Warning - anyone thinking about visiting Champagne might want to skip the text. I learned a lot so I'm going to share it!
We skipped town... again - I'm pretty content here for a while now. Monday was a(nother) French holiday so we hopped in the car Friday afternoon for a long, six hour drive to Champagne. After an 11euro snack stop, dinner at a cafeteria and more than 30euro in tolls - no wonder it's easier to take the train - we arrived in Reims! On Saturday, we were picked up for 9 hours full of touring and tasting!
Champagne Fact 1 - There are 280km (almost 175miles) of cellars under the city of Reims. Before renting an apartment, you have to sign a paper that states the champagne owner is not responsible for any kind of catastrophe and you are aware you live on "unstable ground." Can you imagine if those bottles started popping? It'd be one big party, that's for sure!
First stop -
Epernay, the capitol of Champagne
endless fields of grapes! average age - 30-40 years.
The crop is small for this time of year because of the unusually cold and rainy spring. Also, the plants are bent and tied to wire because the lowest grapes are the best and the only ones used for champagne.
Champagne Fact 2 - everything, yes EVERYTHING is done by hand! Picking, spraying, pruning, you name it! And more than everything is regulated. They are told when they can harvest, the quantity of juice they can use, how much champagne they can produce for the year, specific pesticides to use, and the list goes on and on and on. As we were told about all the regulations, we thought of Iowa farmers and what they would think of them!
Champagne Fact 3 - Champagne can be one or a mix of three types of grapes:
Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier. Wine from previous years is saved to get the exact same taste every year... unless the bottle has a specific year on it. In that case, it's vintage. That means that the cellar-master tastes the year's crop and says, "this is awesome, it is a year for a vintage!" And then I like to imagine a lot of French clinking glasses inside the cellar in celebration. Only grapes from that year are used to make the champagne. How do they get non-vintage to taste the same every year? They are professionals!
Did I say wine? Champagne Fact 4 - Champagne == Sparkling Wine... it's just made IN Champagne. They are very very protective of "Champagne" Does that mean Andre is made the same way as champagne? Technically, I guess, but I'm not sure it would win in a taste test!
Next we were off to Moet & Chandon for a cellar tour and tasting.
Champagne Fact 5 -
Moet & Chandon will not tell you how many bottles they have in their cellar - they like to keep the mystery on how large they actually are, even though everyone knows they are one of the most famous
chateaus - but it is believed that around 28 million bottles are housed in the cellar we walked through!
Champagne Fact 6 - So you get the juice, then you bottle it and add yeast and sugar to have a reaction... science. Anyway, after a while, the yeast settles in the bottle - on the side of the bottle when they are stored like the picture above. The reason for a champagne flute was so the sediment from the bottles of champagne would settle to the bottom of the glass, but now we are fancier and get rid of it before sending it to be sold. The bottles are turned a quarter turn, in the apparatus below, until the sediment makes its way to the top of the bottle. Now there is also a machine that will do this, but it is still performed by hand. The pros can turn 1500 bottles per day by hand! It was crazy fast!
Champagne Fact 7 -
Veuve Cliquot invented this apparatus because she was tired of sediment in her flute! Originally, she made it out of a table.
Dom Perignon anyone?
We weren't told a lot about this because we didn't pay the pretty penny for that specific tour, but we did walk by the bottles!
Champagne Fact 8 - Dom Perignon is only vintage. So some years, they don't produce any. Also do you know the story behind him? I didn't. Dom Perignon was a monk who was in charge of the abbey vineyards. Long story short, one time all of the bottles started popping open and spraying everywhere. He thought it was the "Devil's wine." King Louis (can't remember the number) wanted to try this "Devil's wine" and he loved it. Ta-da, champagne!
We grabbed a local, French lunch while tasting three more champagnes and one digestif - I'm still not a fan of the digestifs - before heading to a much smaller, private
chateau de champagne, Henry de Vaugency. This stop really made you appreciate small, independent anything! This vineyard had been owned by the same family for eight generations - we were told soon to be nine because Pascal's (the current owner) son has agreed to take over. If I remember correctly, I think they said his son made this decision at age 6 or 8... smart kid!
They had a small museum on the property showing how they used to do things, but then we saw how Pascal is doing it now and it is no different! Below is how they crush the grapes. They load it full of grapes, lower the wood circle looking thing, and crush! Juice spills out of the sides and into a small trough along the bottom. There are three drains. The first drain is opened initially for all the best juice. When they have hit the regulated amount, the second drain is opened for the less fantastic, but still tasty juice. After that regulation amount is reached, the third drain is opened for the remainder. The third juice - called rubbish - is used to make the digestif we tasted at lunch. It's more bitter so they don't like using it for champagne.
I never told you how they get the sediment out... Champagne Fact 9 - Most prefer to get the sediment out of the bottle by freezing it. They freeze the end of the bottle - the cap is similar to a beer bottle at this point. After the small part is frozen, they can take the cap off and remove the sediment. BUT Pascal did things the OLD way by popping off the cap and allowing the air (there's always a little air in the bottle) to push - more like explode - the sediment out! He said it takes around 60 bottles of practice to perfect it! It was the craziest thing I've ever seen. There's really no way to describe it! The sediment shoots out of the bottle into the below labeled #1.
After the sediment is out, you place the bottle on #2 so that it can get its second treatment of
liqeur and replace anything that was lost during the sediment explosion! At #3, the cork is inserted and the wire is wrapped to avoid any early popping! This is really the only thing that is different, more automatic, than the old way.
Then it's mixing time!
Sunday was spent roaming the streets of small Champagne villages before making our way to a chateau for dinner and a place to sleep... and of course more champagne!
Champagne Fact 10 - Champagne making is no easy task, but I'm glad someone is up for the challenge!
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