Champagne supernova

On Saturday, we headed out of Reims and took the scenic route to Epernay, trying to follow the Route des Vins as much as possible (tricky since it wasn't signposted out of Reims, so we just headed towards a village that seemed good and picked it up at some random point along the way). Saturday wasn't quite as wonderfully sunny as Friday, but we still got some nice weather, especially for our lunch in Hautvillers, which was nice.

Stopped off at some random point on the road and hiked up to an old church on a hill (unfortunately closed) to take a few snapshots:

A pretty cool photo, if I do say so myself! It looks like we were up really early in the morning, but this is actually slightly later than the photo below, it was just really hazy down in the valley. Pity the vines are still bare!

I look like I'm wearing a romper

Pensive moment in the vineyard (or am I just trying to get my hair out of my eyes?)

We stopped off in Hautvillers and visited the grave of Dom Perignon himself, which was fun although the abbey where he's buried isn't otherwise especially noteworthy. But our lunch on the terrace at Au 36 was a highlight. The staff were actually very friendly and accommodating, which of course is not always the case in France, we shared two glasses of champers (plus an extra for me) for a very reasonable price, and they served up a delicious tapas-style selection of Reims specialities. The pâté en croute, boudin blanc and mini potato and ham galettes were to die for. And that giant pink thing on the side was a rose and raspberry macaron! Jules had the slightly less exciting duck platter, but I did let him try all of mine, so he didn't come out of it too badly.

Lunch

Wine tasting at Hautvillers - we tried chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier-based champagnes - it was interesting how different they tasted, with the pinot noir my favourite. Most champagnes are actually blends of two or three of these grapes ("assemblages")

Once in Epernay, we headed to the famous Avenue de Champagne, home of many prestigious champagne houses. Unfortunately it seems we were a little early in the season, as all of the beautiful ones pictured below seemed to be closed and were shut away behind elaborate wrought-iron gates (I poked my camera through). It still made for impressive viewing though, and it was nice not to be surrounded by coach-loads of tourists.

This one was the nicest, I think it's Perrier

The town hall

Part of Moët and Chandon's massive property, on both sides of the street. If you ever doubted there's money to be made in champagne, just come here and see the magnificent palaces the big houses occupy

We stopped for a tasting at one of the only places that seemed to be open, A. Bergère, and enjoyed a zero dose champagne in the sunshine and peace and quiet. I'm a little bit obsessed with zero dose sparkling wines, since having a fantastic (but, frustratingly, not for sale) zero dose Montlouis at the Tours wine festival. If you don't know, dosage is the amount of sugar added to the wine in the final stage, after they take the sediment out and before they put the cork on. Brut, the standard dosage you probably drink most often, can have up to 15 grams of residual sugar per litre, whereas zero dose (also called Brut Nature) has no added sugar and no more than 3 grams total. Apparently back in the day people used to like their champagnes ridiculously sweet - with up to 50 grams of sugar per litre, but tastes have changed and more and more winemakers are experimenting with low or zero dosages. This is apparently aided by climate change producing grapes with more natural sugar in them, thus eliminating the need for added dosage. The A. Bergère champers wasn't my favourite of the trip (that would be the 2004 Joseph Perrier we had at Le Foch) but it was interesting and I'd definitely love to try some more - I hate sweet wine!

Me and my zero dose

We then took a tour of de Castellane, which was not a name I recognised, but you've probably seen the white bottles with a red diagonal cross on them. They also have a very pretty building with a 66 metre-high tower (which we walked up, exhausting) - a former water tower. It was an interesting contrast to the tour I took of Taittinger with my sister. That basically just shows you the chalk cellars and it all looks very traditional and oldy-worldy. Although you go into the caves at de Castellane as well, you also tour through their factory and get to see the modern process of how champagne is made today. It would be interesting (although I suppose noisy) to see it during the week, when the factory is actually operational. They bottle a phenomenal amount each day, I can't remember how much, but tens of thousands of bottles every day from just one champagne house, and not even a particularly big-name one (although I think it is a very solid mid-range supermarket champagne).

Outside de Castellane

We walked up a horrible spiral starcase to the first level of windows in the octagonal turret

I love my champagne friend!

