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Published: April 17th 2009
We arrived in Paris Friday late morning. After checking into the hotel and picking up our Normandy day train tickets, we were off to a wine tasting. Down under the streets in an old royal wine cellar was the setting for our tasting. The cellar was actually that of King Louis XV’s sommelier. Our instructor was a wine maker named Sebastian. We started with a glass of champagne. He gave us a quick lesson on the making and drinking of champagne. Note: If the bottle comes from anywhere other than the champagne region of France, it is nothing more than sparkling wine. We started with the whites. We looked at color, smell, legs, and taste. After 3 tastings we moved on to the reds. Did you know that the color of the meniscus will help you gage the age of a wine? If the color is the same as the whole, then the wine is young. If the color of the meniscus is more orange then the bottle it is older. French wine labels are different. What you should look for is the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée,. This shows the quality is checked to specific standards and what region the wine is
from. When looking at the wine label, the AOC, the bottlers’ place and vintner name are the important factors. On a good bottle of French wine you will not see Pinot Noir or Chardonnay. Look for a region, such as, Bordeaux or Val de Loire. Sebastian informed us that we should drink our bottles of wine almost immediately. Do not wait more than a year at the very most two. Looks like I’ve got some bottles of wine to drink! After the wine tasting we had a late dinner and turned in early as we had an early morning approaching.
The next morning we were picked up by our driver at 7:45. Then it was off to champagne! We had a private driver and tour of the region. It was amazing! If you ever get to France and want to tour the champagne region please book through www.parischampagnetours.com they are excellent! We drove about 2 hours to a village just south or Reims (pronounced rhance), Verzenay. Here our guide, Trong, introduced us to the vines. A unique factor to the growth of vines in champagne is the chalk. There is only about 3 feet of top soil and then
the roots begin to grow in chalk. The chalk helps to retain moisture. This is also why the vines are on hillsides rather than flat land—for drainage. The production of grapes is very controlled. Here is where I start to get fuzzy on the specifics. Pinot Noir vines have only one shoot (which has a more technical name I can’t remember). On the one shoot there can be 4-7 buds from which the grapes will be produced. All other buds are removed—this is to control the grape yield every year. As long as there is not a late frost/freeze in May, harvest is usually for about 2-3 weeks in September. I plan to come back then to volunteer to harvest. My great height is key; I don’t have to bend over as far. ALL grapes in champagne are hand picked. Once the grapes are picked they are sent almost immediately to the pressing center. There are 3 in Verzenay. Verzenay has only Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes but there is a third variety that also makes champagne and that is Pinot Meunier. Champagne is created by fermenting the wine twice. The dryness/sweetness of the champagne is decided with the amount
of added sugar during the 2nd fermentation (which occurs IN the bottle). I could go into a whole lot more detail but I think I would mess up some of the facts so I’ll stop there. We were able to visit one of the wineries in Verzenay, Jean-Claude MOUZON. There we met Cederic. He and his wife, Frederique, own the winery. The family has owned it’s vineyards for four generations. The winery itself was only opened in 1985. It took Frederiques family many years of grape growing and selling before they could open their own winery. Now they grow and press their own grapes and vinify and bottle their own champagne. We got a tour of their facility and then tasted their great champagne. They were very kind and generous. Quite an interesting experience as our tour guide was also our translator. So cool! After we finished our visit in Verzenay, we headed to Reims. Here we toured another champagne cellar, this time one of the bigger names: Taittinger. Cederic and Frederique only produce about 20,000 bottles a year. The chalk cellars of Taittinger house millions of bottles of champagne. Unfortunately I can’t tell you much more because we were
Invalides
Houses Napolean's Tombnot good students on this tour. Our tour guide had left us to the Taittainger folks and their tour was large. We stayed in the back and took pictures rather than listening. Sorry. Once done here we toured the Reims cathedral and took pictures of the Café du Palais. Gotta love Zane Lamprey and his TV show, Three Sheets. If you don’t know what I’m talking about look it up, it’s a fantastic show!
