Champagne, Champagne, Champagne!

Well, we began in Paris but after 4 days made our way 2 hours on the train to Reims (apparently pronounced rannns) to take in what this main city of the Champagne region had to offer.

Staying in what was advertised as a guest house – apparently in France that means some old lady’s spare room – we arrived at about 3pm on Sunday and set off into the old town to see what we could find. The answer, of course, on Sunday the 2nd of January- is there is nothing to find. Everything was closed, the tumbleweeds were bouncing through the streets and the tourist office provided little to no help, apart from telling us the Champagnery we wanted to visit would not be open while we were here (a fact they decided not to advertise on their website).

But we found an art gallery to visit – and of course wandered through the magnificent Cathedral and booked 3 Champagneries for the next day.

We visited first, the Charles de Cazanove champagne house – a lovely looking building on the outside main road of the old town. There we saw the 2 processes of ageing that all Champagne goes through, in a modern factory style building. It wasn’t as pretty as what we saw later, but enlightening nonetheless (who knew that even the regular Champagne, ie non-vintage, had to be aged anywhere between 1 and 3 years!!). We tasted three Charles de Cazanove Champagnes, a rose, the standard Brut, and their premium Brut. They were nice (a little full on for 11am…) but a little too dry for our taste – definately not the best we had that day. The rose was probably the one we liked the most, said to go well with dark berries and dessert – which we could definately see, but that being said, we didn’t buy a bottle from the nervous French man doing the tour, nothing had quite caught our fancy.

Next on the list was world famous Taittinger champagnery. Built on the remnants of 4th century Gallo-Roman chalk mines, and on top of that, the remains of the Saint Nicaise abbey dating from 1211, the cellars have a rich and varied history. We toured through the gallo-roman caves, saw relics from the basilica of a time long since gone, and saw what is supposed to be millions and millions of bottles of Champagne, slowly ageing under the city of Reims. We only tried one wine at the Taittinger cellars, but it was enough. Made from 40% Chardonnay and 60% Pinot Noir and aged from a minimum of 3 to 4 years, this wine was amazing (and I don’t even like Champagne that much!).

Cool and crisp, with more bubbles than you can imagine – a hint of peach and vanilla pod, their website describes it as a “brilliant, golden straw yellow”. We definately had to have a bottle.

An hour later, with one more pastry in our stomachs (Tarte au Citron for me, obviously) we wandered into the little family owned Martel Champagne cellars, once again built atop Roman-chalk mines from the 4th Century. we saw in these cellars – along with the hundreds of thousands of Champagne bottles ageing, many examples of what machines were originallly used for the turning, corking and affecting of the wine bottles, before they began the use of the modern machines they have used since the 70s.

With Martel we tried 3 wines again, all were nice, but our eye was caught particularly by the rose (drunk normally on hot summer’s days)  and the standard Martel Brut. So with a bottle of each in hand, we traipsed back to our room, and prepared for what turned out to be quite an underwhelming dinner – not worthy of a post!

Still… we’d had enough bubbly to grin and bear it.

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