Lost in Provence

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Champagne...

Devaux

We learned a lot on our trip to the Champagne region. We got a complete tour of the Devaux facilities and saw Champagne being bottled right before our very eyes. Devaux is the fifth-largest Champagne maker in the world and produces bubbly for lots of big-name brands like Veuve Cliquot, Mumm and Jacquart. In fact, most of the bottles under these major labels are made at Devaux and the grapes that go into them are selected by Johann's cousin, Momo.

Some of Devaux's different varieties

First point of interest: There's big money to be made in Champagne. A bottle of Champagne only costs its producer about three euros. But after you slap the brand name onto it and factor in the costs of marketing and distribution, a low-cost bottle will run you about €22. Devaux bottles Champagne under its own label, made from the six hectares of grapevines the company owns, and their prices range from €21.50 to €126. We fell in love with Devaux's "Ultra D," an extra brut that has no added sugar and is about as dry as something that's a liquid could possibly be.

The Champagne region

Real Champagne, by definition, has to be produced in France's Champagne region, and only those produced here have the right to use the name "Champagne" on their bottles. That's not to say that fine bubblies aren't made in Italy and California, it just means they're not allowed to use the brand name of the region. Speaking of the region, as you can imagine, land here sells for a pretty penny. A piece of property 100 meters square is worth about a million euros. Unless, of course, you haven't purchased or inherited the right to grow grapes on it. Without that, you have yourself a field of wheat that's worth about €4,000. Beautiful as they were, looking at the wheat fields made me a little sad for their owners as we drove by. So close, and yet, so far.

The Devaux warehouse (I think I saw the Ark of the Covenant in there)

So, let's say you're off to the store for a bottle of Champagne. What to buy? First, you can narrow your choices down by demi-sec, brut and extra brut. Demi-sec is, in my opinion, undrinkable. It's sickly sweet, and reminiscent of those cheap bottles of Asti Spumante we all drank in high school before we knew any better. The major labels don't dedicate much of their production to demi-sec, and when I asked Momo who drinks it, he said "old people." So unless you are a member of The Greatest Generation or a high schooler with prom right around the corner, skip the demi-sec. You want brut, unless you prefer your drinks very dry and have a little extra money to spend. Then splurge on the extra brut.

The Champagne region

But now, how to tell whether it's a good bottle or not? We usually let the price guide us, don't we? Don't fall for that. Champagnes are made from a blend of different grapes, and generally speaking, the more chardonnay grapes in your bottle, the better quality it is. Of course, that's a matter of taste, and you can test where your affinities lie by buying a bottle that's made with 100% pinot gapes and one made with 100% chardonnay and comparing the two. As long as you have the bottle open, here's another way to gague its quality: bubbles. The smaller the bubbles are, the better the Champagne is. To get the best results, drink out of a proper Champagne glass, which comes to a point at the bottom of the glass and provides the best effect for the bubbles, not allowing your glass to go flat before you've finished it.

A glass of Champagne and my dessert

Finally, no Champagne tutorial would be complete without instructions on how to open the bottle. This is trickier than you might think. The number-one cause of eye injury in France is Champagne corks. (No kidding! I love this country.) After peeling back the foil and twisting off the wire holding the cork in, DO NOT TAKE YOUR HAND OFF THE CORK. The incredible pressure inside each bottle can (and frequently does) cause the cork to fly out without warning and cause considerable damage to anything in its path. (I'm not sure what the number-one cause of dining room chandelier breakage is in France, but I'd be willing to place a wager.) Then, and this is VERY IMPORTANT, tilt the bottle to one side and slowly twist the cork, pulling it out at as leisurely a pace as possible. Pulling the cork out quickly, or with the bottle straight up, will result in the characteristic Champagne geyser you see so often in the movies. And that's a waste of precious bubbly. 

Cheers!  

Bonjour from the Champagne Region!

 

Champagne!

