Epernay
Our trip to the Champagne region saw us up early to get the tube to meet our friends Chris and Holly Hueston at St Pancras to start our journey to France. After an 1.5hr train to Dover Priory then a quick taxi ride we were soon checked in for the ferry to Dover. Just to rack up some more forms of transport for the day, we then got on a bus to be taken to board the ferry. The sailing was packed with various different school or club teams off to different sports competitions in Belgium and the Netherlands. This meant that we didn’t end up getting the best seats but we did manage to get a table for some lunch so ended up just hanging out there. After arriving in Calais we had to wait for the car rental guy to show up so we could collect our car. It was a nifty little 4 door Citron which seemed to have automated everything – from a built in GPS to automatic windscreen wipers and lights to beeping noises when you were backing the car! Unfortunately the GPS was in French so it took us some time to get it into English and get it working. After a few practice rounds around the car park and Paul and Chris as the designated drivers – we were on our way! The drive down to Epernay was fairly uneventful with lots of sleeping happening in the back seat (what is it about road trips that puts you to sleep?!) as we drove through the French countryside. We managed to make our way through the tolls roads and get to our hotel for the first two nights fairly easily. After dumping our gear we headed out to check out Epernay.
Place de Champagne leads on to ….
We were about a 15min walk from the main part of town just down the Avenue de Champagne which – as the name suggests – is where a lot of the champagne houses are located.
Avenue de Champagne
We found a little bar/restaurant that look reasonable enough with a menu we could half decipher. Thankfully our waiter spoke English so it managed to order our meals without too much drama. As we were all fairly knackered, we headed back to our hotel for an early night as we had an early start the next day. The next morning saw us up early to grab some breakie before our tour. We found a lovely little patisserie where we stocked up on pain au chocolate, tart aux apricot and baguettes. We found a little public park opposite Moet & Chandon where we took a stroll eating our pastries while we waited for our tour to start.
One of the first things we learnt on our tour of Moet & Chandon was that we’d been saying it wrong all this time! Apparently the two little dots above the ‘o’ mean that you do pronounce the ‘t’ at the end (unlike other French words such as ‘et’).
It was also really interesting to learn about how long they leave them in the cellars, the precise angles they have to rotate the bottles as well as the degree of the bottle and all about the yeast that that they eventually freeze and pop out towards the end of the process.
The Moet & Chandon caves run 28km underground and with vast number of bottles in all these cellars, it makes Avenue de Champagne the most expensive street in France (even more than the Champs-Élysées!). Oh course at the end of the tour we got to taste the beautiful champagne! We had opted for just the traditional champagne which was lovely!
Considering my experience with bubbles to date was predominantly of the Lindeau variety, the Moet & Chandon was something else! Definitely went down smoothly. Of course we had to exit through the gift shop, but with the cheapest bottle costing €31 we couldn’t quite justify it so left empty handed.
With our tour done we went for a wee wander around Epernay. Not terribly much to see but a lovely little wander around.
We ended up going to a crêperie for lunch where we had delicious savoury crepes. Some of our menu translating wasn’t quite what we thought it was but it was still delicious nonetheless.
Crepes
With full bellies we decided to head back along Avenue de Champagne and see what other champagne houses were doing tastings. We found one called A. Bergere who were doing 3 tastings for €5 so we popped in there to have a tastings.
We seemed to have impeccable timing as there seemed to be an influx of others come in while we were there. We tried a 100% Chardonnay with no sugar (actually quite nice), a 100% Chardonnay with sugar and a 70%/30% blend of Chardonnay/Pinot Noir while we were there. All very nice and Paul and I ended up getting one of their cheaper bottles to bring back to London. With both our drivers 4 flutes of champagne down, we decided we probably shouldn’t drive anywhere, so went to find a bakery to get a baguette to get with the brie that I’d bought earlier from one of the markets on our wander around. We eventually ended up back at the hotel for a bit of down time.
I went for a walk to try to find a church I’d seen on Google which was meant to be just up the road but there was no sign of it at all. The receptionist didn’t speak any English and my French – though it had got us through a lot – was not up to full on conversation mode! So I found some churches on Google to check out in the morning for Easter Sunday mass. We had a fairly relaxed evening in the hotel and after the brie and baguette we decided we were all fairly full and there was no need for dinner. The next morning Chris and Holly went on a breakfast mission, while I went on a mission to find a church and Paul rested his legs that were still sore from pulling them badly in his first game of indoor cricket in a year. Unfortunately my mission to find a church was rather unsuccessful. The first one I went to was closed and didn’t look like a church at all, so I went across the other side of town to another one I’d found on the map but that too was also very much closed (though at least this one looked more like a church).
