The Taste of Travel: French Champagne

France considers its wine a national treasure, and the crown jewel of that treasure is champagne. The houses - Bollinger, Krug, Pommery, Taittinger, Veuve Cliquot - are well known to aficionados and many welcome visitors for a look behind the mystique.

By law, only champagne created in the Champagne region of France can bear the name - everything else is merely sparkling wine, and no matter how good, lacks the prestige of the iconic French bubbly. Though you can travel to myriad small champagne vineyards throughout the region, the most accessible place to enjoy a glass of authentic bubbly is in Reims, capital of the Champagne province and a short 45-minute TGV train ride from Paris.

Rich in history and home of the cathedral where France's kings were crowned, Reims has a lot to offer, but for a touch of life in the lap of luxury, two cellar tours top the list. Domaine Pommery and G.H. Mumm are both walking distance from the city center, and the cellar tours give visitors an excellent overview of the process of making world-class champagne along with the history of champagne and the individual companies. Keep in mind, tours of the champagne caves should be booked in advance to ensure a spot in an English-language tour. Each lasts about an hour, with a tasting at the end.

Madame Louise Pommery built the Domaine Pommery Estate ten years after taking over her late husband's champagne business, and she was responsible for creating brut (dry) champagne in 1874. Before that time, champagne was a very sweet drink, generally consumed with dessert. Brut is also lighter and fruitier than the original.

In addition to playing a key role in the history of champagne, Madame Pommery was also a great supporter of the arts, and as you follow your guide down the stairs into the caves, which were originally carved out of the chalk earth 2,000 years ago by Roman slaves, you will see numerous pieces of art spanning a variety of genres.

The caves at the G.H. Mumm Estate, created by Georges Hermann de Mumm, a short distance away are newer, but fill the same function of keeping the 20 - 25 million bottles at a constant 10 to 12 degrees Celsius and 85 percent humidity. Similar in size, both Pommery and G.H. Mumm produce about 5 million bottles each year.

Following your guide through each tour, you will have the process of making champagne explained in depth, from the planting and harvesting of the grapes to the aging process, riddling and removal of sediments and, finally, opening the bottles. Each tour travels past stack after stack of bottles, walls in their own right, frequently pausing at points of interest to talk. Pommery's caves still have labels on the walls of various cities throughout the world - reminiscent of the time when champagne was prepared differently according to a particular region's tastes. Now, however, it follows the same recipe.

Champagnes are blends of wines, and the cellar masters have the ultimate say in which wines will be selected for that year's vintage, giving the champagne its final style. At Pommery, up to 150 different wines are involved in the process.

After blending, the champagne is fermented with yeast and sugar. This is the second fermentation in the champagne process, as the blended wines are each previously fermented. The second fermentation must be aged at least 15 months, but both Pommery and G.H. Mumm age all of their bottles a minimum of 30 months.

The second fermentation leaves sediment of dead yeast, and that must be removed before the bottle is eventually sold. To get the sediment to the neck of the bottle, it subjected to riddling, the careful twisting of the bottle at different angles during the fermentation to allow sediments to collect at the neck of the bottle.

In the past, the sediments were removed by quickly opening the bottle and allowing the pressure to shoot them out before re-corking. That had to be done with skill, to prevent losing too much of the champagne, but still allowing the removal of the sediment. Today, the necks of the bottles are frozen, so the sediment is trapped in a block of ice. The bottles are opened, the frozen sediment is expelled under pressure, and the bottle is re-corked.

At G.H. Mumm, there is a small museum featuring some of the antique tools and devices used in the champagne-making process in the past. Pommery's caves are adorned with objets d'art throughout, but both take tours past their most precious bottles - safely behind protective bars.

On display at Pommery is a bottle of the first vintage of brut and every vintage since. G.H. Mumm has a similar display, with bottles from the current vintage all the way back to the 1800s.

At the end of each tour, there is a tasting. The basic tours include one glass for about €10 per person. Additional glasses of champagne will add to the cost and the experience. Bottles, t-shirts and a number of other souvenirs are available in gift shops at each estate.

Practical Info

Reims can be done as a day trip from Paris if your only goal is to tour champagne caves, but even then, it is best to stay at least one night in the city.

Getting There: The best way to get to Reims is on a direct, highspeed TGV train leaving from Paris Est station. Prices start as low as $20 one way if booked online in advance (http://www.raileurope.co.uk/). A tram is being built in Reims to make transportation within the city even easier, though construction is ongoing.