Bonjour from France's Champagne region! The trip started well, with first class seats on the TGV from Marseille to Dijon. The high-speed train moves too fast for photos of the countryside to look like anything but a blur (at least, with my camera), but the scenery included rolling hills of grapevines, fields of sunflowers and vast expanses of golden wheat. (Unfortunately, you'll have to take my word for it that it was beautiful, since I've run into some technical difficulties with the photos and can't get any more trip pictures uploaded. So these ten of Johann enjoying Champagne and one of his cousin Momo will have to suffice for now.)

Champagne!

We picked up our rental car at the train station in Dijon and proceeded on to our hotel in Essoyes, Renoir's hometown. The hotel had three stars and all the perks its web site had promised: king-size bed, Italian shower, heated pool, gourmet restaurant, stunning views of the village below. We were thrilled. We had dinner at the restaurant that night, complete with a bottle of Champagne (what else?) from a vineyard just two towns away. Dinner was so good that we decided to have lunch there the next day (again, with Champagne), after which we took a dip in the pool and then got ready for the wedding, which was being held at 4 p.m. A French wedding consists of five parts:

Champagne!

1. Legal ceremony in the village mayor's office.

2. Religious ceremony at the village church.

3. Vin d'honneur. Can you believe we have already been to two wedding-related events without being offered a drink? Me neither. The vin d'honneur is a pre-reception toast to the happy couple, usually held somewhere within walking distance of the church but usually not the reception hall. Small hors d'oeuvres and drinks are served. Here, naturally, the drinks served were of the bubbly variety and from the groom's own vineyard.

4. Reception, dinner and dancing.

5. Post-wedding Sunday brunch.

What has two thumbs and loves Champagne? This guy.

Unfortunately, however, I only made it to the first fifth of these events, finding myself incapacitated by food poisoning and spending the next twelve hours being violently ill back at the hotel room (we did not eat at the hotel restaurant again). Johann had a great time, though, and reported that the dinner was spectacular and the Champagne kept flowing all night long. He danced up a storm and ooh-ed and aah-ed with the rest of the wedding guests at the fireworks display put on in the couple's honor (I had a pretty good view of that from the hotel room window).

Champagne!

Once I was feeling better again, we had lost time to make up for. We did the Renoir walk in our village, trekking from site to site to see his studio, the various scenes he painted, the house in which his wife was born and his gravestone. The little village of Essoyes is impossibly picturesque, and you can see how the pastoral beauty would have been inspiring to the famous painter.

 

Momo with a bottle of Devaux

We also took a tour of the nearby lakes and hiked through the bird sanctuary, stopping to stroll around whichever little village caught our eye or to take pictures of the gorgeous countryside. And lucky for us, Johann's cousin Mohammed (Momo) works for Devaux, France's fifth largest producer of Champagne, and he gave us a free tour and tasting. Surprised you've never heard of Devaux? Don't be. They produce only a small number of bottles under their own label, but if you've ever had Veuve Cliquot, Mumm, Jacquart or any of the other big-name brands, more likely than not, the bottle you had was produced and bottled at Devaux and our cousin Momo was the one responsible for buying the grapes that went into your bubbly. We learned a lot and there's a complete tutorial on Champagne to follow after I get the photo problem sorted out.

Cead Mille Failte from Ireland!

Ireland

Hello from Ireland, where the hills were green and rolling and the beer was brown and flowing! We spent ten glorious days there with our best friends from Chicago, Ed and Cindy, plus his parents and her parents. There were four nights in Dublin, two in Athlone and one each in Bunratty, Kilarney and Kinsale.

We saw a lot for just ten days. St. Patrick's, Dublinia, the Dublin Writers' Museum (guess whose idea that was!) the Guinness brewery, the Jameson distillery, the Cliffs of Moher, All Wee Cave, the beach on the Dingle penninsula, Bunratty Castle, the Bram Stoker tour, the Gravedigger's Pub, The Locke Distillery, Bunratty Castle, Fork Park, Trallee Rose Garden, Conmacnoise and The Burren. And I'm sure I'm forgetting something. 

