La rue sans pareil...

...Would be the Avenue de Champagne in Epernay, of course (la rue sans pareil = the road without equals/the road with no match).  Shaking off the lingering effects of the previous night's wine (rather than the Grapes of Wrath, we can call this the Wrath of Grapes), it was time to mount up and conquer this 2 km slice of heaven.  It was a day for Champenois sunshine and cellars alike.  A day for champagne rooms and champagne royalty.  It was a day for Moët and Chandon.

Dom and the author, hanging out together

We were excited for a tour and tasting of Moët and Chandon, and they really didn't disappoint.  It was Napoléon's favorite champagne for a reason, and their property really showed off their luxurious style.  Their cellars are really different, with a lot more of their walls fortified by bricks rather than bare chalk walls.  They have 25 km of cellars, made up of 3 different levels of caves underneath the streets of Epernay, which amounts to... you should be sitting down for this... over 100 million bottles down there.  That's absolutely unreal!  Even while I was in the cellars, I couldn't fathom that many bottles in one place.  The cellar tour took us past a few artifacts that Napoléon picked up, back in the day, for his favorite champagne buddies, and we ventured past their priceless wine library, as well.  For the most part, we heard the same old things as we did in the 1st 4 tours, but our guide also talked about a lot of refreshingly new things.  We were shown a bottle of Dom Pérignon Oenothèque Rosé that was still fermenting in the cellar, and we were told it'll stay that way for at least another 7 years.  Last year, Dom P. unveiled their 1st vintage (1990) release of this 50/50 blend of pinot noir and chardonnay, and bottles fetch somewhere between $700 and $1,000 a pop.  It really was a wild experience to check out tens of thousands of these cocooned beauties, covered in chalk dust and still containing the yeast sediment.



Dom bottles fermenting (1 busted, can I lick it up?)




The champagnes we tasted afterward were great.  I had the Impérial Brut and Rosé while Des had the newly-released Grand Vintage 2002 Brut and Rosé.  The Impérial Brut was good - I got a clean, floral, and pear feel - and the rosé was more floral-and-red-fruit.  The Grand Vintage was like an upgraded Impérial, but with apricot and slightly more caramel notes... high fives all around if I got all that right.  Kept in ideal conditions, the 2002 will mature well for at least the next 10-20 years, but it's still perfectly fine if drunk today.  During our tasting, we even took a picture with Scarlett Johansson!  Ok, so what if it was a poster??  I don't see any photos of you with one!  Our tour guide told us that he got to meet her when she came 3 months before for her advertising photo shoots and general schmoozing, and it goes with out saying that we were both extremely jealous.



Dom Pérignon Oenothèque Rosé



The Grand Vintage was about the best that we could also afford, so we bought some.  Maybe one day we can come back and afford the Dom Oenothèque, but until then we're settling for Grand Vintage.  If you think you're a baller, you have to be verified, first, by buying up a few Dom bottles along with some accessories to go with it.  The scrubby-looking guy in front of me at the register picked up 2 Dom magnums, a 3-bottle Dom ice bath, and a few other items, to ring up a solid bill of about 700 euros (about $950).  Thanks, man, for showing me up with my 2 "wimpy" bottles of Grand Vintage 2002.  And he was wearing a Canadian tuxedo (jeans/denim shirt/jean jacket combo)!  I mean, raise your hand if you saw that coming... yeah, me neither!  Of course, then he promptly strolled over to his $200,000 Mercedes S65 AMG and sped off.  I want to be that guy.  He mounted up with his all-denim get-up because, frankly, he doesn't care what he looks like since he makes it rain more than Pacman Jones in a Vegas strip club.  If it was me, I'd take an Oenothèque or 2 and some of their Andy Warhol-designed wine glasses - and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't don a jean jacket.  But again, that's just me.

My XL hand next to a Dom magnum

La tour de Castellane

After lunch, we strolled the Avenue de Champagne, looking for our next victims to suck dry of their champagne (instead of vampires, champires?).  Unfortunately, a lot of places were closed to the public, and, being a Sunday, some that usually are open weren't.  We settled for Champagne de Castellane, which, if you remember, is the house that has the big tower that dominates the Epernay skyline.  Thankfully, they allowed us to skip the tour and just taste 4 of their styles.  The champagne and their house were good, but (snob alert!) a little unremarkable compared to the other champagne producers we visited.


Then it was time to track back to the champagne bar we visited the day and night before to have some oak-aged champagne (not really my cup of... well, champagne) and to take in the day we just had.  The place is called C-comme (pronounced "say come"), and it's pretty awesome.  A swanky champagne bar with a gift shop in the front and a cellar downstairs, check it out here.  As for dinner, it was at a simple brasserie up the road since it was a quiet Sunday night in town.


Rest up for tomorrow, because the single best experience of our trip is coming tomorrow morning, along with our arrival in Paris!  A bientôt!