Goodbye Reims, Hello Paris

My last day in Reims started like the previous – a long walk down to a champagne house! Today I was visiting Veuve Clicquot, one of my favourites, for their “Aromatiquement votre” tour. 

Again, I was first there, but the other two people on this activity turned up pretty soon – an American couple. We warmed pretty quickly, especially when trading stories about champers and dogs! (not together…)

The tour started with a quick background on the champagne region and VC’s part in it. We looked at the three types of grape vines used to make bubbles (chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier, so named because the new growth looks like it’s dusted with flour, as “meunier” apparently means “miller”). 

Next up was a visit to the “Garden of the Senses”, a herb and flower garden where they grow various aromatics and some tastes (herbs, blackberries, peaches) to stimulate the senses used when tasting wines. We wandered around the garden rubbing leaves, sniffing honey-scented buddelia, and tasting blackberries. 

We were next brought into a small room with a large portrait of Madame Clicquot, who revolutionised the champagne industry with things like inventing the riddling process and making single year vintages. She certainly sounds like an interesting woman.

After this background, we had a bit of a tasting “lesson”, where Liesel (or Liesen?) gave us tastes and sniffs of various flavours and aromas that had been identified in the vintages we’d be tasting, with various extremes such as lemon curd, cherry jam and truffle oil! She gave us a hint about the vintages too, letting us know we’d be trying the 2004 white and rose, as well as a much older white and rose, but that she wouldn’t tell us the year yet!

After this, we headed down into the crayeres, where we would be having our wine and cheese tasting. Liesel handed us over to her colleague, Vincent, who took over from there. 

Our tasting was in one of the oenothèques (wine library) where they store small numbers of special vintages. It was candlelit plus a few of the yellow lights they use to avoid the lights spoiling the wine. The table was set with plates of four cheeses, with four glasses, and four bottles of vintage: 2004 privee cave white, 2004 privee cave rose, and the surprises were a 1990 privee cave white and the 1989 rose! 

Wow… even though this experience was expensive (90euro each), it was worth it! The older vintages cost ~$300 per bottle, so being able to savour a glass of them is unlikely to happen again very soon.

My favourite was the oldest rose… which is amusing since I liked the vintage Ruinart the best yesterday, too. Ah well, expensive tastes as long as it’s only a glass-full!

A convivial tipsy trio of giggled their way out of the oenothèque, past the 1978 privee cave rose (my birth year vintage, in case anyone needs an idea about a fabulous birthday pressie) and into the boutique.

As well as wines, VC does have a lot more souvenir-type items in the gitt shop: tea towels, plastic glasses, wine stoppers, aprons, ice buckets… much fun. I ended up with a single plastic glass in the signature “yellow label” orange, and a tea towel, before being directed to the bus stop outside for a much cheaper lift back to the city centre.

I had to check out, so I left my luggage at reception while I went into town to kill time before my train in the evening. I started with a late lunch of mussels in a lovely creamy champagne and mushroom sauce (see? there’s a connection with champers and champignons!) and wandered around town a bit. I stopped into a couple of bottle shops and picked up some half bottles, not realising when I bought them singly, that together they weighed quite a lot! 

My luggage was pretty overstuffed by the time I disposed of the bottles, but I managed to drag it to the train and heave it into the luggage rack. At this point I was considering cracking one open and downing it on the train for sheer space! But no, I managed okay.

We reached Paris Est, and I realised my plans for taking the metro to the hotel were foiled by the many stairs in the way, so I took a taxi.

Paris is much more frantic and busy than Reims! Even at 8pm on a Thursdsay night in the holidays where “everyone” has left Paris apart from tourists, it was buzzing! Even the hotel porters were so busy in conversation that I was halfway up the steps before they noticed me.

The hotel is a grand old dame of the nineteenth century variety, but is having some much-needed renovations done, so a few things aren’t working. I didn’t expect my aircon to be one of them though, as it was blowing out hot air when set to cold when I got to my room. I rang reception to ask them to send someone to have a look at it, and waited. And waited. After 45 mins of getting sweaty and uncomfortable, I decided to go down and ask in person, and have a drink at the bar. It seems my concern hadn’t been recorded anywhere, so much surprise all round, as two people started tapping away on their computers, studiously avoiding eye contact. While this was happening, I asked about the tea/coffee facilities that were advertised as being in the rooms. Again, much surprise, especially when I showed them the Hilton website stating this! Sad shaking heads at this – we know nothing about it; it must be something happening once the renovations are done, but you can hire a kettle for 10 euros! I tried to argue that it was an advertised feature, but didn’t get anywhere. I decided to wait in the bar, and saw the famous mouse/mice people had mentioned in their tripadvisor reviews having a fabulous time running around the floor. By this point I was wondering why I was staying here!

Reception eventually managed to fine me another room, so I grabbed my things and moved! Thankfully the new room was cool, and was in much better condition – no tiles falling off in the bathroom and it had seen paint in the last twenty years! I heaved a sigh of relief at being cool, and went to bed.