bubbly town

Ablind monk dom Perignon, known as the inventor of champagne, put the region of Champagne in north-eastern France on the epicurean world map. Thanks to the TGV bullet train, i find myself in Reims (pronounced‘rance’) the region’s capital, in less than an hour from Paris.

From here i drove down to Hautvillers, or ‘high place’, a gorgeous village founded in 658, overlooking the marne and surrounded by vineyards. it is here in the Abbey that dom Perignon in the mid 1600s made the cloudy, effervescent, regional wine of the time into something which is clear, bubbly and cork popping, now known the world over as champagne.

As i walked the cobbled streets of the picture perfect town, i could see history everywhere i looked—Roman ruins, a medieval centre, streetside cafes and creperies, and of course the stupendous Abbey of Saint Pierre where rests the tombstone of dom Petrus Perignon who was born around 1638 Ad and became a benedictine monk at the age of 19. in 1668, he was transferred to the Abbey of Hautvillers and was then appointed as its Treasurer and Cellar master.

The wide sweep of bountiful vineyards along the slopes of the mountain of Reims is gorgeous. i am intrigued by the wrought iron house signs around me. There are 160 of them in this small village, i am told, and all of them have something to do with champagne. Even the school, the wash house and the fire station have signs like this! The village is home to around 70 wine growers and many inhabitants during the summer months. The town is one of France’s loveliest, and as for the drink, i would let dom Perignon have the last word: “Come quickly, i am tasting stars,” he said, after his first taste of champagne.

While the Abbey is beautiful with gorgeous stained glass windows, you don’t go to Hautvillers for just the Abbey, you obviously also go there for the champagne. Champagne Tribaut is one of those family-run houses that is worth a stop and certainly a taste. located 88 rue d’eguisheim it is open daily 9 a.m. to noon and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. so i called in advance for a free tour in English(there is a small charge for tastings). it turned out to be a charming, family operation producing particularly well-regarded blanc de blancs and vintage champagnes, especially the Grand Cru. There are far more champagne houses than anyone has time to visit so i realised you need to focus on the ones you absolutely want to do.

many cellar visits later, i feel like a champagne queen, feeling giddy with all the knowledge (and the tastings of course)! The drink is traditionally made using a blend of Chardonnay, Pinot noir and Pinot meunier (black grapes), but one can also find blanc de blancs which is 100% Chardonnay or blanc de noirs, two Pinots only. it is fermented twice, which gives it the bubbles. in the second fermentation, yeast and sugar are added and the liquid is sealed and aged for approximately one and a half years. The yeast inside the bottle consumes the sugar, releasing alcohol and gas.

interestingly, as the champagne ages, the yeast begins to die, leaving sediments. At this stage, one has to start riddling the bottles i.e. rotating them every few days and storing them tilted upside-down. Lees are then removed by freezing only the neck and removing the cap. The pressure from inside pushes out the ice with the lees frozen inside; additional blends of wine are added to top off the bottle and it is recapped. And of course, it does not lose all of its bubbles because the gas in champagne is actually in the wine itself, not just added carbonation.

Interestingly, in the days of Dom Perignon, bottles were pushed into sand piles so that the sediment could collect. It was in the 19th century that Veuve Clicquot, a champagne house in Reims, invented the riddling table and the process of turning and tilting the bottles became more efficient.

At the end of the tour we were given a tasting. In our case we were very lucky because they were sampling special vintage champagne made from only Chardonnay grapes. Now that’s the way I love my holiday! And of course I loved the tasting session, and to be honest I cheated: drank instead of spitting it out… I mean how can you waste it?

My spirits rise with each swirl of the golden liquid and I hope for unexpected moments to happen. Watching those delicate bubbles escaping to the top of my champagne glass, I feel as if I am in magic land.

To wrap up my ‘Champagne Days’, I traipse to Moet& Chandon to pick up a bottle of Dom Perignon to take back. When Moet & Chandon bought the Abbey of Hautvillers in 1792, they put the monk on the label to sell more wine after all he was the person who doubled the size of the Abbey’s vineyard under his stewardship! In reverence, I pause to also take back a picture of this man. Happy and floating with a bottle of the best bubbly in my arms, the world seems especially beautiful.