The next day was Easter. So we decided to head over to Notre Dame for Easter service. Chaos is all I have to say—Spoken in French and a gazillion people. But overall, a cool experience. Koi and I headed over to the Louvre after the service. Again, a gazillion people so we saw the big ones and then bolted. We saw the Mona Lisa, The Wedding Feast at Cana (massive), and the Venus de Milo. After that it was just whatever we saw following the exit signs. Koi is not a museum guy so he was pretty bored. However, I thought the Louvre was amazing. It is an absolutely beautiful and ginormous building that I can’t believe used to be a palace. After the Louvre
it was off to the Eiffel Tower. We stood in line there forever, but it was really neat seeing the city from up above. We didn’t get to go to the top because it was full but the 2nd level was great! Koi wasn’t too impressed seeing as he doesn’t like heights so he stayed away from the edge. We slowly made our way back towards our hotel area. We walked along the Champs Elysee and had dinner. Then we decided to go check out the Moulin Rouge. Tickets to see a show are really expensive so we had opted not to go. However, we still wanted to see the building. Definitely in the “Red Light” district of Paris.
Our final day in the Paris area was spent in Normandy. We took a train up to Bayeux where we were met by our tour guide, Mathias. Our tour booking company had let us down with holiday weekend train schedules and we missed out on a couple hours of our tour. However, we got an incredible guide due to the mishap. He drove us through the countryside making our way toward Omaha Beach. Our first stop was on a bluff
above the eastern edge of Omaha Beach. Here we learned more about D-Day and the events leading up to it. Here again is where I begin to get hazy on the details. I encourage you all to look up on the internet or buy a book about D-Day and its events. It is an incredible story and a very important part of world history. It was a few years in the making especially the year leading up to June 6th, 1944. So many details and operations that were carried out before the troops invaded the beaches. I can’t tell them all here b/c you won’t be able to read it all. In short there were parachuters that took out bridges, gliders that landed tanks and men without being heard, fleets of men, aircraft, equipment, machines, etc. The Germans were prepared as well. In years of anticipation of a coastal attack they made bunkers, planted mines, and hid boat mangling devices under the water at the beaches edge. The Germans had canons, machine guns, mines and many other firearms in preparation for the attack. After seeing how the Germans prepared and hid we visited the American Cemetery. Instead of the headstones
facing east, they face west, towards America—towards home. It is the most well groomed piece of land I have ever seen. The land is considered the same as the property of any American Embassy. It is American soil in France. There are over 9,000 soldiers buried in the cemetery, including 4 women. We saw the headstones of the Niland brothers. These are the brothers that the movie Saving Private Ryan is based on. However, the story is obviously fabricated for film. There are only 2 brothers buried in the cemetery. In the movie it also shows the soldiers being shot up as they get out of the boats. That is not how it happened. The Germans waited until almost all of the soldiers were on the beach before they opened fire. Once the beach was finally overtaken the allies built floating docks, quays, and roads to allow unloading of transports. If you know your history then you know that it still took almost another year before the Germans were defeated. An interesting tid-bit that our guide told us about his grandmother: as the Germans had invaded the country, she had soldiers living in her home. She forced them the take
off their boots when they went upstairs. She also removed the fuses when Hitler was on the radio so they could not hear him speak. When they would go looking for her she would be praying so they didn’t touch her. After a couple of hours she would put the fuse back. We thought that was interesting. After the cemetery we visited Pointe du Hoc. This cliff is 100 ft above the water and sits in between Utah and Omaha beaches. It's 6 canons could reach both beaches. Rangers were sent in to take out the canons before the beach landings. You can still see bomb craters and bunkers, Canon stations, barb wire, everything still sits as it did after the attack. We enjoyed this visit as there was no fence or signs telling you to stay away. It's all in its natural environment, you visit at your own risk.
Take a visit to Paris and to France. It is a good time. Just remember, trying to speak a little French will get you long way. Speak no French and get no service.
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