View from the top - not hugely scenic, but the river was an amazing green colour

We capped off the evening with a tasting of six champagnes (between us) at C comme Champagne. I was really hoping for more of a guided/commented dégustation, which we didn't really get across the whole weekend. In fairness though, the bartender did give us a quick rundown of what we would be tasting at the beginning and then answered some of the questions we had. For example, I finally learned what makes some sparkling wines bubblier than others. It's not the amount of yeast or sugar, as I had thought, but how long they are aged. Wines that are aged for longer will have more delicate and fewer bubbles than younger wines. The barman sniffily commented that that's why Alsace wines are particularly bubbly - "they don't age them at all, amateurs". That actually makes sense to me, because I prefer finer bubbles and it does seem that you are more likely to get that with a more expensive wine, which of course means that the vinter has to be able to afford and have the space to keep the wines in the cellar for longer.

Our selection of champagnes for the evening

After getting up before 6 am on Sunday to watch the first (sadly, dull) F1 race of the season, we returned to C comme Champagne and A Bergere to make some purchases with the car on hand to haul our booty away, and then we headed back to Brussels so that Jules would have the time for a rest before having to drive back to Luxembourg (poor thing). On the way, probably the most exciting part of our mini break happened - an encounter with the largest wild boar in the world!!

His name is Woinic, he weighs 50 tonnes and was made out of steel by one dude pretty much just as a hobby over 11 years.

Pretty awesome

Excitement levels were very high for this boar encounter, I can tell you. What better way to finish off a lovely anniversary weekend?

Reims dreams

Can you believe last week was my one-year anniversary with Jules? Me, who looked most likely to die alone eaten by Bobby (the cat)? I know, me neither. It's been a great year, although obviously complicated by my moving to another country two plus hours away. Which sucks, but has some upsides. Like, with summer around the corner, I've decided to pretend that weekends in Luxembourg are me going to my rural retreat (it helps that Jules's apartment is awesome and has a huge terrace I'm dying to be served cocktails on). Who doesn't want to be cool enough to have a little pied à terre in an exotic European country? I can merrily pretend to be rich enough to be engaging in a little light tax evasion in my Luxembourgish pad, much fun.

So we decided to celebrate this milestone in style with a trip to that most festive of regions, Champagne. We took Friday off work and made a beeline from Luxembourg to Reims on a beautiful sunny day, to have an anniversary lunch at Le Foch, the restaurant I dined in with my sister when we visited back in 2011. In fact, Le Foch was really why we stayed a night in Reims - I had initially thought of doing two nights in Epernay, but I wanted to have lunch there and I didn't want Jules to have to worry about driving afterwards. It turned out pretty well, since there's not all that much to see in Epernay other than champagne houses (which are pretty cool) and we also had a nice drive between the two cities - but more on that next time.

In front of an unfortunately-scaffolded Reims cathedral - not a cloud in the sky

A row of different animal gargoyles

Beautiful arches recede into the distance inside the cathedral

I don't have anything appropriate to say about this. Let's just say you wouldn't get into a white van with this on the side (it says "Don't be afraid" by the way)

We had a more modest five courses this time (plus amuse-bouches and petits fours - there was also a cheese course but I didn't put a photo of that because it just looked like cheese), as opposed to the seven or eight of the full dégustation I did with my sister.

Amuses-bouche: foie gras and apple pannacotta, parmesan sablé and the most delicious tuna (? tasted like hamburger but I think he said tuna) with a pickle gêlée on top

Rabbit cannelloni - weirdly tasted nothing like rabbit, more like tuna (tuna confusion all round) but tasty

Red mullet

Venison with puree and acidic turnips - you wouldn't think a turnip would be so delicious, Baldrick would have a field day

Chocolate feuilletine with spun sugar: soooo good and crunchily delicious

After the cheese course, a pear wine smoothie

Not looking awkward

Lunch lasted about three hours, then we still had some time to walk around Reims a bit and visit Le Vergeur museum.

