Epernay, the capital of champagne

A Reims morning from the hotel room

It was time to move on to Epernay, the renowned capital of champagne (but not of Champagne, mind you - confused yet?), but we still had one last morning in Reims.  Breakfast was a pain au chocolat, of course.  Seriously, if you haven't had one of these, you are truly missing out on a simply beautiful thing.  With a direct translation of "bread with chocolate," how could you go wrong?  It's a croissant-type bread with 2 streams of chocolate (usually dark!) running through the middle of it, and this is a perfectly acceptable, and often encouraged, breakfast staple.  And French people aren't fat!  We rolled out an experiment while in Reims and Epernay where we counted the number of overweight people we saw while we were there (4ish days), and we only reached 10.  Ten people.  In 4 days.  How long would it take to get to that number in America, 30 minutes?  Fifteen minutes?  Less??  It's obviously a combination of lifestyle factors that contribute to this, and I even lost 4 pounds in our 10 days in France (that I don't want/need to lose).  *Disclaimer: please don't take this as me singling out overweight people, we just thought it'd be interesting to see the visible contrast in health levels between France and the States, because there's no denying that it's stark.

So, pastries consumed, it was wine time.  We checked out a wine store next door to see if their prices were cheaper than at the champagne houses.  You know, if you take a touristy tour and pass through the gift store on the way out, you figure that you would pay tourist trap prices, right?  Surprisingly, that wasn't the case.  It turns out that the champagne in the local wine store was slightly more expensive than at the source, so we pointed our palates in the direction of Mumm to scoop up 2 of our favorites.


But first, it was time for another tasting.  A lesser-known house (for Reims) called Charles de Cazanove was pretty much on the way to Mumm, so we figured, "why not?"  That's the great part about champagne, it doesn't matter how you drink it.  Dr. Seuss could have easily written a story about champagne - you can drink it in the morning or at night, with fish or with tripe, invented by monks under steeples, you can drink it alone or with people... ok, enough rhyming, I'm obviously pretty poor at it.  But you get my point, and right then we wanted some.  Cazanove may be smaller, but it has plenty of experience, being around since 1811, and still produces about 3 million bottles each year.  We shared 4 flutes of their bubbly line, starting with their brut, passing through their millésimé and either blanc de blancs or blanc de noirs (hey, I can't remember them all!), and ending with the brut rosé.  They were all great, and I'd recommend the millésimé to anyone.

In front of Mumm, holding my prized posession

After that, it was on to Mumm.  Our guide and emcee-in-the-making from 2 days before, Sarah, wasn't there, but it wasn't hard to navigate their small shop in order to pick out which champagnes we wanted.  I wanted the Grand Cru and Des wanted the Rosé, but it was difficult to not get distracted by the other bottles and accessories.  Even more difficult was trying to resist the urge to biggie-size our bottles and go with a magnum or jeroboam.  Of course we don't really need a gold-colored case, a Cordon Rouge champagne bath, or crystal, Mumm-engraved champagne flutes, let alone a gigantic bottle of champagne that I would have absolutely no chance fitting in my budget or suitcase, but they looked so fancy and shiny and I couldn't stop marveling at all of them.  Yet resist we did, and we walked out as proud parents of 2 bundles of Mumm joy.

Funny thing about vacation is that the days blend together.  They all feel the same, so you forget day-specific events like the Saturday markets.  Well, it was Saturday, and the market lay directly in our path.  Needless to say, I was stoked.  The vision of rows of whole fish, whole chickens, sausages, oysters, terrines, and fresh fruits and vegetables appeared not long after the mouthwatering aromas had reached us.  We followed our eyes and noses to a stall selling 2-serving portions of chicken and seafood paella for just 5 euros.  We bought 2 forks from a guy selling househould items right next to the paella vendor (we washed them first!), and lunch was served outside the train station while waiting for the train to Epernay, basking in the brilliance of another sunlit Champenois day.

In case you forgot

What about the vines, you may ask?  The 30 minute journey between Reims and Epernay, along with the area just south of Epernay, is filled with the best vines in Champagne (grand cru vines, for those of you playing at home).  Louis Roederer, Moët and Chandon, Mumm, Clicquot, etc., all buy their chardonnay and pinot noir grapes from them in order to make their best cuvées, so it was a really cool sight.

More champagne!

Aside from the tall tower at the Champagne de Castellane house that you see from the train, the town of Epernay is rather underwhelming at first.  It has a beautiful church and theater, and a few cobblestone streets, but, to be honest, I was worried we weren't going to find anything interesting besides the champagne.  I was right for the most part about there being nothing else, but I underestimated how interesting the champagne would be.  Silly me, you don't need anything else.

Our hotel was nice and cozy (Hôtel La Cloche) and, just like Hôtel Bristol in Reims, was well worth what we paid.  Our window looked out over one of the 2 main circles in town, and the bathroom was utterly enormous for a European WC.  Following our hostess' suggestion, we popped into a champagne bar around the corner to take our medicine before taking a pre-dinner nap (I love those!).  Dinner was great and so was the rosé to go with it, and so was the Bordeaux we drank in the room afterward.  Like I said, not much else to do in Epernay if you're not from there (for future reference, does anyone have any suggestions for the nightlife?).

On deck: Moët and Chandon and our homeboy Dom P.  Thanks to the early readers of this blog, it's gone international with some views from the UK and France!  Perhaps the French readers can advise me how best to teach (in print) the Yanks how to properly say Reims.  Merci bien, à bientôt !