The beauty of champagne

May is the month of holidays so despite having been busy for three consecutive weekends, I had to spend the next two travelling :) For the first one I went north to eat and drink, and then do that a little more. The next one I was off to Épernay with five friends for some champagne.

The first time I lived in France I lived in Reims, also in champagne, but unfortunately in those days I didn't have the means to enjoy the beverage as often as I liked. I also, surprisingly, never made it to Épernay even though it was only 30 minutes by train. It's a beautiful town and luckily for us, they make visiting the caves super easy. The main road in town is the Avenue de Champagne where you guessed it, you will find the majority of the caves!

Our first stop was Moët et Chandon.

It was the Journée Particulière fort he LVMH group - this is their version of "open doors". It meant the tour was free but there were no tastings. It also meant that they had tours at the Dom Pérignon Abbey in Hautevillers which is not usually open to the public. We headed off in the pouring rain on Sunday to this quaint village to see the abbey. Sadly they offer no tastings but we found a few other caves to make up for it!

Both tours were very informative and I learnt a lot about champagne - the champagne region has a lot of rules, for one. Champagne is made from three types of grapes - Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. The fermentation process is slightly more complex for champagne and takes a few years which explains the price. Some of the bottles are even turned by hand - 35,000-50,0000 per day. The more expensive bottles, including Dom, is made from the Grand Cru vines. Moët et Chandon owns 50% of these vineyards. Ok, enough of that, moving on to the pictures . . .

The caves of Moët et Chandon which span 28km. The first thing the tour guide said was, don't stray from the group as it could take a while to get out! 

The Dom Pérignon Abbey

Bottles designed in honour of Andy Warhol's request to drink champagne for the millennium

View from the abbey

View from the abbey

A bit more of Épernay. . .

City Hall

It's always important to take advantage of being in the countryside by breathing the unpolluted air and going for a walk to see green instead of concrete and stone. We decided to take a self guided tour to a lookout point which had some stunning views of the vineyards in the area.

 And then we were done for the day!