Reims Info: Online Guide to Reims

Champagne Houses

Domaine Pommery
5 Place General Gourand, +33 (0) 26 61 62 55
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Tours start at €10

Hours: Easter to mid-November 10am - 5pm daily

G.H. Mumm
34 Rue du Champ de Mars, +33 (0 )326-49-6967
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Tours start at €10

Hours: Daily March 1 to October 31, 9am - 11am and 2 - 5pm; other times weekend and holiday afternoons

Taittinger
9 Place Saint Nicaise, Reims Cedex, +33 (0) 326-85-4535, Website

Hours: mid-March to mid-November Daily 9:30am - 1pm, 2pm - 5:30pm; other times Monday - Friday only.

Veuve Clicquot
12 rue du Temple, Reims Cedex, +33 (0) 326-89-5440
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Visits by appointment only

Note: This article was originally published on The Savvy Explorer

Misadventures: Traffic Violations

I admit it. I'm guilty of a slew of traffic violations in France.

I broke at least three laws, and I was only driving for about eight minutes.

It wasn't really dangerous, but I did sort of run a red light, speed and drive the wrong way down a one-way street.

Let me explain.

We had to drop our car off at the Hertz office at the train station in Reims after hours. Normally, this would present no problem at all. The rental office is right in front of the station, and there's a drop box for the keys.

When I was there, however, the whole front of the train station was shut down and appeared to be closed off by construction of a new city tram/train service that will make navigating the city a whole lot easier.

My dad was driving, and my GPS ignored the fact that we couldn't get where it wanted us to go, so we were on our own. We ended up parking the car on the opposite side of the station and walking through it to try to find a route to get the car to the correct parking lot so we didn't get charged with the French equivalent of grand theft auto.

I saw there were two women in the Hertz office, even though it was closed, so I knocked on the door. One said something about being "ferme" (closed), and I proceeded to butcher the French language as I tried to explain our plight with the 16 or so verbs and 100ish words I knew.

Fortunately, she spoke English and told us how we could get to the parking lot, where several taxis were waiting around for a fare.

Walking back to the car, I held my hand out for the keys. My dad gave me a funny look, but it had been a week and a half since I'd driven, and three years since I'd driven in Europe. More importantly, I wanted to be done with dropping the car off and get back to the fun part of the trip.

My dad feels compelled to follow the rules of the road to a T, even while being passed by all the locals. I don't fault him for it. In fact, I think it's probably the best way to travel.

However, if I am ever pulled over and cited by gendarmes, I think it would be funny, and it would probably make a good story.

We piled into our Opel Meriva, which is a normal-sized car but felt cramped with all of our luggage, and I started it up.

I began my vehicular crime spree by speeding. I'm not sure why the French seemed to think that 30 kilometers per hour is a good speed to be driving. The thing is, 30kmph is less than 19mph, and I don't think my German-engineered car made for the autobahn (maybe a stretch there) could even go that slowly. I thought 45kmph (about 28mph) was a more reasonable speed, especially since there was no one on the road.

I reached a larger road with more traffic and saw where I needed to turn. No one was coming, so I turned. My dad and sister started laughing and shouting something about running a red light. I think they were mistaken, but they assure me that I did, in fact, run it.

Whatever.

As I cruised past the construction toward the Hertz office, I had one of two choices. Option One was to follow the arrows, negotiate all the parked taxis and travelers who ignored the crosswalks as they lugged 90-lb suitcases over cobblestones. Option Two was to drive the wrong way down a one-way street for about 60 feet and end up at the Hertz office.

And really, it's not like it was actually a street. It was some nonsense someone had set up with cones. I have the utmost respect for French highway engineers, but I think the guy who set this up was just taking the easy route so he could go grab a glass of wine and a baguette - which is exactly what I wanted to be doing.

I wish I could write that some gendarmes came running out of the train station and I explained to them exactly why I had done what I did before we all went and got drinks and they gave me one of their cool hats, but no one saw me, or no one cared.

I tossed the keys in the drop box and became a pedestrian again.


-A note on the photos: The top photo is the Opel Meriva I was driving, but that photo was taken in Eguisheim, France, about three days earlier. The photo of the two gendarmes was taken in Paris, and I still want one of their hats.