Finally I found one but by now I’d already been gone an hour (and I said I’d be gone max 1.5hrs) and discovered that my phone had no signal so I couldn’t call Paul or the others (who also had no signal or mobile data*) to tell them I’d be late, which was a shame. As I had no way of getting in touch with the others I just stayed for a little while then headed back towards the hotel in the hopes of bumping into the others (which luckily I did). We then headed back to the hotel and checked out before starting our drive to Reims. We decided to take the scenic Champagne route which is well signposted around the area. Luckily we’d picked up a map of the route as well so had a vague idea of where we were headed.
We went through very cute little villages where the grapes are all grown, however due it to being spring (well technically at least) and still very cold, there were no blossoms or leaves on the vines.
We stopped off at a few different places for photos but otherwise just wound out way through.
Unfortunately the old road-trip sleepiness got to me at one point but I hope I didn’t miss too much!
Random windmill in the Grand Cru villages
Reims
Once in Reims we checked into our hotel and went for a walk to Pommery which is one of the bigger champagne houses. Unfortunately Veuve-Clicquot is closed at the moment for renovations so we just took photos from the outside.
Veuve-Clicquot
Veuve-Clicquot
Once we made our way up to Pommery, we discovered that there were no hour long tours in English for the rest of the weekend and the next 30min English tour wasn’t for another 1.5hrs. We decided to book in on a tour for the morning and try our luck at Taittinger down the road instead. Unfortunately Taittinger was also booked out for the day so we made a booking for the morning. As we wandered back towards our hotel we stumbled across the Saint Remi Basilica, the patron saint of the inhabitants of Reims for more than fifteen centuries. It was absolutely amazing inside and is almost the size of a cathedral.
Even after seeing all the amazing churches that we’ve seen, I still never fail to get start struck by them! After a quick stop back at our hotel, we decided to wander up to the Notre-Dame Cathedral (which was as amazing as the original) to have a wander around, as well as trying to scope out any places for dinner.
Paul and I ended up buying another two bottles of champagne as one was from one of the Grand Cru villages we’d passed through (meaning that it was the best of the best grapes) and the other to drink back at the hotel that night with Chris and Holly. On wandering back to the hotel, we discovered two things –-> 1) the receptionist was right when she said nothing was really open; and 2) a little dairy was open that was selling Bugels chips which Holly reminisced about from her days growing in up Canada. So back at the hotel we had a feast of chips and champagne!
Again we weren’t really hungry enough for dinner but Paul was tempted to try the café gourmand which is an espresso served with three tiny desserts. I, on the other hand, was tempted by the dessert buffet! So Paul and I headed down to the restaurant while Holly and Chris retired for the night.
The next morning we both headed out separately to find some breakfast. Paul and I had no luck finding anything open so had to resort to McDs (though we did have coffee/hot chocolate and pastries which is kind of French) while Holly and Chris had better luck as they found a patisserie selling lovely fresh goods. We then headed off to Pommery to do the wine tasting there. Pommery was a much different experience compared to what Moet & Chandon had been. The waiting area was a gallery type space with a massive lovely wooden barrel which had a beautiful carving on the front of it, however in the other corner there was a taxidermy elephant doing a trunk-stand (like a handstand but on it’s trunk), as well as a house that rained on the inside and a tiny mini type car. All a bit random for a champagne house we thought.
Once our tour started, it became evident that the theme of random gallery exhibitions continued throughout the cellar. There were very brightly coloured lights leading the way before we came across some dancing gumboots and a disco light display.
Over all we agreed that it just made the place seem tacky.
We found out on our tour that the Pommery family no longer owned the champagne house, and we wandered if perhaps it was more of a profit making venture by the new owners rather than keeping the classic feel to it. Each to their own really I guess but it certainly didn’t have a feel of elegance that a champagne house should exude (even down to the metal patio chairs where we were served our tastings). The tour itself was still interesting, as we found out the some of the cellars in Pommery had originally been dug out by the Romans for the limestone. These 18km of chalk pits were then later made into cellars 30m below ground when it was bought by the widowed Louise Pommery in 1868 who turned it into the biggest champagne producer in the area. The other point of difference was that Pommery actually make some of the larger sizes of champagne in the actual bottles – unlike other houses that make them in the standard size bottles then decant it into the bigger bottles. In saying that though, they only made them in the bottles up to a certain size, as the bottle itself weighs 9kg then with the champagne added it weighs 18kg all up! If they made them any bigger than that, they’d be too heavy to turn by hand during the production process. There’s a whopping 20 million bottles stored in the cellars and one cellar section takes 2 men 2 weeks to stack! Most the bottles are underground for about 7 – 10 years depending what type of champagne it will be made into. We then headed back up to gallery area for our tasting – we all thought it had more of a kick as it went down than the others we’d tasted – perhaps it was a bit drier or something? After finishing up at Pommery, we wandered down to Taittinger for our cellar tour there.