Ireland

So, as you can see, Ed kept us on a tight but fun-filled schedule. He's the alpha wolf of this travel pack and always plans where we'll go and what we'll see. And since he has yet to have a bad idea, we'd follow him anywhere. Clever Ed rented a mini-bus with a driver to take us all over the country, avoiding the need to have a designated driver and providing us the opportunity to watch the countryside roll by while drinking beer and playing cards. He tried to incorporate a penalty shot of whiskey into our Euchre game, but it turned out that alcohol just improved my and Cindy's card-playing abilities. Cindy, let's Irish-up our card games from now on.

Ireland

We heard some traditional Irish music, though it was harder to find than we thought it would be. The first pub advertising authentic Irish music was playing The Eagles. The second, Billy Joel. I can't remember what the music was at the third pub, but it wasn't traditional or Irish, and at this point I would have given them credit if it had been U2. We drank pints in Dublin's oldest pub, Ireland's oldest pub and Ireland's smallest pub. We also drank pints in several pubs that I thought should be nominated for Ireland's hottest pub (the Irish clearly prefer an all-in-one pub/sauna experience), but I don't know if that's a category they track. All and all, before the first weekend was out, the trip had turned into such a pub crawl that Ed Sr. quipped, "So far, we've seen more pubs than sunshine!" Ed Jr. replied, "You sound shocked and disappointed. I'm neither."

Bunny with her cousin, Patrick

Ed's mother, Bunny, tracked down some Irish relatives and we spent a day visiting with them (including the museum her cousin owns and runs!), even getting our whole group invited for tea, which featured homemade scones and an apple pie that Ed didn't stop raving about the whole rest of the trip. We then spent what probably seemed like a greater part of the afternoon than it actually was trying to track down a woman who is supposedly the best friend of one of Bunny's friends in the States. I say "supposedly" because she was reputed to work at the post office in a town that turned out not to have a post office when we got there. Also, her name was Joan Cunningham. Joanie Cunningham? "Who's your friend, mom, the Fonz?" Ed asked. We never found her. Must have been some of that famous blarney we kept hearing about.

Ireland

Other notable stops included the stunning Bunratty Castle and the sublime Kilarney Lake, which is hands-down the most beautiful place I've ever been in my life. And naturally, we visited the Guinness brewery. The tour is very cleverly arranged, taking you up floor by floor, each one encircling the pint-glass shaped space in the center of the building. The tour ends with a glass-windowed bar on the top floor that features 360 degree views of Dublin, but knowing their customer base, the Guinness people don't make you wait until the seventh floor for a beer. There's a tasting room on the third floor, which is brilliant, because you can only absorb about three floors' worth of information about Guinness before wanting to drink one pretty badly.

The Guinness Tour

Johann installed me at a table in the corner of the tasting room and went to get us some free samples. Then he went back for seconds, but this time on the far left side of the bar. "Are these different than the ones at the other end?" He asked the bartender. "No," she replied. "I better verify that," he said, helping himself to two more glasses. When those were gone, he tried his original source again, but got a strange look as he grabbed two more. I tell you, there's nothing worse than judgmental free-sample bartenders.

Ed With His Whiskey Tasting Diploma

We took a tour of the Jameson distillery, too, which I highly recommend. Ed was one of the lucky few chosen to do a taste-test with Jameson vs. Scotch and American whiskey, after which he received a diploma certifying him as a graduate of the Jameson whiskey-tasting school. When we went back to the distillery the second weekend, we enjoyed an evening featuring a four-course dinner and traditional Irish music and dancing. Ed took the tour again. I think he has a master's degree in whiskey tasting now.

Ireland

There's so much more to say about Ireland, but I'm already packing our suitcases again. We're going to a family wedding in France's Champagne region and will be back next week with more stories and photos. Slainte!