Le Vergeur museum

This 13th-16th century building houses the collections of Hugues Krafft, the rich scion of a champagne-cultivating family who owned the house in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was a keen traveller, photographer and artist who was passionate about both preserving Reims history (he salavaged many pieces from the ruins after WWI) and collecting items from his travels in central and east Asia. Surprisingly, from the limited number of his own works on display in the house, he was also quite a gifted photographer. I suppose you always think these types will be a bit dilettantish and do these things because they have the leisure and money to, not because of any particular talent, but I was impressed. The house was left more or less as it was in his lifetime, at his request, so it offers a different perspective than your traditional museum. It's accessible (I think) only by guided tour. We were the only ones on the tour, which was nice, and our guide was very informative and knowledgeable.

AND there's a collection of some 50 original Dürer woodcuts and engravings. My favourites, the Apocalypse series, were taken from a book printed in 1511, but which was subsequently unbound so that you can see all of the woodcuts at once. It was incredible that these were 500 years old but looked just like new, and they were actually presented in a normally-lit room, not the semi-darkness you often find with old books and manuscripts. They reminded me a lot of the Apocalypse tapestries at Angers. No photos were allowed inside the museum, especially of the woodcuts of course, but there's some photos on the website here and I would recommend checking it out if you're in Reims - not too big either, so you don't get exhausted!

PS I know "Reims dreams" only rhymes if you mispronounce Reims. Or dreams.

Dirty thirty

You know how I said my birthday drinks in London were sober and sensible and my birthday drinks in Tours were going to be nothing like that? Yep, turns out I was right. But they were awesome!

Spent pretty much all day on Friday and Saturday cooking and cleaning and shopping in preparation for the big day, and stressing over whether it would be a success. I don't really like hosting parties because I'm worried no-one will come or they won't have a good time, and it will be miserable and everyone will hate me forever. So it wasn't a great sign that about 5 people cancelled on me on the days leading up to the party :( But I tried to forge ahead with the idea that the important people would be there and there would be more champagne for us!

On Wednesday, before going up to Paris, I'd posted a note to all my neighbours telling them I'd be having a small party and to let me know if there was a problem, or to come over for a drink. I also blu-tacked a copy of the note to the outside of my letterbox, just to make sure that everyone saw it. When I got back to Tours on Thursday, I noticed that it was gone from my letterbox. I was a bit confused - did the postman take it down, because of some obscure French rule about the inviolatedness of French letterboxes? Or had one of my neighbours taken it for their own reference? On Saturday morning, I noticed a screwed-up piece of paper next to the front door, down a flight of stairs from the letterboxes. Was it...? It was - someone had taken the note down, screwed it up, and thrown it on the floor. This was not a good start to neighbour-party bilateral relations.

So when I got a knock on my door at 7.15 pm (the note had said the party would kick off at 8, although I'd actually invited my friends for 7.30), I feared the worst. I opened the door to my neighbour from across the hall (there's only two apartments on each floor in my building). I've literally never seen this guy since the day I moved in, although I have occasionally run into a friend or two coming and going from his apartment. It's weird, I hardly ever see any of my neighbours. Anyway, I was relieved, but even more flabberghasted, when he announced his intention to come to my party. I think I looked the opposite of welcoming at this point, but I managed to politely let him know that I wasn't *quite* ready at this stage, but would be pleased to see him in half an hour or so, when I'd finished putting on my makeup.

Turns out my voisin de palier is awesome! We are now united against the biatch neighbour downstairs who complained about my music - for some bizarre reason, he even got a letter from the agents saying that she'd complained about him, even though it was me who was playing the music (and I didn't get anything). But instead of turning against me, he was like "she's completely ridiculous - you were playing music on a Saturday afternoon, I couldn't even hear it, and she came to complain so I told her to get a life". He's also apparently engaged in "psychological warfare" with the woman downstairs, which consists of her asking him to take out the rubbish and him not doing it. I KNEW I was the only person who took the rubbish out, goddammit! I ran into this neighbour the other day when coming back from the airport, and she said thankyou for taking the recycling out, because the bin's too big for her to get down the stairs (which is understandable, it's taller than me too when coming down the stairs). I have no idea how she knows I do it (spying out the windows?), but anyway, while I will continue putting the bins out, it's now naughty Team 3rd Floor against the rest of the building heh heh. We even got to tour his apartment, the designated smoking room for the party - he has a sweet set-up with real windows, unlike my skylights, a proper separate kitchen, and an electric toilet, which explains why it makes so much damn noise! (Why does one require an electric toilet, does anyone know?) Anyway, he stayed almost the whole party, and we're totally going to hang out again soon! (Or maybe I'll never see him again, unsociable recluse that I am. Who can say?)