By now we knew the champagne making process, however it was still interesting to hear about the history of Taittinger as their cellars, which were also initially dug by Romans, had also formed part of the Abbey of Saint-Nicaise, where champagne had been produced by Brother Jean Oudart, a Benedictine monk, who was one of the founding fathers of champagne wine. The Abbey was later destroyed in battle however parts of it are still evident in the cellars. Once our tour was over, we headed back up for the tasting. It was delicious and by now we were really getting a taste for the stuff! It didn’t have the bite that the Pommery one did and went down just as easily as the ones from Epernay, however it was a bit hard to compare them with such gaps between the tastings.
The funny thing was, Chris had started out not really loving the whole champagne thing when we were in Moet & Chandon but by the time we got to Taittinger he was really starting to like it!
From Taittinger, we went back to the patisserie that Holly and Chris had found (the McDs really hadn’t cut it for Paul and I!), and grabbed some delicious filled baguettes for lunch. We then wandered to find one of the oldest monument in Reims, the Porte de Mars (“Mars Gate”, from a temple to Mars in the neighbourhood). The Mars Gate was one of 4 Roman gates to the city walls and is a triumphal arch 108 feet in length by 43 in height, consists of three archways flanked by columns. Apparently the Remi erected it in honour of Augustus when Agrippa made the great roads terminating at the city, but it probably belongs to the 3rd or 4th century. After admiring the ancientness of it, we headed back to the car to start our 2hr-ish journey to Lille.
Lille
We managed to make our way to our hotel in central Lille without too much trouble. Lille is the fourth largest city in France so it was a tad bigger and busier than Epernay and Reims. Once checked into our hotel for the night we went off to explore what Lille had to offer. We were greeted with a very wintery blast which cut right through us! After having a quick squizz around the ‘old town’ area, we set off in search of the street that the receptionist had recommended for dinner places.
When we eventually got there, we found that all of them were shut. Given that it was already nearly 6pm, we weren’t sure if they would be opening any time soon though few had signs in the window to say they were opening at 7pm. So we decided to wander back to the old town area which had quite a few different restaurants open. They were all pretty much of a muchness so we settled on one to get out of the cold. After a few hot drinks, meals and snacks between us, we’d lingered as long as we could in the little bar, headed back off to the hotel for lack of anything (warm) to do.
The next morning we headed to a café for breakfast as the hotel wasn’t really offering much – though it might’ve been cheaper if we’d stayed given the cost of eating in the tourist area! After eventually being served and polishing off our food, we set out for the free zoo that Holly and Chris had found out about. After missing our turn and walking a fair bit longer than we needed to, we eventually got to the zoo. It was pretty small but for a free zoo it wasn’t bad, and even had a few strange animals that we’d never seen before so I guess that was a bonus!
We soon made our way back to the city center to the car, picking up some filled baguettes on the way for lunch.
That’s one big chocolate bunny
Macaroons and chocolate – perfect mix!
It was then time to hit the road again and make the 1.5hr trip up to Calais to catch the ferry.
Goodbye Calais!
The White Cliffs of Dover
Thankfully this time there were less school groups on the ferry so we managed to get a fairly comfy seat at the front of the ferry and before we knew it the white cliffs of Dover were in sight once more and we were on a train back to London. Overall it was a great weekend away. It was lovely to be able to spend some time with Chris and Holly as unfortunately we couldn’t afford to fly home for their wedding in November last year. Hopefully we will get another trip or two in with them before we both leave the British Isles and head off for new shores.
*As a side note: Someone should invent something where you can pay a certain amount per trip or per day for international data – it would be do useful for traveling, not only for maps but also for keeping in touch with people! I know you can just do roaming but you should be able to buy credit or something for data. If this exists already – someone let me know!
**Random champagne facts:
- Champagne stays underground or 7 – 10 years depending what type of champagne it’s being made into.
- The grape juices are stored in open stainless steel vats to let the gases escape in the first part of the process
- In the second part of the process they are put in bottles and sealed with beer type crown caps which taps the gases into the mixture. The yeast eats away at the sugar then eventually dies and forms a sediment at the bottom of the bottle.
- As the bottles are slowly raised on a more vertical angle, the sediment shifts to the neck of the bottle.
- The necks of the bottles are then dipped into a mixture which is -25 degrees which freezes the sediment. When the bottle is righted the frozen sediment is shot out of the bottle (as the pressure inside the bottles is 6 bars) and all that remains is the champagne.
- A little more sugar is then added to the bottle to taste and they sit for a while longer before they are cleaned, dressed and sent to the stores for drinking!
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