Last month, I visited the well-known Champagne region in northern France, home to the famous sparkling wine of the world and the only place that you can refer to it as Champagne.  The vineyards encompass 3 main areas north east of Paris; Montagne de Reims, Vallée de la Marne and Côte des Blancs. Some of the famous Champagne houses are located in the towns of Reims and Épernay. With only one day to spend here, I chose to stay in the town of Épernay and ended up staying in what turned out a very central hotel, Hôtel La Cloche. It was very good value for 55€ (euros) a night with the added bonus of a restaurant just downstairs, within the hotel.

 

Épernay is a lovely town and beautiful in summer with restaurants and cafés opening their doors and windows onto the streets and to tourists and locals alike. Hôtel La Cloche is within a five minute walk of the station and just next to the church Notre Dame, built in 1888. The architecture was quite remarkable and next time I visit the area I really should make the effort to go on tour of the inside.

Just around the corner from the hotel is Rue Gambetta. A five minute walk up this street and off the roundabout is Avenue de Champagne. I jogged half the length of the avenue early on a Sunday morning and was thrilled to come across some very familiar faces; Moët & Chandon, Perrier- Jouët and Pol Roger to name a few. After tasting wines from these houses over the years, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to even have a glimpse of the houses from behind the high iron gates.

Being a Sunday and after Bastille Day, not many houses were open. But Moët & Chandon were and having booked on the 10:30 tour, I was keen to make sure we weren’t late. We reserved two spaces on the French tour.  I thought it better to practice listening to how wine is made in France in the French language after all, they do say that Champagne was invented here? If I’m in France, I prefer to listen to describe wine in French especially as it always seems to sound more interesting and descriptive compared to in English – even though the vinification process  might be similar.

The prices of the tour start at 21€ per person. This is called a Visite “Traditionnelle” and at the end of the tour you are given one glass of Moët Imperial to taste. The Visite “Impériale” at 28€ includes one glass of Moët Imperial and one of Rosé Imperial. At 35€, the Visite “Grand Vintage” includes one glass of Grand Vintage 2004 and one of the Grand Vintage Rosé 2004.

Our guide, Ghislain, spoke in depth about the history of the house at the start of the tour showing us photos of the founding members and their descendants. Then we were taken through to a room where we watched a video about the Champagne process before leading us through the cellars underground. These really are magnificent with 28 kilometres of tunnels owned by Moët & Chandon. Apparently there is a total of 110 kilometres of tunnels underground in Champagne, this is the distance from Paris to Épernay, quite incredible if you think when these were built, there couldn’t have been any machinery, if at all.

Ghislain explained the vinification process, the length of ageing for non-vintage and vintage wines, and how machines (gyropalettes) have saved time in the remuage process. This is where the yeast is gradually moved down to the neck of the bottle. Before  the remuage process was done by hand, a process which would take 6 weeks to slowly move the bottles (each turned slowly daily) so the yeast would gradually fall into the neck of the bottle. Today it is mainly done by machines.

To finish, we were all led up from the cellar into the tasting room where we had the opportunity to try one or two glasses of Champagne, depending on the type of tour we had booked. Andy, Alexandra and Stefan explained the differences between the wines and the production process. This tour really inspired me to learn more about Champagne from the small producers to the large houses. Unfortunately when I went to the local book store, it was closed. But that shouldn’t be a surprise, it was summer and it was a Sunday after all. I’ll just have to go back another time!