Thursday, March 22, 2007
And here is Scott outside the gate of the House of Moet & Chandon. We left Epernay and drove to Reims to check into our hotel - the Hotel Crystal. Our hotel was located right on a pedestrian zone so it was easy to find a great restaurant and relax for the night.
Then we visited the gift shop and made a purchase - not the bottle that Scott is holding - this bottle of Dom Perignon costs close to $10,000.
After the cellar tour Scott and I sampled some of the bubbly!
Racks of Dom Perignon....The cellars are really cool. The smell of chalk, the cool, damp walls, the aromas of wine, the muffled sounds of bottles being gently moved all add to the romance of it all.
For over 250 years, Moet & Chandon has been producing the world's finest champagnes. Napoleon enjoyed a special relationship with the Maison Moet. In 1799, the house began shipping champagne to him and he made a habit of visiting whenever he passed through the region. Moet & Chandon Brut Imperial was created as a tribute to this friendship. Today, M & C remains the official supplier to royal courts of Europe.
Thousands and thousands of bottles of champagne! Notice all the chalk dust covering the bottles.
After Hautville - we drove back to Epernay to the famous champagne house of Moet & Chandon. Back underground, we had a guided tour of the caves. M & C has over 17 miles of cellars on three different levels.
We thought this house was really cool - enlarge it to see all the things they have done to it.
They even decorate their houses with champagne bottles -
Walking around Hautville in the sunshine - we walked along Rue de Dom Perignon. Notice the cute street signs in this town -
Dom Perignon - 1638-1715.Dom Perignon, the man, was born about 1638. His full name was Pierre Perignon. He was a Benedictine Monk at the Abbey of Hautville near Riems in France. Wine was already being made in the Champagne region before Pierre was born. Dom Perignon's legacy to the world was a procedure for production of Champagne. This included riddling the ageing bottles so the sediment can be removed, adding a dosage for a secondary fermentation, and use of corks to seal the bottles. These steps combined with the availabilty of stronger bottles which could hold the added pressure, allowed the commercial production of Champagne to begin in about 1700. Dom Perignon died in 1716. His famous statement "I see stars" was uttered upon his first taste of Champagne.
He is buried in his former abbey - in the floor near the altar.
In the town of Hautvilliers is the Abbey of the famous Benedictine Monk - Dom Perignon. He is considered the father of champagne and figured out a way to stop the bottles from exploding during the second fermentation.
We grabbed some yummy bagettes for lunch and head out to the town of Hautvilles. Along the way we found some of the vineyards for Moet & Chandon. It was a beautiful view!
What was neat is that all of the vineyards have markers identifying the champagne house that owns them.Here is a quick video of our tour. It shows how dark it really is down in the cellars.
After the tour came the champagne tasting. Scott and I sampled 4 different champagnes before we left the house of Mercier.
The chalky cellars remain a constant temperature of around 10 degrees celcius, which is the ideal temp to allow for slow fermentation. It was a really cool tour!
Lots and LOTS of champagne! The bottles behind me here are in the 4th stage - the ageing stage. The bottles are stored on slats for several years. This ageing process which varies depending on the cuvee allows the wine to acquire its complexity and develop its bouquet.
It was amazing to see all the bottles in various stages of production! These bottles are in the 3rd stage of production. During bottle fermentation, the yeast forms a deposit on the side of the bottle. Placed in these riddling racks, the bottles are turned once a day for 6 to 8 weeks. By gradually inclining the bottle into a vertical position, the deposit flows down towards the neck. The riddling operation is still done by hand at Mercier, although the traditional work of the riddler is also carried out by machines. Our guide told us that a good riddler can turn about 50,000 bottles a day.
Welcome to the cellars! After descending 30 meters, we boarded an electric train for our tour of the caves.
In the town of Epernay,our first stop was the champagne house of Mercier. Eugene Mercier opened this champagne house in 1858. Behind us in the picture is a huge vat that was made for the World's Fair in 1889. Mercier traveled to Hungary to hand pick the oak trees for the vat's construction. Once finished, he filled it with over 200,000 bottles of champagne, and had it pulled by 24 oxen and 18 horses to the fair in Paris. It took 8 days to get there where he emptied the vat!
Friday, February 16, 2007
Today we headed about 3 hours to our west into the French champagne region. The sole reason was to delve into the miles and miles of champagne cellars!
