Unexcused Absences France 2014 - Week 4 Recap (he said)

France 2014 – Week 4 Recap (he said)

by Kent 5 Aug 2014

We awoke Sunday morning in Chalons-en-Champagne after the evening of live music in the main square described in our previous post. That afternoon we saw the Hungarian quintet Söndörgö, who play the “lost music of the Balkans” – and very well, I might add. They were so talented they played 16 instruments among the five of them (I counted). Sunday night was very late (a good bit past midnight) onboard Kismet with Bret (Ann was back in England) and Jan and Bill from La Bonne Vie. Somehow we collectively decided that it was vitally important both to a) make use of the glass recycling bin in the port and b) lighten the load on this 50 ton boat by the weight of one bottle of Jim Beam Kentucky bourbon. Perhaps it was our American flag that motivated them.

Sunday music in the park, Chalons-en-Champagne

Monday we finished up some work for our Bahamas client, then cruised north and west to Mareuil-sur-Ay. After waiting patiently through first the Champagne/Burgundy Canal, then the Champagne/Ardenne région, then Chalons-en-Champagne, suddenly, BOOM, we were in the real Champagne. We rounded a corner on the canal, and there were vineyards everywhere. Within a 5 minute walk of our parking spot we passed 4 Champagne houses, and there were a dozen more in the broader village. The next town, Ay, had probably 30 houses, including the well-known Bollinger. We have finally arrived in the actual wine-growing portion of Champagne, our target destination for over two years. Readers might recall that last year major flooding throughout Europe prevented us from executing our Plan A, which was to take Après Ski first north to Paris, then east to Champagne.

Champagne EVERYWHERE

The Champagne region has been producing still wine since Roman times, and documented production has occurred here since the 5th century. The world-famous sparkling wine now known as Champagne was invented almost 500 years ago by monks from the south of France in the town of Limoux (Dom Perignon, supposedly the inventor of sparkling wine, was actually a cellar-master charged with eliminating the bubbles that sometimes formed in the wine of this region). One hundred years later a British scientist named Christopher Merret presented a paper to the Royal Society detailing what is now called the méthode champenoise, which uses a secondary fermentation in the bottle to create all the tiny bubbles that everyone loves so much. His discoveries coincided with English glass-makers developing the techniques to fabricate bottles that could withstand the extreme pressure that developed inside the bottle during secondary fermentation. Couple this with the fact that all French vines are actually grafted onto root stock from American grape plants (due to the Phylloxera blight which kills all vine roots of French origin) and it becomes ironic that this quintessential French sparkling wine is wholly dependent on both Britain and the USA.

Champagne vineyards as far as you can see

French kings have been coronated in Reims, the main city in this wine-growing region, for hundreds of years. The local winemakers fought to get their wines included in the celebrations, and voila, Champagne wine came to be associated with royalty. After that it was only a matter of time before the middle class sought out this region’s fizzy wine, and thus it came to be that Champagne became the essential wine for weddings, celebrations, and NASCAR winner’s circles everywhere. Currently, the region produces close to 300 million bottles of Champagne per year, about a third of it for export outside of France.

Mareuil-sur-Ay

We stayed in Mareuil-sur-Ay Monday through Wednesday nights. Tuesday we relaxed on the boat and finished up our work projects, and it rained most of the day so we didn’t miss anything. Wednesday we cycled the 30 minutes or so into Épernay, the center of all things Champagne. The small city is home to all the big Champagne “houses”, including Moet & Chandon, Perrier-Jouet, and Castellane, among literally hundreds of smaller houses. The local Office du Tourisme was not only a wealth of local knowledge (we discovered a free music concert and an evening sound-and-light show scheduled for the next day), but also had daily free Champagne tastings featuring two small producers (different ones each day) from the surrounding countryside.

Épernay

Épernay also has numerous Champagne tasting “bars”, which will sell you a flight of small tastings and also sells by the bottle, but at closer to wine store prices than restaurant prices. We took full advantage of both the tourist office and one of the tasting bars. The one drawback to Épernay (and all of the Champagne region, for that matter), is the cost of the wines. Although individual winemakers and vintages can be more expensive in Burgundy or Bordeaux, the average price of a bottle of Champagne is the highest for any wine-making region in the world. The cheapest Champagnes from the bigger houses start at around 18 Euros per bottle, and even at the smaller producers the lowest prices we saw were about 13 Euros. I guess they charge that much because they can. Champagne is a major economic force in this part of France, and it shows.

A house that Champagne built

Thursday morning we strolled through the local vineyards, and discovered a little wine-making village called Mutigny on the top of a hill. Even though it only boasts three or so producers, the town has laid out a beautiful and informative Sentier du Vigneron (wine-maker’s trail). Every few hundred meters of our 40 minute hike we encountered a plaque explaining some aspect or another of the Champagne-making process. And it goes without saying that the views out over the vineyards of the Marne River valley were outrageously beautiful.

