Hotel Aux Armes de Champagne, above, and the Basilica at L'Épine (below), in Champagne country.
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Last
winter, our Sanibel neighbors, Henry and Inge, introduced us to Mareen and Arnold from
Germany. Over dinner at a Thai restaurant, we all became good friends. Tom and
I suggested that Mareen and Arnold come to visit us in Paris in the summer. Later, I
received an e-mail from Mareen. She suggested that we meet them in Champagne country
for a weekend. Each year, they go to a small town named Bouzy, in Champagne, where
they buy a year's supply of bubbly. They always stay in the same charming 4-star
hotel, Aux Armes de Champagne, in the village of L'Épine. This summer, they wanted
to share this annual experience with us. We were delighted to have this opportunity to have an "insider's" view of Champagne territory. We decided on the weekend of August 10-11, and Tom and I bought train tickets for Chalons-en-Champagne (formerly Chalons-sur-Marne), the town nearest to the village of L'Épine. Mareen and Arnold picked us up at the train station a little before 3 on Saturday afternoon. We went directly to the vintner's home in Bouzy. The vintner, Monsieur Plener, and his wife invited us into their reception room and gave us each a glass of champagne -- except for Tom, of course, who does not drink wine. Arnold politely explained this to Mr. Plener, and Tom said "I'm a water drinker," something that always gets smiles. Mr. Plener made a joke about it, saying "but you're in France!" We had a long conversation. Tom and I had to concentrate very hard because Mr. Plener's French was difficult for us to understand. Arnold is great at asking questions that take the conversation in interesting and informative directions. So we learned a lot about what it is like to be in the business of making wine, champagne in particular. Mr. Plener gave us a tour of the "cave," the wine cellar under their home. Their home is also their place of business. The home is small, but the cave is big. In the Plener's cave are 101,033 bottles of champagne in various stages of fermentation. Mr. Plener gave a detailed explanation of the process. It was fascinating. In the early stage, the bottles are not corked; they are capped. In this stage, each bottle has to be turned about a quarter turn each day. Their are hundreds and hundreds of bottles in this stage. There is a diagram drawn in chalk on a wall, indicating the pattern and sequence for the turning of the bottles. Arnold asked if there was a machine that could turn the bottles. Mr. Plener said yes, indeed there is a machine. But he does his by hand. Arnold said probably the machine was expensive. Mr. Plener said no, it was not really expensive, and the machine worked well. But he does not use a machine to turn the bottles because "the machine would turn the bottles without a heart." The machine has no heart, it is true. The cave is cool -- a constant 10°C (50°F). Mareen was shivering by the time we came upstairs. Arnold was asking questions about the press used to crush the grapes. Mr. Plener offered to show us the presses he uses. We climbed into his minivan and he took us to the edge of the village where there were some barn-sized buildings. He and six other vintners own three large, modern presses that operate in these buildings. He gave us a detailed explanation of the process for crushing the grapes. The pressing must be done quickly for champagne and white wine so that the pigments from the skins does not get into the juice. Usually the first vat and last vat from each batch of crushed grapes are destined for the supermarket. The vats in between are the ones used to make the good champagne. Also, if the weather is unusually wet and the grapes have a bit too much moisture on them, the entire batch is destined for the supermarket. Mr. Plener makes mostly champagne, but also pinot noir, chardonnay, and Bouzy rouge. In one room of one of the buildings were some large ceramic room-size tanks where wine is fermented. There was a batch of chardonnay from 2001 in one of them, and a batch from 2000 in another. There were some empty tanks. We were able to look into one -- it was sparkling clean, I'm happy to say. The temperatures in the tanks is electronically controlled. We saw computers there, and also in Mr. Plener's home. That's how he was able to tell us exactly how many bottles are in the cave. Mr. Plener's is a relatively small operation, and there are many like his in each little village in Champagne country. There are hundreds in each town of any size. And then there are the large producers of Champagne who have industrial-size complexes and little trains that run through the caves because they are so large. The world must consume an enormous amount of French Champagne. Tom just read in Le Figaro magazine that France claims to be the world's number one exporter of agricultural products. If this astounding claim is true, it must be because of all the wine that is made in this relatively small country. After the tour of the presses and fermentation chambers, we returned to the house and Arnold presented his order for numerous cases of bubbly, and for a case or two of Bouzy rouge. We were also each given a glass of Bouzy rouge. It was 38 years old! Bouzy rouge is a light-bodied red wine, not unlike a valpolicella classico. It is VERY good. Needless to say, Tom was our designated driver for the trip over to L'Epine, about 20 miles from Bouzy. We traversed Chalons again, getting a little bit lost in the middle of it. But at last we ended up at our hotel about 45 minutes before our dinner reservation. The hotel, Aux Armes de Champagne, is like a number of country inns we saw in 1998 when we took our big tour of the country. But, unlike many country inns, this one is a 4 star hotel and it was indeed very comfortable. It had a garden in the back, full of unbelievably profusely blooming flowers. We had a copious dinner -- I guess Tom and I are spoiled by the value and quality of restaurant food in Paris. But the amazing thing about dinner was our conversation. We explained that at the end of a day of listening to a foreign language and trying to speak it, we were fatigued. Arnold understood this perfectly well; he experiences this after a day of dealing with too many people in English when they are in Sanibel. We suggested that they speak French, because we have no trouble understanding their perfectly enunciated French. And we would speak to them in English. And so it went, beautifully. Once in a while, Arnold and Mareen would have to speak German to each other, to explain something that may not have been clear to Arnold, or for Arnold to explain something that Mareen didn't know how to say in French. A young couple at the table next to ours stared at us in utter disbelief. They were hearing this strange combination of English, French and German coming from the four of us. But the conversation flowed naturally. We had a wonderful time. We retired for the evening with plans for new adventures the following day . . . . |
