Bringin' the (Cham)pagne

Myself, the Baguette Winner and two of our friends hopped on a train to Epernay, in the Champagne region. That’s where they make the champagne.

The easiest way to explain it - even down to the travel time – is that it’s just Martinborough. A cute little town set up to accommodate tourists for a day or weekend, there to tour the champagne houses.

We kicked it off with a tour of Mercier. The pride and joy of their house is a really big barrel:

The cask was made for the World Fair in 1889, and nicknamed the ‘Cathedral of Champagne. Apparently, it was such a big deal that it was considered the main attraction of the Fair – alongside a little metal structure made by a chap named Eiffel. It doesn’t get a shout out in the Wikipedia entry for the Fair, however, and I’m starting to think that Mercier’s promotional video may have taken some liberties. According to Wikipedia, the main attraction (aside from the Eiffel Tower) was in fact a “Negro Village”, but perhaps Mercier felt that mentioning this would be a tad negative.

To get the cask to the fair, Mr Mercier had to buy and then demolish five houses. They seemed rather proud of this fact.

The tour included a slightly bizarre laser-guided train tour of the cellars (which they refer to as caves, with good reason). This was way slower and more boring than it looked in the pictures, as there really isn’t a lot to see. The trouble is, these vast, endless cellar/cave things pretty much look the exact same the whole way. The histories of these places are obviously pretty interesting, but all the best bits of this were detailed in the promo video mentioned above. And the cellars are pretty much full of bottles that just sit there and don’t get touched for awhile, so unless you’re a identical-stationary-bottles-with-no-labels-ophile, there isn’t much to see. What did make it impressive was the size, and the fact that these tunnels had been around since Queen Victoria.

The good news was that the tour finished with two glasses of champagne (a brut and a rosé), and it had barely hit midday. So can’t really complain.

After Mercier, we took ourselves back down ‘Champagne Avenue’ and into Epernay, in search of a traditional French lunch. We managed to find this at La Cave a Champagne, a funny little Fawlty Towersy restaurant, which had a collection of Michelin Guides on a shelf, but did not in fact have a Michelin Star. [It is in the Guide, though]. It was a very classically French menu, meaning that everything was either in a cream, butter or cheese sauce, and it was very good for the price (€20 for three courses). The huge disappointment, for me, was seeing the chicken come out to every other table, immediately after I had ordered the fish. I just don’t like fish as much as chicken. When will I learn?

You can read more about this meal (which included snails!) here.

After lunch, feeling tired and full (all that cream!), we stumbled back up Champagne Avenue to check out Moët. They didn’t have a big barrel, but they did have a statue of Dom Perignon:

This tour began with one of the tackiest promotional videos I have ever seen. People were audibly giggling during its screening. Luckily, it’s on Youtube!

Let’s examine some of the finer points:

-       Great generic music; because nobody is so rich that they want to pay royalites;

-       Every time we saw that finger delicately tracing the rim of the glass, people laughed. Is it a pensive gesture? Sensual? Erotic? It is clearly meant to be evocative of something, but we all just thought it was stupid.

-       “Pioneer in technology and innovative research”: A whiteboard pen? That would be a huge claim to fame, indeed.

-       The main problem with this video is that it says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING OF VALUE. Did you know that Moët is owned by the same company as Henessy and Louis Vitton, two other standards of luxury? Why not throw that in? Or how about showing some of the process, or giving some of the history?

-       This is literally the bit in Entourage where all of the talent agencies are trying are sign Vinnie, and they all show virtually identical clips beginning with “BMW…Rolex…Vincent Chase”. Nobody buys this crap.

I guess it’s not that bad. But they actually sat us down with a straight face and had us watch this. We had already paid, so who were they trying to convince? And if they really wanted to sell champagne, this would have been a far more tasteful advertisement:

The good news is that the tour itself went straight uphill after this. The cellars in these places are directly under the buildings, so we went from watching that dumb video, straight down a marble staircase in the same room. Suddenly, we were in the caves where they store millions of bottles of champagne. Of course, it looked virtually identical to the Mercier caves, even though each house would claim that it was the ‘original’ or whatever.

For this tour, there was no train, and we actually had a human guide (about 15-20 people in our group). This meant that we could ask questions and interact a little more. Our guide could pick up a bottle and point out the sediment, for example, and demonstrate how they are rotated. There still wasn’t a lot to see down there, but it felt much more informative.