Anyway, neighbour love aside, we had a great time! (PS, Hey Firefox, stop telling me that "neighbour" is a spelling mistake, k?) We got through FOUR bottles of champagne, and assorted other booze, parts of two birthday cakes + brownies, started the dancing at around midnight (when I had vowed we would leave so as not to piss off the neighbours, oops - but no-one complained this time), then ran to McCools before closing time to make the bartender give us free shots (success!). After a short jaunt in Excalibur, we ended the evening at L'Académie de la Bière, where I somehow accidentally got into a conversation about how I disapprove of circumcision with a Muslim man. Oops. That's okay though, he said I was "charmante" anyway. Of course, it's well-known I'm at my *most* charmante when offending people's genitalia and religious beliefs!

I got home at 7 am, and woke up a few hours later with barely even a hangover to show for it. Result! I did, however, COMPLETELY fall over and I have a massive bruise on my hip bone. How do you even fall over on to your hip? I must have just gone down literally flat on my face. Such class. By the way, I was in sandals at this point, having left the 10 cm heels in my apartment. We were skipping and singing tunes from The Wizard of Oz at the time, as you do. So at least I fell over under hilarious circumstances, not just because I was too drunk to walk in flats like a normal person.

Oh, and remember how it was meant to be a soirée dégustation? Once every hour or so I remembered this and asked everyone how the wine was and everyone said "We love champagne! Huzzah!" or words to that effect. Dégustation = great success.

My twoooo birthday cakes = two wishes

Om nom nom! Also, I have the knee boobs of a very busty lady

Popping the fourth bottle of champagne of the evening - Démoiselle Rosé. I have a bit of a case of "red wine mouth" here - yep, we also had 2 bottles of red, a bottle of white & a bottle of Vouvray. Zat's a lotta booze. I like this photo even though I don't know why I thought sticking my arse out would be a flattering look

David "catching" the cork

Charlie did not like my evil Ukrainian chilli vodka

Crouching tiger, hidden champers

Let's try that again, without falling over. This was champagne bottle #3

Liz and David

Champagne bottle #1 - Démoiselle. All photos had to feature the shoes. I ran out of ideas later in the evening, and there are some truly terrible ones of me sitting on chairs backwards and so on

Me and the ladies, with champagne bottle #2 - Tsarina. I took two many photos with this one, resulting in a champagne explosion when opened

The dancing started at about midnight

Liz made me an awesome 30th birthday badge. That's my cool (and cute) neighbour Vincent!

More dancing

Best birthday ever, hello thirties!

Pop the champagne!

Happy birthday to me (for tomorrow). Officially into the last year of my 20s, one step closer to dying alone and being eaten by Bob (the cat). Ha ha.

I had decided I wasn't up for doing a big thing for my birthday this year. Hosting parties tends to stress me out - will everyone turn up? Will there be enough food? (There is ALWAYS enough food, since I come from the "prepare for an attack from the eating equivalent of Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde" school of catering, as exemplified by my father, but doesn't stop me stressing about it for the next time.) Will they have fun? Will it be awkward and everyone will hold an impromptu ceremony to crown me Worst Hostess Ever? So I decided just to have a drink with Liz, my best friend in Tours. Also, I'd bought a bottle of champagne (Taittinger, in honour of our visit to the caves and the fact that it is delicious) and, being the selfish type, I wanted to share it with as few people as possible while not being sad and drinking a bottle of champagne all by myself on my birthday. However, just before I left work on Friday I got a facebook message from Stephanie, the American girl I met recently and went to the pretend-80s club with, asking if I wanted to grab a drink with her, so I decided to invite her around too. Again, because I'm a selfish person, I told her to come over an hour after Liz, so that we could quaff the champagne before she got there. Ha, I feel bad, but if you can't be a greedy champagne hoarder on (well, just before) your birthday, when can you be?

