A wake up call of a bacon, ham, and mushroom omelet with a side of cocopops… a breakfast fit for kings! With our bags packed the night before, we quickly enjoyed breakfast, before heading downstairs to our waiting taxi to take us to Gare d’lest (East Train Station). Unfortunately today was Victoire 1945 in France (celebrating the end of hostilities in Europe in World War II), and the taxi driver seemed to take the longest route there, and we missed our train to Champagne by a few minutes. Not to worry, as another train left ten minutes later, but did mean forking out another $NZD70 for new tickets. Whooops!
We arrived in Reims and jumped on the only bus outside waiting, luckily Mrs Organised aka Emma, had printed a map of Reims so with little dialog we managed to tell the bus driver where we were going.
It was evident when we arrived at Veuve Clicquot that this was going to be good! From the massive golden gates as you enter, to the reception littered with Veuve Clicquot paraphernalia.
We waited a short time before the tour started, where we learnt a lot about Madame Clicquot, how she came to bare the famous name (She married his son), how she came to be in control (her husband died), and why she added “Veuve” to the start of the brands name, formally Clicquot Ponsardin (Veuve is French for Widow).
After a slight history lesson, it was down into the limestone cellars under the champagne house. There are 25kms of caves which provide a perfect environment for the champagne to blossom into the fine drop it is.
After the caves, we entered the boutique, time to try a glass or two. First up on our pallets was the La Grande Dame 2004 Vintage, followed by the 1998 La Grande Dame Vintage.
The “standard” Veuve, if you can call it that, is a blend of this years stock with the last three previous years (80% current, 20% combination of previous years). This produces a wine consistent across the ages, mellowing out the highs and lows.
The vintage ranges are produced using only the current years grapes, and if they aren’t up to quality, a vintage is simply not made, and those grapes are donated to the standard Veuve. This means the tastes from vintage to vintage can vary quite dramatically.
After Veuve we headed to the Reims Cathedral, a few minutes by bus down the road. While walking was usually our preferred method of transport, we had our two massive backpacks with us. So far we have resented these bags, and wished we had bought suitcases. I just hope there is a time where we are glad that we have backpacks, but so far they have been less than ideal.
Back to the train station, we were off to Epernay, the other main city in Champagne. We were greeted at the station by a lovely local called Anne, who showed us to our accommodation for the evening, a little French cottage style apartment called Enchantee. Was very quaint!
Ditching our bags,we set off on the streets to Champagne Avenue, that is its actually name not a concoction of my witty brain. This avenue is the most expensive street in France, with over $500 million in wine stored in the limestone cellars below.
As today was a bank holiday, many of the houses were closed, but that didn’t stop us wandering up the street in awe.
An hour of exploring, and tasting at the one house we found open, we headed to Moët (which is at the start of the street). We were booked in for the Grand Vintage tour, a visit to the caves below before tasting two grand vintages at the end.
The crazy thing about how these bottles are stacked, is they might look massive from the front, but they are stacked 30 meters back into the caves!
Awesome chandelier made out of champagne flutes.
Emma’s personal hero, Dom Perignon.
After this very informative tour, and decadent tasting, we headed to a wine cellar & degustation restaurant to try some more varieties of the liquid gold. 10 glasses of champagne later we headed back to the hotel, where we tried to play some strange French board games, in the end we made up our own rules.
We couldn’t get over how cheap champagne was! A bottle of Veuve Clicquot from either the cellar door (“boutique” as they call it here) only cost NZD$50! On a GOOD special you can get this for $65 back home, but is usually around $90 a bottle standard pricing.
We bought one bottle of Moet from the cellar door, which was a limited edition bottle which you can write messages on with a special pen that’s included.
We bought a bottle of Veuve, from Veuve’s boutique, which came with an award-winning ice bucket. It started its life as cardboard, and comes flat packed in the side of the box (adds on about 8mm’s to the width of the standard Veuve box) which houses the bucket. Not sure if we’ll open it before we leave (who am I kidding!) but when we do, I will post a photo of the awesome bucket!
From the degustation cellars we bought a bottle of vintage champagne from the founding winery in Champagne, Gosset, which opened its doors in 1584.
We headed to bed reasonably early by our standards, not without first downing an Equalize each.