Moët & Chandon also produce Dom Perignon, which you will recognise from your favourite rapper’s humble-brags. Dom Perignon is strictly a vintage champagne, which means that all of the grapes used are from a single year, deemed to have produced an especially good crop. There were other facts about what made it special, but you have Wikiepdia.

"Y'all drink Dom but not rosé..."

A few fun champagne facts before we end this thing:

-       You know how champagne bottles are really thick? That’s because they used to explode all the time (due to the bubbles). Apparently, Dom Perignon himself may have come up with this solution.

-       The Moët people claim that “magnum” is the best size for champagne, because it has the best volume to surface area ratio (ie, the amount of wine touching the air pocket at the top). There’s a good chance that this is just the size they wanted us to buy, for margin reasons and whatnot.

-       Champagne is fermented in the same bottle right the way through, in either your standard bottle or a magnum. If you buy a bottle bigger than a magnum, it will have been filled from other bottles (and this is why they reckon magnums are better tasting).

Snailed It!

If there are three things that everybody thinks of when they think about France, they are baguettes, snails and eco-terrorism. This food review deals with the second of these fundamental Frenchities.

Whilst upon a daytrip to Epernay, one of the key locales in the Champagne region, myself, the Baguette Winner and two friends went out for an intentionally quintessential French meal. We ate at a small, crammed-in bistro named La Cave a Champagne, which looked so much like what you’d expect a little French restaurant to look like that photos are unnecessary (also, I forgot to take any). Just know that if it weren’t clichéd to refer to things as clichéd, this place would have been a total cliché.

I won’t go over the entire meal, but just know that it was both perfectly nice in that it allowed me to finally enjoy some traditional French food (and it was inexpensive), and also it was slightly disappointing to learn that I may not actually be a big fan of the old French classics (at least as they were presented here). For now, I’m going to hope that I just failed to order the right items for me, and hope for better next time. Incidentally, the snails dish (the entrée) was actually the best part of the meal.

[As an aside, the same team went out for a more expensive French meal the next night, and I enjoyed it far more].

Let’s get to the main attraction:

That’s artichokes and mushrooms in a creamy sauce, and the little black things are the snails. Either you’re dying to know what the snails tasted like, or you’ve had them before, and you’re acting like it’s no big deal; you eat way weirder stuff all the time. Well, you don’t, and if you do, what’s wrong with you? Try eating delicious processed foods like the rest of us. They process the flavour right in there!

Anyway, the snails were fine. They don’t taste like a whole lot, which is why they work in that super-creamy, buttery sauce. Think of them as chewier mushrooms, or far less chewy paua. In other words, they’re pretty dependent on what you put them in. It is for this reason that I shan’t be seeking them out in future, but if they’re put in front of me, I won’t vomit everywhere either.

The following night, we went out for the aforementioned “expensive” meal, which was kindly covered by our friends to thank us for giving them our fold-out couch. Again, I won’t go over the whole thing, but it did include another new for me: guinea fowl. This was genuinely delicious:

"It's like chicken, but not trying as hard." - Helen, our friend

I suppose if you’ve had pigeon or pheasant before, this might be like that. It’s a gamier, darker version of a chicken leg, but maybe not quite as deep red as duck. This was great, as I’m a “dark meat” guy. It was served on roast potatoes with a simple gravy, and I ate every little bit of it.

Also, there was only one guy in the kitchen, churning out three-course meals! Either these were some of the best microwave meals any of us have ever had, or he was good, man.

A Guide to Science: Stuffin' Up

You probably thought that our last lesson pretty much summed up science. But it turns out that there is more to science than skeletons. This week, I went to the Grand Galerie d'Evolution, part of the broader Muséum national d'histoire naturelle. Much like the Galerie de paléontologie et d’anatomie comparée, which was basically a couple of old guys' skeleton collections, this was a similarly lovingly displayed collection of animals. Only these ones were stuffed with taxidermy!

Theoretically, this museum is all about evolution. In reality, however, it is more about taking dead animals, stuffing them, and lining them up in interesting ways. And it is great.

Upon reading that this was a museum devoted to taxidermy, I imagined something along the lines of this:

That's not far off, actually.

