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Published: June 14th 2011
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It always amazes me when you travel to another country and have mutual friends with someone on your trip.
Our last entry for this trip is about the many champagne houses in Epernay and Oger. A 9:20 meeting time on a sunday morning means there were bound to be a few sore heads in the group, luckily Nikki and I were not one of those people. We hopped on our coach and made our way to our first champagne house, The Moet et Chandon house, one of the biggest champagne houses. It has over 28km of champagne cellars beneath its grounds and sits proudly at the start of Avenue de Champagne, a street lined with the biggest champagne houses.
After sitting through Moet’s most recent promotional video (yawn) we started our tour, the cellars are much cooler than above ground for obvious reasons and it is quite something to see mile upon mile of bottles of the finest champagne. The process in which champagne is made was explained to us, which includes rotating the bottles, by hand, several times a day which allows the sediment to settle. The guide at The Moet house wouldn’t disclose exactly how many bottles
there are at their house but our guide said it is rumoured to be over 100 million!
At the end of our tour several bottles of two different types of Moet were opened so we could drink both types at the same time to taste the difference between different combinations of grapes. Before we knew it we had to leave so everyone ended up downing their drinks as fast as possible. Needless to say everyone was very friendly and talkative once outside.
On our way to where we would be having lunch our guide explained to us that there are only four weeks a year when the grapes are picked and all are picked by hand so not to bruise the grapes. Because so many grapes need to be picked and a lot of people are needed to do so in such a short period of time our guide told us that the champagne houses pay students, gypsies and people from Eastern Europe to pick them.
We had lunch at a quaint little restaurant in a very remote part of Epernay, I could quite easily have spent the whole of our stay in this area. Lunch was,
as expected, amazing and was served with two glasses of champagne. As we were all sat around a table chatting with the other people on our trip the usual questions were asked “where do you live?”, “what do you do for a living?” etc. A girl sat next to Nikki asked me what I did for a job and to cut a long story short a very good friend of mine, who I have worked with for years was in her class at school, It really is a small world.
On to our second champagne house and this one was one of the smaller houses, Henry De Vaugency. Pascal, the eighth generation of champagne makers in his family, gave us the grand tour and talked us through the process of how to make champagne. His champagne is made entirely from chardonnay grapes and at the end of his tour he picked a guy from our group to open a bottle with a sword. Pascal pointed out the weak point on the bottle and you then basically slide the sword along the weak point causing the top of the bottle to break off thus opening the bottle, it is a
very cool trick even if you do waste a little bit of champagne.
After a few glasses of several different types of champagne Nikki and I enquired about a bottle of Champagne Des Amoureux, Pascal, seeing that we were both half pissed, gave me the sword and allowed me to open the next bottle. I was a little nervous as when Pascal passed me the sword everyone took out their cameras to take a picture of me opening the bottle, with a quick strike of the sword off shot the top and the next glasses of champagne were poured out. Nikki was drunk by this point so I decided to help her out and finished her champagne, with both of us now drunk Pascal’s sales techniques were working, we bought the remainder of his stock of Champagne Des Amoureux....in magnum size!
Once everyone had finished their 4th, 5th or 6th glass of bubbly we made our way to our final champagne house, the coach was a mixture of drunk people and those who now needed water as the combination of alcohol and heat was getting too much. Some people did not go in the last champagne house as
they were feeling a little rough, after our tour and having the champagne making process explained to us for a third time it was time for the champagne tasting to begin. After the second glass a guy on our table said “They all taste the same to me now” that’s when you know you’ve had enough, or at least that is when you should know. After another 4, 5 or maybe 6 glasses of bubbly the champagne owner’s sales techniques again were fantastic, well they seemed to be at the time anyway. We bought another magnum of champagne and that was it for our purchases, when we got on the coach there were a lot of people feeling either drunk or dehydrated, everyone was very thankful to get off the hot coach at the other end. Some of the people decided to carry on drinking whilst others, like Nikki and I, decided to go for a meal. For our last meal in France I thought I’d make the most of some fine French cuisine and opted for the escargot to start and fillet mignon for main, another amazing meal.
On our last morning we just lazed around the pool
until it was time to get our train home, it was not the most comfortable journey having to carry home several magnums of champagne but it was well worth it. Epernay was fantastic and with such amazing views, I would highly recommend it.
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Champagne :D
I was wandering when are you guys are going to publish a blog about visiting one of the Champagne Cellar. You brought back lot's of memories - I visited Champagne with Peter two years ago and I did enjoyed and learned a lot about Champagne. I'm glad that you both enjoyed!!! Looking forward to your next blog!