Epernay

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Our hotel (Les Berceaux, with well-known owner-chef Patrick Michelon) was lovely and in a great part of town. The room was ideal, with two separate rooms. We had booked dinner both evenings, safe in the knowledge that food would be good, our baby-monitor would work and is was a short ride in the lift back to bed! The kids ate first, went to bed and we had dinner later. We effectively only had one full day in Epernay and wanted to use it well.

We wanted to visit a Champagne house of two (well, rude not to, really), so decided to go to one large one (Mercier - the most popular Champagne in France) and in central Epernay, on the Avenue de Champagne. The other we found (recommended on the web) was Launois Père et Fils‎ in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger.

We turned up at Mercier and bought our tickets for the tour and the tasting. It was very impressive and very large. We went deep underground by lift and boarded a laser-guided mini train for a tour of the tunnels. The tunnels have been hugely extended, but were mainly original Roman chalk mines. Some of the carvings down there are impressive, but chalk’s soft, so it must be simple, right? Anyway - 18km of tunnels with 25 million bottles of Champagne had Karl wishing that he had a trailer attachment on the car. We tasted a Champagne or three and left.

Between Mercier and the less-grand Launois Père et Fils, we decided to have a wander and a lunch in Epernay. We started at the local market, which put hours to shame - even our “French Markets”. Everyone was friendly, patting the kids (I think it was patting, rather than hitting, but who knows?) and showing us their produce, asking where we were from and sniggering at the answer, as if to say “take a look - you don’t have proper food where you’re from.” It was a lot of fun. Onita got more than she bargained for when she ordered a Porc Tartar for lunch and got a huge patty of uncooked, minced pork. She had expected it, just not quite on that scale. She did her best, which wasn’t great!

The Launois Père et Fils Champagne house was quite a contrast to Mercier. It’s, as its name would imply, a family-run affair with a range of Champagnes. Tasting was free, but being just pre-harvest, tours weren’t operating. We tasted some Champagnes, with the old-lady-of-the-family sitting observing in the corner. We left half a case of Brut Reserve to the better and half of Brut Rose. That was about the limit of what we thought we’d be able to fit into the car.

One more scrumptious dinner at Les Berceaux and we were in bed, ready for the easy trip to Disneyland in the morning, keen to get in a full day of Character-spotting.

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