The pièce de résistance, as my new Frenchy friends would say, is this procession of animals right in the middle of the Galerie.

Those are all real, dead animals! Apparently, the desired effect is that it should remind the viewer of Noah’s Ark, with all the animals lined up to board the big boat. It’s a fun, sarcastic gesture, what with this being the Grand Gallery of Evolution and all. As with the story in the Book of Genesis, I’ve got a few issues with this depiction of Noah and his Ark:

-       They’ve doubled up on giraffes. Actually, they have more than doubled up. They have like seven giraffes! Noah would never take seven giraffes on his barge.

-       They also have a lot of the deer/antelope/gazelle family. Luckily, they put them nice and close to the lions.

-       Not seeing a lot of primates in this exhibit. Or native New Zealand fauna, for that matter.

-       I’m starting to think that this exhibit was really just a convenient way to display the animals which had already been stuffed, and is not, in fact, an accurate depiction of an important historical event. 

Once I had moved past my anger at the above blasphemy, I went to look at a big tortoise.

This is Kiki, and he used to live in the Menagerie (zoo) next door. Now he’s all hollowed out and stuffed with rolled up newspapers, I imagine. Apparently, he was a presidential gift of some sort. In fact, the writing on the wall (in English!) said that gifting a giant tortoise was customary practice for a President. They probably didn’t have Cadbury Roses at that point, yet.

Kiki was really old when he died. It said he lived through both World Wars unharmed, so not a bad innings.

There was an exhibit about endangered and extinct animals. Unfortunately, they kept the room really dark, so I couldn’t take any great pictures. Maybe they wanted to pretend that the animals were just sleeping, so that we would stop thinking about how they are all filled up with those Styrofoam packing peanuts. 

God was really messing around when he made these fat, flightless things. They might be the one animal that actually seem more dignified in cartoons:

Obviously, they were my favourite things in the museum.

Or maybe second favourite, because there, in the endangered exhibit, we saw a kiwi. Two to be precise, and there was one more outside:

There it stood, peering down its long nose at the positively rotund polar bears and elephants, twitching nervously at the sight of the stoat, weasel and cat, and just seeming downright proud to be a New Zealander. It almost brought a tear to this reporter’s eye. Kia kaha, Mr Kiwi.

There was also an Australian section:

I didn’t ask any of the other punters, but I could tell they were all disgusted.

 
Upon stuffing, the animals had been arranged into natural poses. There was a sloth hanging from a branch, birds in full flight, children crying and ruining it for everyone else (unfortunately, not stuffed). There was even a tiger on an elephant:

I don’t remember ever seeing this in the Wild Thornberrys.

Towards the end, there was an illustration of how the taxidermy process occurs. It seems quite complicated, and apparently involves dissecting the animal, and then rebuilding it from the inside out. This is far more complicated than my method, which involves a water blaster and some Selley’s No More Gaps. But I’m only a semi-professional taxidermist.

All in all, this was an enjoyable meander, made more enjoyable because we exited past the happy hippo:

A Guide to Science: Bonin' Up

This lesson, we take a break from our ongoing quest to get to the bottom of what art is, because I visited the Galerie de paléontologie et d’anatomie comparée (Gallery of Palaeontology and Comparative Anatomy). The Galerie is part of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (you can figure that out), which also features the heroically named Grand gallery of evolution (a Richard Dawkins wet dream). These two galleries are in separate buildings (with separate cover charges), so that will have to be the subject of a different lesson.

Now, I know I’ve got this reputation as a full-on art guy, too obsessed with the transient essence of “truth” to ever truly connect with science and its more literal truthiness. But if I may take off my artist pants for a moment and pull my scientist stocking over my head, just keep reading, ok?

The entrance to the Galerie houses one of the most bizarre sculptures I’ve ever seen:

In a stroke of pure genius, I made no note whatsoever of the name or sculptor of this thing, and the internet has failed me. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s guerrilla marketing for the number one film in the world right now.

More than likely, that sculpture serves as karmic balance for what lies through the main entrance...

