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We left wine country and headed north to Champagne country, arriving in the capital of the Region, Epernay, at lunchtime. Typically the town was on shut down, over the lunch time period, so we decided to join in and go for a picnic! The hotel was located right on the Avenue du Champagne, where all the major champagne houses are located. The street looked like a film set, perfectly clean, trees pruned and bright white paved pavements lined either side with Renaissance and Classical style buildings, each aligned to a major Champagne house.
We found a beautiful park on the Avenue and sat by a fountain enjoying the sunshine while we ate our lunch (that mornings breakfast buffet, hidden in our bags, thankfully cheese, meat, bread, fruit and croissants wasn't yet boring!).
After the lunch break we decided we had been in Epernay far too long without sampling the local brew, so it was off to the Champagne bar, La Banque (formally the Bank of France) and each tasted a different glass of champagne, non of which we'd tried before. After feeling relaxed and 'bubbly' we headed to Moet (pronouncing the 't' surprisingly!) and Chandon to do a cellar tour, the famous brand is one of the biggest in Epernay, taking up several of the large buildings on the Avenue and 30km of cellar space 20m below. The tour started in the old drawing rooms, where Mr Moet, the mayor of the area, had entertained guests. We then watched a Hollywood-style video, narrated by Scarlett Johansen, about the brand. It was then time to head down onto the caves.
The long corridored cellars stretched for miles and were surprisingly tall and wide, with dozens of galleries off of each one. We soon got disorientated, after moving from one corridor of Champagne bottles to the next. Each gallery was labelled with it's address, number of bottles (typically over 20,000!) and a secret code detailing the blend, only known by the winemakers, of which Moet and Chandon only have 11! We all decided that that job would be a pretty good one!
Before we headed back to the surface we got to taste the Champagne; we chose the Grand Vintage tour so we got to try a White vintage Chanpagne and a Rose vintage champagne, both were so moorish!
That evening we ate at La Cave du Champagne, a tiny traditional French restaurant serving homemade French cuisine! We all had fantastic meals accompanied by a beautiful bottle of Champagne and French wines...even Rob maintained that his Baby Cows Head Meat was nice!! (Eurgh!). We toasted everyone and a fantastic trip; it was a lovely end to an amazing Road Trip!
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