there, necessarily), but who needs A/C when it's low 60's and sunny outside every day that we were there? If anything, our room would get warm, which is when we'd open the double doors on to our small balcony over looking the sunny square, listening to the hum of conversation, the clinking of silverware on cafe plates, and the buzz of distant traffic. We also thought we heard champagne calling our names, so we were all too obliged to follow the call.
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| G.H. Mumm Cordon Rouge |
Late in the afternoon was our 1st champagne house visit, to G.H. Mumm. Des and I didn't have a very good idea of what they were about, and frankly we weren't sure what to expect. However, we were blown away. Mumm is very clean and classy, and the tour is rather simple, which I like. There's nothing too flashy, they just let their champagne speak for itself. We learned about the 3 types of champagne-making grapes (chardonnay, pinot noir, and pinot meunier) and their qualities (chardonnay - light and crisp, pinot noir - heavy and bold, pinot meunier - fresh and fruity), the vats they keep the new crop in, bottle sizes (the quart up to the nebuchadnezzar), and champagne-making procedures before we hoofed it down to their cellars. With about 15 km of cellars and 25 million bottles, their cellars were about average size (crazy, right?). Sarah was our guide, and she was great. A good-looking Belgian girl living in Reims, she's aspiring to make it big as a female MC (artist name Sarah Blingie), so of course I was floored by this. We talked to her for a long time, you gotta listen to her music all you up-and-coming producers out there!
After the tour, we tasted the 3 glasses of champagne we had picked out: the Cramant, Rosé, and Grand Cru. They were all fantastic, each with distinctly different aromas. I know this sounds naive, but before this trip I wasn't aware that different champagnes can taste so completely different. It's really amazing tasting such different ends of the spectrum like Cramant and Grand Cru. For those oenophiles out there, don't worry, Des or I will post on our blogs later about each of the champagnes we tasted while on the trip in much greater detail. Anyway, back to what I'm good at - tasting. I was a huge fan of the Grand Cru and Rosé, two very pinot noir-heavy champages. The Mumm Rosé was wild - barely a slight shade of pink and mostly a deep gold, it had a rich, flower-and-red-fruit taste rather than the sweet and syrupy aromas of other rosés I've had before (and disliked).
Our Mumm guide Sarah suggested we try a restaurant around the corner from our hotel, Côté Cuisine. It was sensational. The 1st course had us hooked, when we shared a mussel soup, which was the best soup I've ever had in my life. Yeah, that good. The half bottle of Haut Médoc red and our main courses were just the icing on this delicious cake. After a digestif in a bar on the Place d'Erlon and watching the French U-21 footy team beat Spain's U-21 squad, we dragged our tired but happy selves to bed. I mean, after all, this was only Day 1; we still had 9 more days to go...
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