Man versus nature, August 12 2009, trixOr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/trixer/3825831430/

...a real “EFF YOU” to any animals that think they are better than us. People say dolphins are smart, but I’d like to see a dolphin put some of these skeletons back together. I doubt a dolphin could even do a WASGIJ. And before any dolphins start Morse Coding a rebuttal, take that:

Upon seeing that massive whale, I immediately began singing (in my head, obviously) “I got me a car that’s as big as a whale” like that B-52s weirdo. This led to the following thoughts:

-       He really needs to specify which whale his car roughly equates to. Some of these whales are not any bigger than your average Fiat Panda;

-       If he means big like the really big whale, I don’t believe him. That whale is really big. Does he mean he bought a bus? Because he could have said that, and then it would be impressive without being vague;

-       I think we like that lyric because it is followed by “and it’s about to set sail.” But I’m not sure that a whale ‘sails’, so to speak. It probably ‘swims’, like a fish, although I’m aware that a whale is a mammal, not a fish, but not all mammals are whales, so that is largely irrelevant, and let’s just say it ‘glides’.

-       That last paragraph is unnecessary, because I’ve rewritten that lyric as follows:
“I’ve got me a car, it’s a Honda Accord

And I’m dri-ving it forward.”

This way, we know what size of car he bought, a probable price range (because who knows how much whales cost?!), and there’s half a pun there with forward/Ford.

That’s a southern right whale! [Don’t tell the Greens]. So maybe this is that science the Japanese are always claiming to be doing.

While researching for this essay (stealing photos from other places), I stumbled across this quote: “This right whale is possibly the most effective exhibit of baleen that I have ever seen.” (here’s the full blog). Of course, we all understand the constant struggle of trying to find the perfect baleen exhibit. So this whale face must be pretty impressive. It’s like that blood diamond in the movie Blood Diamond, which Leonardo Di Caprio identifies as being 100 carats just from hearing about it from a guy who is definitely not a jeweller. That’s how good this whale’s face is.

Speaking of the Southern Hemisphere, they had a skeleton of a kangaroo:

I looked everywhere for a kiwi, but couldn’t find one. I’m guessing that, during World War II, Prime Minister Fraser sent a crack team of experts to scour France and bring back any stolen New Zealand artifacts. Either that or, even then, nobody knew what the hell a kiwi was. [Everyone here thinks that we are really proud of the fruit].

Upstairs is where they keep the dinosaurs, so that’s where I went. Trouble is, I don’t really know dinosaur names in English, so I’m not really sure what I saw. I do believe they had a woolly mammoth:

Under the woolly mammoth, they had a real photo from the woolly mammoth days! It’s held up pretty well.

It actually claims to be an homage to a sculpture by an artist named Paul Richer (if you Google Richer, it’s the first image that comes up). I don’t know why they’ve made it look like an issue of Spawn, though.

The dinosaurs were really good. They had one that looked like a T-Rex (turned out to be an Allosaurus), a Triceratops, and one with a really long neck:

Fun fact about the long necked ones: They evolved this way over many millions of years, because their long necks enabled them to get the very last can of Wattie’s spaghetti and sausages from the top shelf.

Speaking of dinosaurs, were you aware that there’s a character in Jurassic Park called Robert Muldoon? It’s this guy:

Don’t worry, the raptors get him.

There’s not a lot else to write about the Galerie. They had a bunch of draws full of rocks and shells, and of course, I looked at them all in depth. As an expert on science, I am interested in such things. After that, I exited through the exit, because that’s how they do it in France.

Dubrovnik: The Other Dubbo

Disclaimer: The following is likely to contain gross generalisations, or ‘stereotypes’. If you don’t approve of stereotyping, think of this as “cultural norms in a practical setting”. If you are a fan of stereotyping, white people love dogs, yoga and political correctness.

La Baguette Winner (French is getting better!) wanted to go away for a long weekend. It was decided that a beachside getaway in Croatia would do nicely, and TripAdvisor said that Dubrovnik was the place to be. Thus, we decided to go to Dubrovnik.

Cheap flights were secured through Transavia, which is apparently a real airline. Upon Googling (for safety reasons), we discovered that Transavia has never had a fatal accident, although Wikipedia did provide the following interesting nugget: “In September 2012, a Transavia pilot was locked outside the cockpit after his co-pilot had fallen asleep.” Totally normal.