Liz blew me away with my birthday present. Way back last Christmas we were in Paris for the day together before flying out to Liverpool and Bristol, respectively, in the evening. Liz knows Paris better than I do, so she took us trawling through the Asian clothes shops by Republique. I think she wanted gloves or something. Anyway, I really wanted to buy this bag, but in the end I didn't get it because I was worried I was already going to be overweight with my luggage on EasyJet - I was going back to the UK with something like 5 bottles of wine, plus all my Christmas presents. When I came back through Paris to put my parents on the plane back to the UK, I tried to find the shop again - after all, usually when I stay in Paris I stay in a hostel right by Republique, so it should have been easy. But I couldn't find the street even, let alone the shop with the bag. So almost a year later, you can imagine how chuffed I was that Liz remembered the bag I wanted (I haven't thought about it or mentioned it to her since I tried to find it last January) and found it in Paris for me. What a star! And here it is, modelled by moi:



I then made Liz take a million photos with me and the champagne, including pretending to drink it straight from the bottle (ugly chin wattle photo not pictured), so we were concerned it might be shaken up upon opening. Liz stood by to catch any spray, but the bottle was opened without incident. 5 minutes later when I opened the fridge again to get some canapes out, the shelf, unable to take the weight of a bottle of champagne and 2 bottles of bubbly, collapsed. Hilarity ensued as I acted swiftly to save the champagne, which first spilled on the floor and then started foaming out. Not being the type to waste good champagne, I drank as much as I could straight from the bottle for real this time, until it stopped spraying. Bit of a bummer, but we didn't lose too much champers I don't think.

This wasn't even the first time that evening that the fridge had let me down. The fridge is officially known as the Frozen Fridge of Doom, since it is ridiculously cold. I've tried turning it all the way down to 1, all the way up to 6 and leaving it in the middle, but it still insists on freezing all my stuff. I often dive in for some hummus, or the cat's food, for example, only to find it frozen solid. It is good for keeping things like vegetables fresh for longer though, I must admit. But even I was surprised when I went to get some lemon to squeeze on to my smoked salmon canapes and found that the lemon was frozen solid. Who knew that was even possible?


The Frozen Fridge of Doom. This is to show the ice build-up at the back, not the apparent lack of human food in there.

Champagne time!


Me and my Taittinger, we love each other. Me and my Taittinger, always together...


Cheers!


Liz enjoying the privilege of getting some champagne


Bit blurry, but a nice photo of me and Liz having a larf I think


Me, Liz and Stephanie

Anyway, it was a nice evening, good to catch up with Liz, who I haven't seen in ages because she's been taking a course 9-5 and then teaching her classes at night, so busy busy. I have my actual birthday off tomorrow, so I'll have to think of something nice to do with myself. It was raining non-stop yesterday, so I was quite happy (well, as happy as humanly possible under the circumstances) to be in bed with a hangover all day.

A couple of random photos:


The evil spider who attacked me within seconds of my sitting down on the couch the other day. Credit where credit's due, he was still in the same spot when I got back from work, so I was able to kill him right away instead of worrying he might get on my knee again. Shudder! He's dead here, so imagine him not curled up and scary and on your knee. Eek! It took me about half a can of fly spray to kill him, then a lot of courage to dispose of the corpse. And then I had to wash the blanket he'd been on, partly because it had fly spray all over it, and partly because it had had a spider crawling all over it.


I've already ranted about how I paid La Poste 23 euros to redirect my mail, even though I'd changed my address with everyone I could think of, just so I could get the tax bill, and how it turned out they have a policy not to forward mail from the tax department. Well, here is the one and only piece of mail I've had redirected so far, an ad from the Monoprix supermarket. This is the side that the original address label was on...



And here's the other side:

Talk about useless! Not that I really care about a Monoprix ad, but supposing I did, way to stick a giant label over half of the information. What if it had been a postcard or something? Why not just stick the new address label over the old one? Or even just take a slight bit of care as to the label's placement? Nope, don't give a monkey's, La Poste.


And here's Bob, during cuddle time on the couch. He comes and hangs about on the floor next to the couch but won't jump up, so I have to lift him up and then he snuggles in between me and the back of the couch, often with his little paws on my shoulder (hence the blurry close-up). Look at his little round head, aw. Good news, Liz is staying in Tours for Christmas, so she is going to feed him. Yay!