A few days in Champagne
Marne
Tasted July 10, 2006 - July 12, 2006 by psmith with 915 views
Introduction
This was the second stop (after two wine-free days and nights in London) of a 16-day trip. We stayed at The Royal Champagne in Champillon, a small village just off N51 in the Vallee de la Marne a couple of kilometers north of Epernay. The hotel was quite nice with a rather traditional 1* restaurant and a beautiful view from the room of the 1er cru Champillon vineyards with Dizy and Epernay in the background.
Flight 1 (1 note)
We spent most of the day getting acquainted with the French driving via the Epernay road signs. Unfortunately this led us to a smaller square in the city and my goal of finding a wine store wasn't successful as most of the better shops are in the main (and well marked) city center. We returned to the hotel empty handed but for a few chocolates and went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The food was quite good though the overpriced wine list made the meal seem expensive for what it was. After some browsing we settled on:
Flight 2 (2 notes)
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We had a visit planned early the next morning at Vilmart, a personal favorite grower in Rilly-la-Montagne. Vilmart is small (though not tiny) by Champagne standards and isn't really we equipped to handle visitors. The tour consisted of a very brief (think 5 min.) tour of the barrel aging room followed by a couple of their basic wines:
Flight 3 (1 note)
Prices at the winery were excellent, less than 50% of what the wines regularly cost me, so while we weren't really trying to buy any more than we could drink on the trip I did pick up a few bottles to drink later.
We spent the rest of the day wandering around Reims. The cathedral is truly spectacular - more impressive than Notre Dame in my opinion. Wine stores and restaurants are also quite easy to find. For lunch we stopped at Le Vigneron, a simple, rather rustic restaurant offering good food at relatively high prices. With lunch we had a wine unknown to me:
Flight 4 (1 note)
On a whim we decided to stop by Taittinger for a visit. Large houses seem well set up to handle tourists and Taittinger is certainly no exception. The tour started with a movie going over the history of the house and the basics of champagne production. The tour lasted about an hour and included visits to the impressive Roman-era chalk tunnels and a tasting of their NV Brut Reserve which, while clearly well made, is hardly really inspiring either. Prices at the winery were generally higher than one could find in the shops (which generally didn't offer many screaming deals either).
We went back to our hotel to relax with:
Flight 5 (2 notes)
Dinner was near Dizy at La Grains d'Argent. While the aim of the restaurant may not have been really high, its execution was quite good, better than expected given what were, by Champagne standards, very reasonable prices. We enjoyed a couple of half-bottles with dinner:
Flight 6 (1 note)
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The next morning we had an appointment at Billecart-Salmon in Mareuil-sur-Ay. This was a really nice visit which included trips to their Clos Ste. Hillaire vineyard, the cellars, and winemaking facilities. The tour finished with a tasting of the always tasty Brut Rose in their gardens. Interestingly, the Champenois, including Billecart, seem to view the current popularity of rose champagne as something of a fashion that would pass, not seeming to put in on the same level as the non-rose wines.
We had a quick, but excellent and well priced, lunch at La Table Kabus in Epernay that included another bottle of Rene Geoffroy Coteaux Champenois Cumieres Rouge before returning to our room for a nap and a really nice champagne:
Flight 7 (1 note)
Dinner was, again, at The Royal Champagne. In the lounge beforehand we enjoyed a glass of the always tasty '98 Dom Pérignon:
Flight 8 (1 note)
The meal was excellent, only marred by the smarmy prick of a sommelier (a different one from the previous night) who felt the need to let me know how influenced us mindless Americans are by Robert Parker. Early in the evening, and before I realized that I didn't really like him, I had accepted his offer to recommend a wine with the hope that he might turn me on to a lesser known house. He picked a decent enough bottle:
Flight 9 (1 note)
After presenting it he poured a taste and played a game with us by asking "can you guess what's different about this wine". Well, I had clearly seen "non-dosage" on the label and the fact that I actually knew what that meant threw him off and seemed to disappoint him as he sort of stormed off and didn't stop by much the rest of the night. As I looked around I realized that every table with Americans had the same bottle.....nice that he put some thought into it. The fact that I could have done better for the 95€ price didn't help.
After dinner we went back for our last night and a bottle we had bought earlier in town:
Closing
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The next morning we left for 5 nights in Beaune.