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 !

"Too much of anything is bad, but too much champagne is just right."

Thanks, F. Scott Fitzgerald, for continuing our trend of title quotes and for accurately summing up my feelings for this day.  It started innocently enough, with some Limonade, Orangina, and espresso outside our hotel.  The sun was spilling out all over the square, the temperature was just right, and it just felt like another glorious day for champagne (although, isn't every day, regardless of the weather, a glorious day for drinking champagne?).

Salade de gesiers, terrine de lapin, et un Leffe

Wait, what's that you say, Des?  We need to get some lunch first so we don't drink on an empty stomach?  That's a great idea, why don't we duck into this neighborhood joint where they serve things that my French abilities fail to translate for us?  Oops.  We were hungry and away from the popular, more central part of town, so we decided to pop into a brasserie full of all locals.  I'd say that's a good sign, even if it meant we stuck out like Manute Bol at a jockey convention.  The menu, a prix-fixe deal, had 3 hors d'oeuvres and 3 main plates to choose from and you could have one from each.  I hadn't heard of salade de gésiers or the second one, but the 3rd choice for an hors d'oeuvre was rabbit terrine.  I took the rabbit terrine and chose the salade for Des - turns out that gésiers means gizzards, cow stomach - who knew?  Believe it or not, the terrine and the salad were delicious.  The gizzards were pan sautéed and tasted like beefy bacon, which makes sense considering this and bacon come from around the same part of the animal.  I was proud, I felt good, I knew Anthony Bourdain would be proud of me for the gastronomic adventure I'd just taken.  We finished up our more normal main dishes (escalope milanaise and a veal cutlet) and geared up for champagne house #1: Taittinger.

Pommery vineyards

I can sum up the tour at Taittinger with one word: sterile.  Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate it, it just didn't have any personality.  Our tour guide was great, looked great (common theme!), and was extremely nice, I just walked away feeling like Taittinger was too plain.  Mumm was simple, but it was personable, hands-on, and cozy; Taittinger was simple, too, but it was white, plain, and a sort of arms-length transaction.  Like I said, sterile.  We visited the cellars and learned that they are a "chardonnay house," meaning they like to use chardonnay grapes the most in their champagnes.  It works, too, and their goal of creating an elegant, classy brand has succeeded.  Where most of the other houses allowed you to choose the champagne(s) you would taste at the end of the tour, all you had at Taittinger was their original Brut.  It's a great champagne and it's easy to drink, but I can buy that in the stores.  Maybe I'm asking too much, but I want the choice, and I want to be able to taste champagnes that I might otherwise miss in stores - your Millésimé, your Grand Cru, your Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs.  But let's end this on a good note - their Brut didn't disappoint and the history behind their house is amazing.  Definitely go here if you're a history buff.

Kicking off the Veuve Clicquot tour

About 3 blocks away lies the famed Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin house.  You know, the champagne that Wiz Khalifa drinks while rocking his yellow diamonds.  Ok, so I don't have any yellow diamonds (or white, blue, or black diamonds for that matter), but I did sip Clicquot in Reims.  Can I get half of a street cred point for that?  No?  Damn.  This tour was in French since the English tours were booked already, so this one was a little more challenging.  The weird thing is that there were more English folks than French on the tour.  We went through their history first, and our guide, although nice and (again) pretty, the script was a little B.S.  It could be that I'm insensitive and skeptical, but don't tell me that "the bottle is a darker shade since Madame Clicquot was in mourning of her dead husband" (Veuve = widow, FYI) and that "the chardonnay grape reflects Madame Clicquot's elegance and beauty while the pinot noir in the champagne shows her nurturing, maternal nature..." Blah, blah, blah.  Sorry, I don't buy it.  It didn't taint my opinion of the tour or the house, but I just couldn't help but chuckle when she would throw those nuggets at us.  The rest of the tour was great, seeing their interestingly different chalk cellars (pyramid-like caverns rather than carved-out hallways) and walking through their Aroma Garden.  In the garden, they have the organic manifestations of every aroma and taste you experience in a Veuve Clicquot glass.  They were growing white flowers, lemongrass, cherry blossoms, raspberry bushes, etc., to serve as a sort of inspiration to their master wine maker in order to keep producing the same, consistently great experience in each year's product.  In other words, go to the Aroma Garden, smell each of the plants, then go inhale a flute of Veuve Clicquot Grande Dame, and the two should be similar experiences.  Pretty awesome, right?  I know!  Our tasting was of their rosé, which was good.  Not my favorite, but I wouldn't hesitate to have another glass.

Getting closer to dinner time, Pommery was our last stop.  We joined one of the last tours of the day, set off down into their cellars, and promptly realized this was going to be... different.  Pommery has turned a small part of its cellars into a modern art exhibit, and that's the part they show you.  Um, excuse me, Miss Guide?  But why are there clay sculptures of the business end of a hippo, or a plant that looks like it's covered in maggots, or a video that looks like the end of Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video?  Whether you call that art or not, it's also really creepy.  Even though I was tired of hearing the same things by then, I would much rather have gone through the same old champagne lesson we'd heard at the 3 previous houses we'd visited so far than have to endure the "art" show.  The tasting afterward was great, made more so with the knowledge that we wouldn't have to go back into the cellar.  We asked the guy pouring everyone's champagne a few questions and we ended up getting a kind of private commentary through our tasting, so that was exciting.  Somehow we even got a 5th glass even though we only paid to share 4.  We shared flutes of their Brut Royal (great), Brut Apanage (great), Brut Rosé (not a fan, a little rubbery on the back end), Brut Grand Cru Millésimé (good, very heavy and rich), and Rosé Apanage (another good rosé to try).

Dinner was at Brasserie Flo, an upscale place right by our hotel.  It was delicious for us both, and the bottle of Bordeaux to go with was excellent.  We decided to turn in early and went back to the hotel room for TV and bed - or so we thought.  After about 15 minutes in our room, at about 10:30 or so, we began to hear... a band?  Is that a marching band playing Britney Spears' "Toxic" in the square outside our hotel?  Why, yes, yes it is!  They played for almost an hour.  We watched from our balcony until they were done, watching the crowd around them grow and a bizarre conga line form at one point, and it was a pretty cool surprise for the night (the video here is sideways, but shows part of their performance and some moving pictures of the Place d'Erlon).  So then it was bed time, because a big day awaited us.  We still had to wrap up our business in Reims and catch the train to Epernay.  A demain!

"Come quickly, I'm tasting the stars!"

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.

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.

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...