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.

Rabbit Hunting Season

The Baguette Winner is still out of town. She is a vegetarian. As she is out of town, I made the executive decision to cook rabbit, or lapin. The nearby Casino supermarket sold me five quarter rabbits for €4, which was the smallest pre-packaged amount I could find. [Pre-packaged is important, as it means that I do not have to attempt to communicate my request to an actual human].

It didn’t occur to me to Google a recipe for this, so I was forced to rely on attempting to recreate the only rabbit-based meal I’ve ever sampled: rabbit stew. We have a tiny kitchen, relatively understocked in terms of sauces, spices, etc, so my chosen technique involved filling a pot with everything that seemed loosely stew-applicable. This meant an onion, tons of garlic, a couple of carrots and some stock , then some lentils and lemon juice  and a splash of beer later in the piece. At the end, I wacked in some spinach and a little toasted bread, and voila (getting better at French!).

The end result was not bad. Too salty – probably didn’t need sea salt on top of a stock cube – and there were a lot of bones. But overall a pleasant experience. Quite a lot like skinless chicken wings (the skin was removed).  A smarter chef would’ve taken to the leg/thigh cutlets with a knife first, to break them down a bit. But mistakes are all part of the fun!

The novelty was certainly worth it. Duck is next on the menu, as it is abundant at most supermarkets (although not especially cheap). I’m sure you can’t wait!