Another Day in Epernay

Since we stayed the night at the lovely Hotel Jean Moet, we started our day in Epernay.  We had plans to tour Moet Chandon later that morning.  You may have heard of them... they make a little champagne called Dom Perignon.

As with any typical day we started off the day with croissants and coffee.

Jamie and Kelly went for a walk around the downtown area of Epernay while Tari and Duane took it easy in the hotel room.  A very nice local gentleman saw Jamie taking a picture of Kelly and stopped to offer his services, so a picture could be done together.  The people of Epernay are very friendly people!

Downtown and the Avenue de Champagne

While waiting for the Moet tour time, Kelly and Jamie wondered downtown Epernay and also the main road of Avenue de Champagne.  Avenue de Champagne is the main street in town where the large internationally known champagne houses are located.  Along with Moet, where we had our tasting, there were other houses such as Pol Roger and Perrier Jouet.  Underneath the street is over 68 miles of champagne caves!  Like an underground city, each house's cave complex is complete with their own street names for each corridor.

 

 

This building looked to be quiet governmental, but was actually a tourism office, hotel, and restaurant. It also had a huge lovely garden behind it that was open to the public and connected you to other areas of Epernay.

Moet-Chandon Champagne House

We had scheduled an 11 am tour and tasting at the Moet house.  The house itself was huge and had a statue out by the entrance celebrating the life of Dom Perignon, the French Benedictine monk who made important contributions to the wine industry by finding better ways to make quality champagne. 

As part of the tour we walked the champagne caves where all the champagnes are stored for aging.  Napoleon also walked these same caves as he was a big fan of Moet Chandon and would often come to visit and leave with 300 or more bottles after each visit. Napoleon said he liked to have the wine to celebrate victories and needed it to get over the losses.

 One of the original wine barrels used to make champagne.  Moet was actually one of the first houses to stop using oak barrels and start using steel.  They did this in the 1960s, about 40 years earlier than others,  

The walls of champagne that we walked down during the tour in the pic below is all Dom Perignon Magnums!  Gotta say, don't think we have ever been around that much ever!  These walls normally go back a few layers and the photo is only of the end of the corridor!

 The rows of bottles are often marked in a "secret" code that only the wine maker knows that tells about the wine's origin.  Along with that information, the number of bottles in that grouping will be listed.  In the case of Moet, the number would often be in the thousands. This nook had over 86,000 bottles in it!

Time for Bubbles!!!

As you can see from Duane and Tari's excitement, we ended the tour by leaving the caves and going to a tasting room.  As part of our tour we were able to taste two different champagnes.  The first one was the Moet Imperial and the second was Moet Pink 2008.  

 

The tasting room at Moet was a little different than most we have been to.  For one, it was down in the caves and not up by the shop and it was also decorated room with chandeliers and no tables and chairs.  I think the intent was to not have you stay long in this room. 

 Our tour guide helped pour, but there was also a gentleman who was a champagne sommelier that came in to pour and tell us about the wines we were tasting.

Once the tasting was completed, the next stop was the Moet gift shop where of course you could purchase all the champagnes and other items with the Moet label like beach towels, champagne buckets and a USB drive.  Yep, you could actually purchase a USB that had the Moet logo on it and looked like it was done in gold.  Not sure why anyone would need that.......

After completing the tour, the four of us did a walk all the way down Avenue de Champagne and then circled back up toward the main downtown area.  The walk was way longer than we expected, but we did get to see a lot of the town.

                             

One of the neatest looking buildings in Epernay was the Castallina.  It was very large and appeared to be another champagne making house.  The building itself looked very Austrian in style and had a tower that could be seen from almost anywhere in town.

As we walked through town we saw this street sign in several areas, finally we had to stop and take a picture.  1) because we were pronouncing it Chateau Terry and joking that our Tari had a house named after her and 2) because we had no idea what the symbol meant next to it.  The car on fire symbol did not seem obvious to us.  We searched the internet for answers with no luck.

 

Of course there were several shops in town that sold only champagne, but what amazed us was the prices they sold them at.  A bottle of Pol Roger that we would typically spend about 65 dollars for in the US could be purchased for about 30 Euro!  It is a good thing local establishments do not ship directly to US consumers or we all probably would have been shipping back some boxes of wine!

More Bubbles! 

Once we completed our walk around town and had some lunch at a small sandwich shop, it was time for more bubbles!

Attached to the hotel we stayed at was a wine bar named C.Comme  The wine bar was a creation of several of the smaller champagne houses where flights of champagnes could be tried or bottles could be purchased for take home purposes.

We decided since we had time to waste before our train back to Paris that we would do flights of champagne.  Each person had 6 different champagnes to try.  Once thing they are not stingy on in France is samples of wine.  In the States we normally get 2 oz pours or so... these were 6 oz.  That is over half a glass!!!

Nothing but smiles and bubbles!

On the Road Again!

Finally it was time to make our way back to the train station and to Paris.  Both couples purchase a couple bottles when we toured Vollereaux the day before, luckily it fit inside our backpacks... Unluckily for the guys they got to carry those bags back to Paris. Quick tip in Europe, if your name isn't on the ticket, be sure to validate it before getting on the train.

                      

Back in Paris and Back to a Favorite Dining Hole

We arrived back in Paris right around dinner time.  We dropped off our bags and made our way to one of our favorite restaurants from our last trip, Le P'tit Troquet.  It is a very small place, with only about 10 tables or so.  It is owned by a local family that does traditional French food.

It was good to be back here again!

Had a wonderful Cotes Du Rhone Red to go with dinner

As part of the meal, each person has their own starter.  Tari and Kelly both chose poached egg with Lima bean mash and panchetta.  Jamie had the rabbit terrine and Duane went with a grilled St. Machelin cheese on a bed of mixed greens.

One of the nice things about this restaurant is that for 35 Euro a person you get a three course meal with a starter, main course and dessert.  That is a pretty good price for a French place.  They normally have a standard menu and then a daily special menu as well.

For tonight, Tari choose the daily special main course of grilled Sea Bass.

Duane chose the leg of lamb and both Kelly and Jamie had the Beef Bourguignon.  The beef bourguignon was still just as good as we remembered!

The night ended on a sweet and stinky note with dessert.  Kelly had a wonderful strawberry and rhubarb compote that came in cute little mason jar.  Jamie had traditional creme brulee and both Duane and Tari choose the 3 cheese option.  The cheese was very good, but there was one cheese on there that gave the definition to "smelly cheese"  Normally an older cheese will smell a little funky due to aging etc, but the one cheese on the plate had a strong enough smell to clean one's sinus passages!

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