Tales of an Amorphic Destiny

Champagne Region

June 27th, 2007 at 09:06pm James

We loaded up the Sunny after Graspop and drove west to Brussels where we met up with Viv. She’d caught the Eurostar from London that morning and was coming along to see some of France with us. We met in the beautiful historic old square and after a quick bite to eat, (McDonald’s I’m ashamed to say) we set a course for France’s Champagne region.

After being on the road for quite a few hours we decided to make camp for the night in a tiny, random French town that we still don’t know the name of. It started to rain as we went to bed and the weather got worse through the night as a huge storm came through. The tents held together though and we lived to see the morning. The office had been closed when we arrived the previous evening and was still closed as we left, so our first night turned out being quite cheap indeed!

France’s Champagne region is of course famous for the sparkling wine that bears its name. Our first stop was the city of Reims, home of several Champagne houses and while we waited for the Taittinger house to re-open after lunch we went for a walk around the town. The massive cathedral was very impressive – absolutely huge and adorned with many and varied stained glass windows.

Of course France is also famous for it’s patisseries and after spying these meringues we simply couldn’t resist buying one to enjoy the sugary goodness!

Our tour of the Taittinger Champagne caves was both interesting and spectacular. The building stands on what was originally a monastry, the kilometers of cellars beneath it were built out from Roman chalk mines and then taken over as cellars after the monastery was abandoned. Once the Champagne is bottled it is aged horizontally in these cellars for several years. This one tunnel alone housed 91,000 bottles of aging vintage Champagne!

After the bottles are aged, they’re placed in wooden racks where they’re turned or "riddled" daily to shift the sediment from secondary fermentation down to the neck of the bottles. We walked past hundreds of these racks, all stacked with bottles of different sizes.

We were shown the corking process and then we got to enjoy the final result – a very tasty glass of Taittinger Champagne! In this picture we’re in front of a replica of the bottle used to christen the "Sovereign of the Seas" – at the time the biggest cruise liner in the world.

After Reims our next stop was Epernay, the unofficial capital of the Champagne region where we did a tour of the Castellane house. Unlike the portion of Taittinger that is shown to the public, the entire Castellane production line is shown on their tour.

They also have "caves" that house their aging Champage and we were shown a section where they keep a stash of bottles from each vintage year. The ones in the foreground are from 1965 and 1971 and the mold that covers them protects them from light. Apparently they’re occasionally available for purchase through Christies of London!

The tour finished with the obligatory tasting and a wander through the museum. After our visits Sarah and Viv have confirmed that they love Champagne!

We made camp for the night and relaxed by the river with BBQ chicken, a few beers and yet more Champagne.

The next morning we walked along Epernay’s Ave de Champagne and ended up at the Moet & Chandon house. We chose not to wait 3 hours for the next available tour, (by then we were pretty well educated in the ways of Champagne production anyways) so we settled for a photo with the statue of Dom Perignon himself.

And with that we boarded the good ship Sunny and left the Champagne region, bound for the much-renowned Chateaux of the the Loire Valley. There’s a few more photos here.

Entry Filed under: Europe