"Remember, gentlemen: it's not just France we're fighting for, it's Champagne!"

Winston Churchill would be this quote's originator, and do his motivations really surprise you?  I'd fight for Champagne, too, after the amazing hospitality they showed us on this day.  It started with another insanely beautiful day.  All of our hostesses and taxi drivers in Champagne kept telling us how lucky we were - to give you an idea, the French Riviera gets about 2,500 more hours of sun per year than Champagne does, so there's usually not much sun to be had.  It was the kind of spring day you could imagine Ronsard making a poem for (yep, I just went literary on you), so it was a perfect day to venture out to the countryside town of Tours-sur-Marne, site of Laurent-Perrier.


A little background to set up this great chance we were given: Laurent-Perrier is closed to the public, and only offers tours to wine professionals.  Des politely asked if they would allow a tour for a wine student and they generously accepted.  We were stunned, in the best way possible.  I mean, maybe they're not that exclusive, but I guess we didn't have our hopes up that they'd accommodate us.  But they did, so we hopped in a cab on a Monday morning and zipped along the Marne River until we reached their estate.  Unfortunately but probably smartly, we didn't take any pics because we didn't want to come off as too touristy or ungrateful.

Entering the gates of heav- I mean, Laurent-Perrier

Tours-sur-Marne is tiny, with only 1,300 people living there, and you can drive right through it in under 2 minutes.  There are zero tourists, or at least, there weren't any when we were there.  We pulled through the gates of Laurent-Perrier, and it looked like any normal work-filled Monday - the only people we saw were employees.  After all of the public dog-and-pony shows we'd been through, it was awesome, albeit slightly intimidating, to know that we were the only outsiders there.  The concrete sculpture inside the gates greeted us with an all-too-appropriate maxim: "Ne Buvez Jamais d'Eau" (Never Drink Water).  Madame Snozzi (stop it, way cooler than the person you're thinking of) was the name of our tour guide who gave us, and just us, a nifty tour of their building and the cellars down below.


We saw their steel vats where last year's harvest is going through the first fermentation process, and Mme Snozzi told us that the master wine maker will taste all 80+ of them in order to figure out how much of each vat goes in which champagne, or which ones will become reserves for later years' production.  That sounds like a fascinating task, but can you imagine trying to notate and remember all of them?  Right next to the vats was the bottling process, complete with bottle conveyor belts and Rube Goldberg-esque machines.  A few extremely polite workers passed by every now and again, each one nice enough to extend a "bonjour" to us while on the way to what I wanted to imagine was some romantic wine-making task.  I'm sure it was a lot more mundane than that, but I can have my own champagne dreams, right?


Their cellars were much more industrial-looking, but I liked that.  It truly felt like we were in the middle of a workplace, not passing through a doctored-up show piece like some of the public tours (nothing wrong with that, we'd just done enough of that already).  There was a lot more brick than chalk showing since they're so much closer to the river and the chalk is softer because of it.  We stopped and talked to a riddler (bottle turner) for a bit and watched him work his magic.  Machines have taken over most of the riddling process, but human hands still turn the most expensive and irregularly-shaped bottles.  In less than ten seconds, the guy had quarter-turned all of the bottles on the rack (40 or so) and pushed them in slightly so that the bottles stood at a steeper angle, a small part of the up to 50,000 bottles he can turn per day.  He turns more bottles of champagne before lunch time than we'll ever hope to touch in our lifetimes.  Their wine library was really interesting, with about 6 to 8 (if I remember correctly) small, gated vaults holding about 30 bottles each.  Note to self: add "tasting a champagne bottle that comes from a producer's wine library" to your Bucket List.


We finished with a fantastic tasting.  We were led to a small salon-type room, complete with all of the classic Beaux Arts accents and furniture.  We were served glasses of their non-vintage brut and their brut rosé ($90 on the market, score!) by what seemed like our own private butler (double score!), and Mme Snozzi joined us and gave us some cool Laurent-Perrier swag to take home (hat trick!).  Both wines fit perfectly with the theme of the house and of the salon where we were seated - neat, clean, and classic, and the taste was full of white floral and citrus tones (more red fruit, of course, with the rosé).  We spent a little while talking it up with Mme Snozzi and learning about her career adventures, discussing France, the U.S., and, of course, champagne.  We bought a bottle of the brut, not sure how else to thank them for such an amazing experience.  One day, I hope to come back and enjoy a bottle of the Grand Siècle or the Alexandra Rosé on-site.  Of course I'll offer Mme Snozzi a flute, too.  It really was about as close to a once-in-a-lifetime event as you could get for someone like me who's not involved in the wine industry, and I encourage anyone to have me tour guide/translate for them on their own trip to the area (please?).

From the train, vines for miles

We could've stayed for many more days in Champagne, exploring the other small towns and visiting other seductive producers, but we had a date with Paris.  We took a taxi back to Epernay, bought our train tickets, picked up one last bottle of champagne (Henriot), and hopped on the next train to the City of Lights.  In about an hour we were unloading at the Gare de l'Est, in the hypnotizing hustle and bustle of mid-day Paris.  An awkward metro ride with our heavy, champagne-laden suitcases took us to our apartment in the 5th arrondissement between the Cardinal Lemoine and Maubert Mutualité metro stops (in hindsight, a bus might've been better and just as fast).  On the first floor just off a quiet courtyard, our apartment was awesome - I really recommend renting one if there are any more than 2 of you.  Skylights spilled natural light over the loft and the small room below, with a futon, a small kitchenette, and a nice bathroom with a great shower (although hot water was tough to spread out over 4 people every morning).

La Seine

We were one long block from the Seine and La Tour d'Argent, and if you've been to Paris, you know that's a sweet spot.  For about $30-35 per person per night, that was unbelievably cheap!  Quick sidenote: please educate yourself on the restaurant La Tour d'Argent.  Founded in 1582, it's one of the oldest and certainly the most famous restaurant in Paris.  Although recently downgraded from its 3 Michelin stars, its cellars hold about half a million bottles of wine!  If you're really lucky and show some interest in their unfathomable selection, you might be invited down to see their cellars, filled with the most famous wine labels and vintages in the world, some dating back to the 1800's.  It's an utterly incredible place that has history that I don't have enough time to illustrate here, and I'm obviously fascinated by it.  Ok, maybe that wasn't that quick of a sidenote.

Our walk home every night - Victor Hugo would be proud

Anyway, two more blocks down the river was the Notre Dame, and it was our backdrop every night on the way home from a night out.  On our first afternoon, we hung out around the Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter.  We were exhausted and headed off to bed pretty early, nothing too exciting other than that.  We had a lot on our plates the next day - we had to tackle our first day in Paris, our friends Mary and Jon were arriving, and, my favorite part, we were going to the Stade de France to watch France take on Croatia in a footy match (uh, unreal!).  I'll cover that next time, à bientôt!