The women were leaving at noon to catch our 1pm train to Reims. Just 45 minutes away, and in the heart of Champagne country. Sorry boys, enjoy your game - we have some fizzy wine to try.
Some of us took the metro, some took a cab to the train station, and we all found our different carriages on our tickets then ended up sitting by a friend nearby anyway. Thorpe had given us these luscious cremes as a Valentine's Day present (he's a great guy) so we snacked on those and plotted our journey.
First things first, we had a reservation with Martel for a tour and tasting. The train station was tiny, and the only two taxis in town must have been waiting. The first one pulled away before we got there, then the other four hopped in the second.
We assumed another taxi would show up, but five minutes of peering around corners did nothing. We checked the TI across the square (closed), Uber (none), and even walking directions (45 minutes when we had just 30).
A bus had been sitting at a stop while all this was happening, so Megan went over and started asking. He could get us within four blocks!
Julia, Carolyn, Megan and I emptied our pockets of change and hopped on. His English was spotty, but he told us what stop to get off at, then communicated exactly how to get there.
With five minutes to spare, we were traipsing up the cobblestones. We got the luxury champagne tasting, after a very thorough and informative tour.
It did start with a video, which could have been bad, but it actually put a picture to what Mark and I had been hearing all week. Some of the methods were unique - pressing in wooden casks, as quickly as possible to make the clearest white champagne out of red grapes (Pinot noir and a second Pinot that I missed the spelling of). The discussion of the terroir in the appellations and the crus I had hear before. The mixing of the separately fermented wines was also something the video more firmly cemented than had otherwise only been described.
With the modern methods being shown in the video, and no production happening at this cellar location, the implements they had were old - not quite as old as the 9th century section of the cave, but as old as the majority of it: the 17th century.
My favorite part was the riddling. Now done by a giant machine, this process moves the settled yeast from the second fermentation into the neck of the bottle by rotating it. The professional riddlers had the bottles in wooden stands angled downward and would turn them a quarter turn - each bottle, every day, by hand. The pros did like an entire rack in a minute.
Duly impressed by how hard it is to make champagne, it was time to see love's labors. And taste them. All three bruts (lowest sugar content), one a rose, and the final one - the oakiest - a vintage, so a good enough year (2007) that it could stand alone without mixing.
I ended up buying none of those and went with a couple of the cheapest. I figure cheap champagne in Champagne is still Champagne!
While at the tasting, we were distracted by a months-old baby who was joining. Turns out her parents are stationed in German. Turns out her dad works in a hospital doing anesthesia, just like Meg. Turns out Meg and her mom had worked at Children's in DC at the same time and figured out why they recognized each other! It is a small world.
And after lugging those bottles, I could have used a glass. We walked down to the cathedral - it had stained glass by Chagal as well as modern art stained glass from 2012! It was bombed heavily in WWI but the structure survived and the ceiling and glass were redone. Twenty six of the French Kings had been crowned there - the first in 496 (on the spot - the structure was from the Gothic period) and the last in the 1800s.
Carolyn and I read through Rick Steves tour, then were ushered onward to dinner by a hungry crew. The eight of us sat down at the first place open on the pedestrian street leading to the train station and got (what I thought was) our final French meal. A foie gras salad (I won't have it again. A bit too fatty for me to want enough to abuse geese for it.) with salmon and ham. A bottle of Champagne to share.
It was an easy walk (by now, used to the extra pounds of champagne in bags) to the station, and a quiet ride in first class (actually cheaper than second when we bought, and a bit more spacious) back to Paris.
The boys had a sort of closing ceremonies at 8 at the Irish bar that we were trying to be on time to. We used some extra metro passes and dropped the sparkling off at the hotel before ducking across the street. (Though the one street we had to cross was a mess. Carolyn and I saw a bus jumping a curb to try to get away from it.) It was a wonderful celebration of the end of tour, and I didn't have any expectations beyond that.
But, Frank started asking if anyone of us wanted to get some dinner, so Megan, Brendon, Carolyn, Zach, myself and Mark all accompanied him. We were seated at a table for six, so there was an honorary spot for Molly, who couldn't make the tour, while we had bone marrow, onion soup, bread, cheese, and more delectables for Valentine's Day and our final meal in Paris.
No comments:
Post a Comment