Tuesday Tour of Champagne

We started the day with a quick call to Peggy & Al before Harry joined us and we headed down to the dining room for breakfast with 4 other guests – a young French Canadian couple and a middle-aged couple from Belgium.  Then a quick call to Julia before taking off for our version of the Tour of Champagne – based on the suggested itinerary from one of Brian’s thousands of wine books.

So, 4 gorgeous little villages starting with Hautvillers – where we visited the most beautiful Benedictine Abbey in which Dom Perignon is buried.  

All of the villages are set in the middle of vineyards with exquisite scenery and Champagne houses everywhere – some very large and famous, and hundreds of others that are smaller and less well-known – and then on to Reims (pronounced something like razz) to visit the cathedral, the tourist bureau and a bistro for lunch.  

The cathedral is fabulous – building commenced in 1211 (though there has been a church of sorts on the same location since 4 hundred and something) with the most beautiful lead-light windows, including some designed by Chagall. 

We saw Reims’ Notre Dame Cathedral from the outside almost exactly 23 years ago when we were on our honeymoon with 3 children in tow, driving from our luncheon restaurant to Chateau Les Creyers, and it was lovely to finally be able to inspect it at closer quarters.  It is huge and very beautiful and fortunately doesn’t have any of the formalities and queues of tourists associated with its namesake in Paris.

Lunch was great – I had Magret de Canard (duck breasts) with preserved peaches and ratatouille and Brian had braised Lamb Shanks and French beans – and then we both had the Fromage – a plate of 3 fabulous cheeses from the region, served with fantastic bread –and a half bottle of pinot.

And then to continue our tour – 6 more villages, fabulous scenery, champagne houses and vineyards everywhere.  Vintage is very late in Champagne this year – but today the roads and the vineyards were busy with tractors trimming vines and getting ready for something – and there are teams of pickers camped all over the champagne region – and the vines are laden with ripe fruit.  We are hoping that maybe, by the time we leave Mareuil-Sur-Ay tomorrow morning, the vineyards will be a hive of activity and that we will be able to witness vintage in action.

Finally we went back to Epernay to buy some food at a charcuterie for another picnic dinner at our B&B, a hide bone for Harry and some champagne to take to Burgundy.  The little wine shop we went to is wonderful – right in the middle of Epernay, with champagne and other wine stacked everywhere in no apparent order at all.  And it’s run by a most delightful slightly hunch-backed lady who must be around 90 years of age and speaks no English.  Brian could hardly contain himself as he saw the pricelist! He probably could have bought 1 of every bottle on the 4 page list and it wouldn’t have cost much more than a few bottles back in Perth!  Anyway, we left with just 6 bottles of champagne – Krug, Cristal, Gosset, Billecart Salmon, Beaumont Des Creyers, and a Charles Ellener 2002 – as recommended by the proprietress.

Then back to our B&B for a half bottle of Mumm in the garden with Harry using our feet to prop up the disgusting, rapidly disintegrating deer hoof as he attempted to tear it apart, followed by a delightful picnic dinner in the guest kitchen downstairs with the gorgeous Canadian couple and Harry of course. What a thrill it has been to stay in this fabulous accommodation in such a wonderful part of the world.