Champagne - Location and Beverage

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Champagne. The beverage is sparkling but the location is flat. Both are lovely.

I had the great fortune to be part of a band of English retailers and wine merchants to visit Reims at the behest of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey) to visit Veuve Clicquot and Krug.

Our first meal in France after nipping over from London on the Eurostar was at a bistro in Reims. It was a family run business - opulent in a fallen-grandeur, fin de siècle sort of a way. Every table was full with affluent locals who, without exception, were nursing open bottles of champagne in coolers. Our waiter was a very French looking, corpulent 50-something who I presumed was the patriarch of the establishment. I followed his recommendations implicitly. As such my entrée consisted of plain white toast, little piles of salt and pepper and a frighteningly mammoth chunk of foie gras. That much richness coupled with free-flowing Veuve Rosé meant I was already feeling a bit woozy before our main courses arrived. Welcome to France!

Feeling suitably relaxed sometime later we made the pilgrimage to Maison Veuve Clicquot. Their cellars are without exaggeration worthy of
World-wonder status: an underground network 23 kilometres long originally built by the Romans. Down a long flight of steps the ambient temperature dropped perceptibly. The first room was spectacularly tall and it lead on to a matrix of caves (in the French meaning of the word, "cave" meaning "cellar"). The sheer scale would be remarkable in its own right, but of course it is also filled with thousands upon thousands of dusty bottles champagne, many of which were decades old.

After returning to ground level we were given berths in a laboratory-like tasting room for a session with Cyril - one of the ten winemakers for Veuve who every year are responsible for fashioning a new batch of non-vintage brut. Non-vintage brut is one of the true miracles of human ingenuity, a triumph over difficult climate, temperamental fruit and reason in general: attempting every year to create a luxury wine in a marginal climate that will taste exactly the same as it did the year before, and the year before that. Cyril spends his days sampling uniformly undrinkable one year old base wines from the various parts of Champagne. If they are not seeringly acidic then they probably won't age well. They will try forty different samples a day - four thousand samples in a year - debate, decide, blend and generally go home "Feeling angry".

Maison Krug? What can I say. It is a special day when the cheapest wine you taste sells for £120. I was very impressed by the dedication, passion and attention to detail of the makers of Krug. I was also impressed by the style of inebriation that one gets after drinking Krug, Krug Rosé and 1998 Vintage Krug: joyful, chatty, with a warm, profound sense of satisfaction bordering on smugness. I would recommend it to anyone!

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Photos

Famous Bottle
From 1873- kept in Scotland most of its life.

A meddling contraption
If you are a wine merchant you know exactly what that means.

Many steps to heaven
There was a tasting room at the top of the cellar steps.

Cyril
This is one of the 10 wise men who make up the winemaking team at Veuve Clicquot. Stand up and give him a bow!

The Krug Courtyard
Water soaks the barrels to stop the wood shrinking and allowing for artier photo ops.

Krug, and lots of it.
You want me but you can't afford me!

I wonder why they are all smiling so much?
A brigade of merry wine merchants.

The Krug family dining room
The French did invent being bourgeois, you know.

Notredame Cathedral in Reims
French Gothic is so the best.