Here is the Basilica of St. Remi, built around the 11th century and named for the patron saint of Reims. Like much of Europe, you would never know that it suffered extensive damage during
World War I. I am always amazed when I see footage depicting the destruction wrought by the two World Wars. In fact, if it were not France’s ubiquitous plaques marking a street or a building’s particular significance, you could easily forget that you are treading on places of great historical significance. And rebirth.
Okay, now on with the Champagne. There are loads of caves and crayères (chalk quarries) that one can tour while in this region. Since this was just a day trip out to Reims, we opted to start our morning off with a trip to Taittinger. Bring on the beautiful people and the tourists asking for student discounts (that would be me).
It’s about an 80 meter trip down into the ground (bring a a sweater!) before you get to see where all of the bottles are housed and fermenting.
Bottles, bottles, everywhere- but not a drop to drink. Yet.
We’re walking around in layer of chalk, so you see a lot of etched “graffiti” from years long past. A great deal of them date from the first World War, like this one.
Champagne comes in many sizes. From the smallest demi-bouteille to the Nabuchodonosor, which holds 20 normal bottles of champagne.
I forget how many bottles of champagne were in here, but I think it was about 8 million euros worth of booze. C’est la décadence.
All tours come with a little dégustation de champagne at the end. As you can see, this tourist in red really only came for the free drink. Me too, kinda.
We had only about 80 minutes in between our two scheduled champagne tours. If you know dining in France, you understand that this is an insufficient amount of time to get a proper lunch and make it to your next appointment without feeling rushed. What to do then if you’re a tourist out visiting some of the world’s most coveted bottled beverages? Why you go to get takeaway quiches and eat them on a street bench. So that’s what we did.
By the way, these are all over the streets. Can someone tell me what they mean?
Reservations for our next tour were for 13:45 (we made sure to call first thing in the morning, since we were out on a Saturday with the rest of the tourist population). My haute cuisine of quiche and apricot tart were sufficient fuel to get me over the midday meal hump and we then set off for more walking in underground caves.
Time to move on to the marketing-savvy cellars of
Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin.
The tour for Veuve Clicquot is more pricey than the Taittinger cellar tour (25€ as opposed to 14). As soon as you walk into the VCP property, you can see what you are paying for- a lot of fancy schmancy bright orange trendiness. I was cracking on the amount of VCP-themed paraphernalia that could be purchsed…and wondered if we should have skipped this house altogether.
Veuve is french for “widow”, and here is
La Grande Dame herself, the old woman who was responsible for bringing this place to great prosperity.
As it turns out, the tour may have been more expensive but I felt that we got more for our money. The tour group was smaller, and the tour was more organized and thoughtfully laid-out. It also ended with a tasting of the high-end La Grande Dame, a bottle of champagne which runs you about $150 for a bottle. With prices like that, I’ll take the tour with the glass for tasting instead.
The chalk cellars are huge, and are layed out like a champagne city that sits discreetly beneath the streets of Reims.
You might have noticed that I am not walking you through the steps of how champagne is made, or what particular grapes go into making a champagne. I’m not that kind of a blogger, but if you are interested, I am sure that Wikipedia can provide you with loads of fun facts on the subject. As for me and tour taking, I usually reach information saturation point about five minutes into the exposition.
The cellars have holes for ventilation. It felt like we were walking around inside a pyramid. A big chalk pyramid that holds booze. Yes, that’s it.
Old crates that were used to ship champagne by sea, back in days of yore. Places of export include Constantinople and Pest. Cool.
After the tour, it was time for the tasting. It was held in a chic bar/commerce area that had just about every bit of merchandise you could imagine. Oh, and they sold some bottles of champagne too. The glass of Grande Dame was certainly tasty, but not as fine as the Veuve Clicquot shopping cart, pair of wellies, or beach towel. Mon dieu….
FIlled with our one glass limit of champagne, we headed back to check out the other big show in town, Notre Dame de Reims, a
UNESCO World Heritage site.
The church was the site of royal coronations, to include Charles VII, who was path to royalty was paved courtesy of Joan of Arc in 1429. Here we have Joan (or Jeanne, as she is really known) keeping watch outside the church.
I just like how there’s a long explaination in French telling you about the church, and then the barely one line “translation” into English. Somehow, I appreciate this.
Once inside the church you are able to see the beautiful stained glass windows, in addition to other, less Catholicky displays of color…
