The journey North from Burgundy to Champagne took us through the amazing vast plains in the East, huge prairies as far as the eye could see and lots of sky. The sat nav managed to find motorway for most of the journey so we arrived early to find the hotel abandoned apart from a lot of cats, which weren’t very good at check in! For once it was a hotel which didn’t welcome dogs, probably due to the number of cats in residence. We were victims of the French weekend in the little French town of Vertus, where the Hostellerie de la Reine Blanche was situated and everything was shut up on Saturday lunchtime. We wandered around for a bit and had to make do with some cheese biscuits for lunch until the lady arrived to welcome us. As it happened they had another guest by the name of Perkins so the first room we were shown did not seem to match the description or the price – quite a coincidence but then most of the guests were English or Belgian (with one Swedish car one day which seemed a long way to come). Eventually we got the right room, situated in an annexe building across the courtyard with a little balcony with views over the vine covered hillside and a nice seating bit to watch the TV. We had BBC 1 and 2 on the satellite so we watched Breakfast news but there didn’t seem to be much else of interest so we carried on with French TV. John has no problem with it but then his French is better than mine. However, I managed a film and an Agatha Christie and felt quite pleased with myself. I can’t do the dubbed programmes because the mouths don’t match the words but I am getting better at original French films and programmes.
We went to Reims on a couple of days and once to Epernay and enjoyed wandering around. We went on the Mercier tour. Being great marketers, they’d made a great experience out of it with a panoramic lift to descend 90 feet to the Caves and a laser guided train to take you through the passages whilst the guide explained about the manufacture and history of the brand. We enjoyed a glass at the end of it as well. We ensured that we drank a little of the local product here too, though not to excess, as it’s no cheaper than in Sainsbury’s. What was really surprising was the cost of the local red wine – we didn’t bother to find out whether it was worth it since we couldn’t see the point in paying over 40 Euros for a bottle of Vertus red when you could drink a very nice Cotes de Bourg for 19 and a Gigondas for 27! We had lunch in a very fine old brasserie in Reims, Le Brasserie de Boullingrin, which was just like you imagine a French bistro to be like and another lunch in Epernay at Le Cave de Champagne, both recommended by lonely planet and lovely. We had supper in the hotel a couple of times, avoiding the champagne menu, which delighted in cooking everything in champagne and was clearly geared for the tourist market and stuck to the more traditional things like Confit de Canard and Jambonneau which were lovely.
Mostly we walked or drove through the little hills covered in vineyards which were lovely and provided fabulous vistas. On Tuesday they began the vendange and where the hills had been pretty much deserted, they were suddenly dotted with white vans, tractors and even buses, bringing in the pickers. We had to crawl along behind tractors carrying crates of grapes to the pressing places so it was all very interesting. John thought it might be fun to pick grapes but we agreed it was probably only fun for about half an hour and then after that it would just be hard work! I was most interested by the marketing, since champagne must be a very early example of creating brands and persuading people to pay to a premium because of the label! The local news carried a daily profile of various local champagne families – nearly always a father, son and daughter, with the girl doing the marketing. Fascinating though the Taittinger family did admit that they are actually owned by the holding company which also owns Louis Vuitton!
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