One reason the flight was cheap was that it left at 6am. Annoyingly, Europe is not just one country, and they have the annoying ‘get there 2 hours early for international flights’ rule. So we got up at 3:30am (or rather, we squeezed in a midnight nap).

We arrived in Dubrovnik at 8am, and immediately slept until 11am. Our hotel was in Zaton Mali, a tiny village about 20 minutes by bus from Dubrovnik. The ATM was in the next village (Zaton Veliki), which meant we had a little walk on our hands. Fortunately, the very casual stroll was along the extraordinary sheltered harbour, replete with beautiful scenery and clear, blue ocean.

Once we had money, we hopped on the bus into Dubrovnik to check out the Old Town. It was hot, and crowded. Still bleary-eyed and drowsy, we did not last long under these conditions. Old Town is lovely, but it is best when not utterly crowded. After lunch, we took ourselves back to Zaton Mali for another nap.

As it turned out, there actually wasn’t all that much to do in Dubrovnik. Given that the point of this long weekend was to relax and unwind – after all, I’ve been (not) working so hard lately – this was perfect. That night we had dinner in the hotel bar, a couple of Croatian beers, and dozed in our room whilst watching the World Cup.

The next day, we had two activities planned: go to the beach; walk the walls of the Old Town. For the beach, we simply moseyed back over the Zaton Veliki, bought a couple of pastries from a beachside food truck, and found a spot on the stony beach. [We never found a sandy beach. The beaches in Dubrovnik tend to be nestled among rocks, with stones ranging from pebbles to fist-sized.] Neither of the pastries was a revelation – especially since we live in Paris – but likewise neither was a national disgrace. The truck was there everyday, and some of the pastries looked familiar a few days apart…

Pause for generalisations: Paris is a very slender town. The French are known for being thin, as you can read about here and here. Croatians, by contrast, are not so thin. To be fair, I am basing this on three and a half days in one city (so perhaps I should say “Dubrovniks”), but it was rather noticeable. They were not, however, shy about this. Many a pot-bellied man, woman and child would while away the day by the sea in their little Speedos and bikinis, without a care for their roly poly bits. I’m not really interested in declaring this either a good or bad thing, or in guessing why it’s the case. [If I had to guess, it’s probably because it was too damn hot to do any exercise. And the meals we were given were pretty large.] Just sayin’.

Much later that day, we caught another bus back into town to check out the walls of Old Town. Old Town is basically a giant castle, big enough to now hold a few hundred souvenir shops, bars and restaurants. It’s built on an outcrop, meaning that climbing the walls provides a pretty spectacular 270-degree view of the ocean. Apparently the walls are 2km around, which is why we chose to walk them at 5:30pm, when there were fewer tourists and it was (theoretically) a bit cooler. I don’t actually have a huge amount to say about the walls. They themselves are not terribly interesting. Rather, they provide the aforementioned beautiful view, and you get a better sense of what Old Town is (because when you are in there, it’s just people and shops and cobble stones). So, apologies for that. Here are some photos though:

Is that Ryan Gosling?

I may have had too much sun...

We finished the day with pizza and chips in an Old Town restaurant, and watched that evening’s football, like proper yobs. Upon leaving Old Town, it became immediately clear that we had no idea where to catch the bus home. The day before, we had inadvertently caught the wrong bus, but were shown where to connect with the correct one. This had taken place in a different part of Dubrovnik. We knew where we had exited the bus into town, so we returned to that point, only over the road. Our bus was not featured on this stop’s timetable. We walked around blindly for 20 or so minutes (pleasant evening sufficiently dampened), before hailing a taxi.

Here’s a further generalisation: The Croats have this delightful way of being helpful and answering questions, while also making you feel sorry you ever asked. I don’t know how they do it! We found this at our hotel, some restaurants and on the bus. It’s like they are happy to tolerate your custom, but wish that both parties could just communicate silently, and from different locations. Of course, the French do this too, but I always assume that something is lost in translation. The Croats were far more willing to speak English (and were typically very good), but preferred to keep us on our toes with just a dusting of disdain. I guess this was sort of fair, as we realised that we hadn’t even bothered to learn the basic greetings of the native tongue.

The rest of our long weekend consisted mainly of sunbathing, food and beer. It was grand. We managed to figure out how to get a bus to the airport, and made the trip home (this time with Easyjet). In summary, a marvelous time was had by all.