May Bank Holiday Weekend - Champagne Tasting!

We made a relatively late decision re what we were going to do for the first May Bank Holiday… in the end we decided on taking the Cruiser on its first European adventure and headed across to Epernay France for a weekend of Champagne tasting. It was a fantastic, albeit tiring weekend.

We headed out on the 6am Dover-Dunkirk ferry, meaning we had to leave Billericay just before 4am… aah! Managed to get a bit of sleep on the ferry which was a blessing though! … on the return trip on Monday we found a great spot under the stairs and had a great sleep!

Our first stop was Reims, though put centre of Reims in the satnav and it wont take you through the prettiest parts of town that’s for sure! We were seriously wondering what all the fuss was about, the area we first drove through was really rundown. Couple of blocks away from the train station though and the whole area opened up into nice wide squares and cobbled streets, really pretty! Ended up finding a really nice bistro out of the main shopping area which had tables and chairs set up in the middle of a square, with grape vines bordering the area. With the sun out, it was certainly a great spot to grab some lunch! Noticed lots of champagne and champagne cocktails on the menu, but it just felt a bit early to be starting on that!

We drove past the Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Reims which was also amazing. While we didn’t go inside, some say it is just as good if not better than Paris’ Notre Dame. There were quite a few churches in this part of France actually that had the same feel about them with the gargoyles and the flying buttresses. It was quite surprising to just see them scattered in the French countryside, when there’s huge queues to get inside the Paris cathedral.

We arrived in Epernay around 4pm and had a quick drive around town to get our bearings. It wasn’t quite what I expected… The Champagne houses like Mercier and Moet & Chandon were huge mansions and really ornate. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting, but they were all really ostentatious… just smells of money!... I guess I kind of expected it to be a bit like the Hunter Valley where the cellar doors are surrounded by the vineyards. Here all the big ‘boutiques’ with the champagne cellars underground were pretty much all in one street. Mercier had a small vineyard attached to it, but the majority of vineyards were out of town.

We stayed at a Caravan Park just out of town, on the river. They had bikes for hire which was great. Meant we could set the car/tent up and not have to pack it up each day. The one downside was you have to bring your own loo paper. Shame we’d just set up and already done our shopping by the stage… but the park owners told us the ‘short-cut’ to the Carrefour supermarket… 10min walk she says… at least ½ hr later… we finally got there!... As I say… glad we could hire bikes the next day to get into town!

Got a huge surprise when we saw a 4WD with QLD plates drive in… turns out though the guy (and the car) lives in Europe, just has a mate in Oz looking after the rego… dodgy but clever… so much cheaper than rego over here. Both nights we ended up having Aussies camping next to us though … actually there were Aussies pretty much everywhere around Epernay… in Moet… where we had lunch in town… Never too far away from the accent. Given the size of the population compared to Europe/America… it is amazing just how many there are traveling around!

Found a great spot while riding on our bicycles, for a quick coffee on the first morning… in a little open square where vegetable and flower markets were set up… and at least 60-70% of people had baguettes sticking out of the bags! Was a great spot to just watch people go by.

While in Epernay we visited Mercier, Moet and Castellane… our favourite, surprisingly for me, was Mercier… even I really thought it was going to be Moet!... The Mercier tour was really good, the guide was very informative and we went on a little laser guided train around the cellars… rows upon rows of cellars chock full of champas! Approx 17million bottles, just for Mercier in those cellars! The one thing better about the Moet tour was that you could walk around the cellars… meaning you could touch and get some great photos of the bottles… including Dom Perignon!

We picked up a coupla baguettes on the way “home” and had a great meal at the caravan park… loved grocery shopping in France.. we walked into the huge Leclerc just outside of Reims and there was just fresh food everywhere (not tucked into one little area like it is at Tescos!) .. bread…croissants… pastries… miles and miles of veg and cheese and deli meats… yum!! Hard to eat badly really!

Unfortunately quite a few motorhomes in the caravan park got broken into overnight… stealing ipods and wallets and things like that. Luckily we didn’t lose anything, but we think they went through our annex… shame really… but the knowledge of that means we will be more aware now…

Highlight of the trip came on Monday when we grabbed a map and decided to do a tour around the smaller villages. Most looked closed and/or deserted… but we came up to one (will have to look up the name), and although it looked shut, decided to give it a go. Matt knocked on the door of this big old farmhouse… no one answered for ages and we were about to give up when this little French woman came to the door… she didn’t speak a word of English.. but she yelled out for her husband… the winemaker who spoke broken English… he sat us down at this huge dining table and opened a bottle of their Reserve champagne for us to taste! Yum! And he told us about the history of the family and, surprisingly, that he was surprised that we, as Australians, were in the area tasting, cause he said we have such great wines back home! Was expecting more of a spiel about how there’s just nothing like sparkling from the Champagne region! He also took us on a tour of his vineyard, showed us the different grape varieties and then took us through his cellars. Was great to see a small scale producer. Really exactly the same as the big guys in terms of machinery etc, but just on a smaller scale.

It was a great way to end our champagne tasting. From there we programmed the sat nav to avoid motorways and started to leisurely make it back towards the ferry… driving through lots of really quaint villages and past mass British and French graves from the war… all the things you miss when you fly past on the toll roads…