More Champagne!

After a restful night of sleep, we had an average hotel breakfast followed by meeting the boys at a cafe, appropriately for un cafe, and then headed down the Avenue de Champagne where the cellars of Moet et Chandon, Mercier, Perrier Jouet, Pol Roger and many more are found.

Moet et Chandon

Most of these champagne houses require a booking to see the cellars and taste their champagnes, but Moet (pronounced mo-wette), accepts walk-ins, so we booked tours for an hour later, and killed some time after finding a little champagne house, Champagne A. Bergere, where we could taste 3 champagnes for the bargain of 5 euros. Their blanc de blanc naturelle (no sugar added) was a winner, and most of the bottles sold for under 20 euros which was great value!

Moet for everybody!!!

We then headed back to the other end of the scale, to Moet et Chandon. Moet is part of a massive multi-billion dollar company, LVMH, which seems to own half the world. So we joined the tour, along with at least 20 other people, and learned about the company's history and watched a video (oddly narrated by Scarlett Johansson) which was supposedly about the Moet story but was in fact a glorified 3 minute ad. We went down into the caves - these wind for 28 km! - followed by tasting their Brut and rose in a tasting room full of pictures of Scarlett Johansson in various seductive poses. Then we got kicked out the other end (I literally had to chug the end of my rose) into their gift shop where you could buy Moet cushions and deck chairs and various other paraphernalia not related to champagne.

Beef carpaccio - delicious!

By this time we were hungry, so went to the brasserie opposite the brasserie where we had dinner the night before, and keeping up my raw meat theme, I had the beef carpaccio, which was yum! Oh, and we all shared a bottle of Pol Roger. Meanwhile, we all had a dream of sharing a magnum (ie. big bottle) of champagne in the park. So we went back to the place where we had tasted some champagne and foie gras the day before, and even though it is near impossible to buy cold bottles of booze in this country, the nice man had a selection of cold magnums for us to choose from! We decided on one, and then asking if he had any plastic cups, he offered us 5 champagne glasses if we brought them back afterwards! Perfect! We were set!

4 guys, a girl and a magnum

We found a nearby lovely park, and the sun was out, so it was perfect magnum consuming conditions! We were all obviously a little excited about the magnum, because before we knew it, it was gone! Dan and Ryan then slipped away, and then came back with..... another magnum!! And not only that, but they bought some foie gras from the man who also provided them with a knife and a baguette! So it was a very happy afternoon!

Vineyards at the end of Avenue de Champagne

By 4pm or so Laci and Paul had to get the train back to Paris to get the Eurostar to London, so we waved them off while us and Dan wandered back down the Avenue de Champagne. It was a lovely sunny afternoon so we walked the entire length and towards the end there are actually some vineyards. On the way back we found a cute champagne house called Paul Etienne Saint Germain which had a sign saying tastings outside. So we knocked on the large door and a friendly man greeted us and took us into the little tasting room where he and his wife told their story of their dream to one day make champagne. Having grown up in Epernay they built their company from the ground up and now have their champagne served in Michelin-starred restaurants around the world. They were so cute!

Paul Etienne Saint Germain

So after that we walked around town a bit more, which being a Sunday was pretty dead and not much was open, but we found a little place for dinner where I had the steak tartare again. I now prefer my meat raw. After a long day I hit the hay after dinner but the boys kicked on for one more and watched a Eurocup match. I must say the weekend in Champagne was one of the best of my life and we were lucky to be able to share it with friends!