Adventures With Harvey

Mother’s Day with Mumm – well almost…

We were only a day out. On Sunday May 8 we chatted with both our mothers on the webcam to wish them a happy Mother’s Day and on Monday May 9 we visited Maison Mumm for a most excellent champagne tour and tasting. But more on that shortly.

By far the biggest highlight in our 6 weeks or so of travelling thus far was meeting a gentleman by the name of J Charpentier. Around 20 years ago Anita had visited the champagne region and recalled visiting the J Charpentier champagne house and buying a dozen little bottles of happiness. So, we decided to pop back and visit… and what an absolute treat. Mr J Charpentier must be well into his 70’s, is a third-generation winemaker and personally did the tasting for us. He spoke almost no English however I’m finding I can understand & speak more and more the longer I’m here, so along with google translate (where needed) we had a truly memorable champagne tasting. It’s hard to explain just how delightful Mr Charpentier was and still totally passionate about producing champagne after all these years. I think Anita was slightly in love 😊

Also a treat was bumping into a couple of fellow kiwi travelers. Michael and Frances were on the same tour at Mumm and all of us were delighted to hear a familiar accent! Following the visit, we stopped by a local establishment for a debrief and decided that we would hang out together the following day exploring Épernay and tasting champagne.

My chronology is jumping around a little here, so let me back the truck up. Our third and final day in Reims was a Monday… and a whole bunch of things are closed on Mondays, sadly the cathedral being amongst them. This also includes many of the large champagne houses (they get a thumbs down from the travelling Woodies) however thankfully not including Mumm. So we started our day with a visit to the Basilique Saint-Remi, the second coolest church in town. You’ll see from the photo just how colossal this place was – Anita is just a tiny spec out the front. We learned that while the UK was busy with 1000 odd years of the dark ages, there was plenty happening in France. On 25 December 496 the local bishop, Saint Remigius, baptised Clovis I, King of the Franks and a church was established nearby at around the same time. The current building was started in the 11^th century and has had a number of additions since – including a major restoration as a result of damage during WWI (i.e. the entire roof fell in). In 1996 they unveiled a new statue for the 14^th centenary celebrations of the baptism of Clovis. Yessir, that would be 14 centuries!!!

We spent 3 nights in Reims altogether and both really loved the town. There is a large pedestrianised ‘centre ville’ with a huge selection of restaurants and beautiful architecture (we’ve become fans of ‘plat du jour’). The huge park in town is idyllic with loads of established greenery, hammocks, playgrounds, gym equipment and so on. The cathedral and basilica are monumental and we found the locals to be, without exception, friendly, helpful and welcoming. The town is steeped in history starting with a huge Roman gate from 2000 years ago. And did I forget to mention champagne?!?

Did you know that there are over 200km of tunnels underneath the city of Reims which are all used for the production of champagne. 26km of those belong to Maison Mumm and it was interesting to hear about the process and see all the subterranean goings-on. Such a massive scale of production and it takes longer than 3 years to produce even the cheapest bottle of Mumm. They keep a library of each year’s vintage, the oldest bottle being from 1893 – all of which were well hidden when Mr Hitler and co rode into town because those Nazis were a thirsty and pilfering lot! Other than J Charpentier we did a couple of other tastings in Épernay however it was hard to find places not charging an arm and a leg to try their bubbles. Of course, we had to stop by and pay homage to the great monk himself – yes a certain Dom Perignon has his statue in Épernay and we also visited the church where he is buried. The evening concluded with a bbq back at Harvey with Michael and Frances who had kindly chauffeured us around in Wiat (pronounced Wyatt) the Fiat.

It's hard to explain how much champagne dominates this part of the world – we have a wine industry at home but it’s nothing like this. We were astonished to find bottles of vintage champagne, from as far back as 1970 (& with a price tag to match), available for sale at the local supermarket. Speaking of which, the E.Leclerc Hypermarket we visited today in Épernay must qualify as the biggest shop I think I’ve ever entered. If you imagine a massive New World but with triple the range of any supermarket in NZ, add a Briscoes plus a decent clothing selection and garden centre all rolled onto one.

A striking feature of this part of the world is the number of cemeteries from The Great War. They’re typically on the side of the road and, tragically, are almost too numerous to count. We stopped at one as we were passing today called the Cemitière Militaire Britannique de Marfaux. Although designated as a British Cemetery with over 1000 war-dead there is also a German cemetery right next door with over 4000! The vast majority there were killed between 15-18 July 1918 at The Second Battle of the Marne which turned out to be the last major German offensive of the war. We were also surprised to find that there is a memorial there to 10 casualties with unknown resting places from the New Zealand Cyclist Battalion. Yes, a cyclist battalion – who knew!

So as we wind things up for today I can tell you that this blog comes to you from a France Passion stop, Champagne Vincent Bennezon a little way to the west of Reims. We’re heading back to Amiens tomorrow, it’s quite a hike so we wanted to get at least part of the way this afternoon.

That’s about all to report for now – until next time…

AWH signing off.