Bike Tour in Champagne

In addition to visiting three of the large champagne houses in Reims and Epernay, we visited a small house in a village near Reims as part of a half-day bike tour.

Our guide, Romain, picked us up at our apartment, and we were off to grab our bikes and begin the tour of some of the small villages in and around La Montagne de Reims. Now, La Montagne de  Reims is not much of a mountain, only 940 feet above sea level at its peak, but when you are riding up the incline into the natural park that covers the top of it, it feels much higher.

Our first stop on the journey, partway up the "mountain", was at some vines growing on the slopes. It turns out that some of the best pinot noir grapes used for champagne grow on the slopes of La Montagne de Reims, while lesser grapes grow in flatter areas lower down. The top of the mountain is covered with trees and is designated as a natural park. The views were beautiful:

One of the things we learned at this initial stop is that although the large champagne houses are responsible for most of the champagne production in the region, it does not own most of the land. In fact, many small land-owners own the vast majority of vineyards and sell the juice to champagne makers each September when the harvest takes place. We even saw rows of vines where one person only owned about five rows. Pretty small, but very valuable real estate.

After this stop, we continued to the top of the mountain and got to ride a bit through the trees (and a bit of rain) before making a stop at a number of military bunkers that date to WWI. It turns out that although La Montagne de Reims is not very high, it is the highest point in the area and commands a great view both east, from where the German armies were expected to attack, and northeast, from where the attack actually came (through Belgium). We will have more about WWI sites in our next post, but it was interesting to see that bunker building techniques did not change much between WWI and WWII.

Continuing our trip, we stopped to see  other vines and views, along with grabbing a picture of the Mumm Windmill, which we had heard about on our tour there:

Next, we rode along a series of flat roads that used to be a railroad prior to WWII. During the later stages of the war, Nazi Germany was in dire need of steel to make weapons and therefore ripped up parts of the railway for that purpose. We even saw an old station that is now abandoned. Now, the railway no longer exists and its route is just paths among the trees and villages for hikers and bikers.

Finally, after 2.5 hours on the trails, we returned to Romain's van and drove to his family's champagne house for a tour of their cellars and, of course, a tasting. Although the tour and information we received was very similar to what we had heard from the bigger houses, it was interesting to see everything on a smaller scale along with viewing the actual production area. In fact, the business is run from a building on the same property as his parents' house and the caves are beneath that building.

We also really enjoyed the tasting because at each of the larger houses we tasted only one champagne, in each case their standard brut. But, at Larnaudie-Hirault we got to taste three. First, we tasted a Brut Naturale, which is a champagne in which no additional sugar is added in the final stages of production (most brut (dry) champagnes add 5-9 grams of sugar per liter at this point). We found the Brut Naturale really interesting and recommend trying it if you ever come across one, which is only likely in specialty wine stores in the US. Next, we got to try both a blanc de blanc (a champagne made entirely from chardonnay grapes) and a blanc de noir (a champagne made entirely from red grapes, but which is still white). We really enjoyed all of their champagnes and even bought a few bottles to take home.

We will definitely try to return to the Champagne region and visit more of the smaller producers that are in the villages surrounding Reims and Epernay. Although it is more work to set up such visits, we think the quality of the tastings would definitely be worth it.

Au revoir,

Jeff and Shana