Hilltop village of Mutigny

In Mutigny we asked at the little tourist info room in the town hall if any of the local producers offered tastings to visitors. No, the nice lady told us, unfortunately nothing was scheduled on this particular day. Heather, though, is a “modest” fan of Champagne, kind of like George Cluny is “modestly” famous. And a “No” from the tourist office wasn’t going to deter her from finding a place to taste Champagne. So she suggested we start calling the winemakers listed as sponsors of the Sentier du Vigneron. And sure enough, on the very first call, a woman answered. I guess we sounded pathetic enough with our bad French and terrible accent, so she invited us over for a tour and tasting.

Mutigny has a church, but the real religion is winemaking

She and her husband own Zimmerlin-Flamant Champagne, a microscopic operation run out of the basement of their house, and they do all the work by hand for their 4 hectare (about 10-acre) plot. Some of the vines are right off the back porch. Needless to say, don’t bother looking for this wine at your local wine shop. And the taste… but first I need to back up. By this point we had tasted multiple varieties of Champagne at the Épernay tourist office and another 4 types at a Champagne bar, and none of it impressed us much. In Burgundy, the sparkling wine is called “Cremant” and is about half the price of a similar quality Champagne. And at this point, for my money I would much rather have a Cremant de Bourgogne. But then we tasted Madame Zimmerlin-Flamant’s wine. I think my socks may have actually fallen off. Their Brut Tradition Premier Cru, a blend of Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay grapes, was actually out of this world, and was by far the best Champagne we had ever tasted.

Heather and Mme Zimmerlin-Flamant on the back porch

The only remaining question was, how much to buy? We were on our bikes and a long way from our boat, so a large quantity was out of the question. But we bought a case anyway (it was a small case…). We somehow got it strapped to the back of my bike, and Heather managed to fit a bottle of Cuvée Prestige 1er Cru into her purse (we weren’t able to taste the Prestige but Mme Zimmerlin-Flamant assured us it was better than the Brut Tradition). Sorted. And all for a surprisingly reasonable price – for Premier Cru Champagne, of course.

Vintage winemaking equipment at Zimmerlin-Flamant

Thursday afternoon we moved the boat a bit west, locked down into the Marne River, and turned back south-east to Épernay. We did yet another tasting in the tourist office, then caught the free concert mentioned earlier. After sunset we headed over to the Avenue de Champagne for the big spectacle son-et-lumière (sound-and-light show) projected onto the side of one of the big Champagne houses. Knowledgeable American tourists usually snicker at sound-and-light shows, but the French variety are generally a lot of fun. This one was really world class – it was truly a spectacle.

Sound-and-Light 1

Sound-and-Light 2

Sound-and-Light 3

Friday we walked over to the Castellane Champagne “house” (actually several city blocks of buildings) for a tour of their operation, museum, and tower, plus of course a tasting. We learned all about the special méthode champenoise on the tour of their manufacturing facility, and the museum had interesting displays of old barrel-maker’s tools and of the machinery associated with printing labels. The cellars contained something like 10 kilometers of tunnels, packed to the gills with aging Champagne bottles. And naturally we stopped by the tourist office for another tasting on our way back to the boat.

Champagne de Castellane

That afternoon we moved the boat downstream to Damery, a small two-boulangerie town about an hour away. There we met Mike (English) and Gloria (American) on the replica barge Elsie May, and enjoyed a long happy hour on deck. Saturday morning we moved the boat about an hour west to the little wine-making village of Reuil. The big excitement in the park next to the boat quay was their annual pétanque tournament. All day teams played round-robin pétanque, and towards evening a local civic group set up a tent and sold grilled sausages and cups of local Champagne for 2 Euros each. By dusk the Champagne corks were popping every few minutes. The local inhabitants were clearly doing their best to limit the amount of Champagne available for export. We, too, lent a hand in this endeavor.

Pétanque tournament in Reuil

We did take enough time out of our Champagne tasting this week to cycle to the hilltop village of Châtillon-sur-Marne, whose favorite son, Otho de Lagerey, went on to modest fame. He became advisor to Pope Gregory in 1080, and then was the Pontif himself for 12 years as Pope Urban II until his death in 1099. Pope Urban II was most famous/infamous for launching the First Crusade. The local citizens were so proud that in the mid 19th century they erected a 100-foot statue of him in town, overlooking the Marne valley.

View from Châtillon-sur-Marne

And speaking of war and conquest, Saturday August 2 was exactly 100 years after the General Mobilization Order of 1914 that marked France’s entry into the Great War, or as we call it, World War I. And this area of the Marne Valley, between Épernay and Dormans, was the site of two tremendous battles, both of which changed the direction of the war. The First Battle of the Marne stopped the initial German advance in September of 1914, pushed the invaders back to a line roughly between Verdun and Reims, and set the stage for three long years of trench warfare. The Second Battle of the Marne, in the summer of 1918, repulsed the final major German offensive of the war, and marked the start of the Allied advance that ultimately culminated in the Armistice of November 11, 1918. For the next month or so we will be in the thick of the territory contested during that costly stalemate in the middle of WWI.