Reims. Champagne Area, December 2012

We rented a car to go from Paris to Reims.  In retrospect it turns out this was a horrid idea.  Before I go to far I want to recommend Reims.  Let's say you are 'stuck' in Paris for a few days.  I know, there are worse things than being 'stuck' in Paris.  But bear with me.  Let's say you are stuck in Paris and you've already seen the sights.  Reims can be reached by train in about 45 minutes from any of the main Paris train stations.  From the train station in Reims you can be at the Reims Cathedral in 5 minutes walking and there are a myriad of great small and large Champagne houses within 10 minutes of there.

Reims Cathedral, Paty is doing her Joan of Arc impersonation.

Reims Cathedral, in a not so amazing coincidence this is also known as Notre Dame.  Specifically Notre Dame de Reims.

And I will put up the Reims Notre Dame against the 'other' Notre Dame's history anytime.  tThis is the cathedral where all the Kings of France received their coronation.  This tradition was started in 1429 when none other than Joan of Arc liberated the Cathedral from someone that at the time must have been deemed bad (google: England and Hundred Years War) and the coronation of Charles VII was attended by Miss Arc herself.

In short, I am not one to go in for the Church and Cathedral tour of Europe.  But this place is so impressive it alone is worth the 45 minute train ride from Paris.

Additionally, notice from the attached photo.  The place was empty.  At the Notre Dame in Paris we waited in a 1/4 mile long line to get in.  Here I went inside the Cathedral and it was just us, a couple workers and one other tourist couple.  It was so empty is was a little bit spooky.  I kept expecting Tom Hanks to jump out of a corner whilst filming another Dan Brown movie.

Besides the adequately impressive Joan of Arc history, this structure was a part of World War I and to a lesser extent World War II.  It was almost entirely flattened in WWI.  Here is a good picture showing the stained glass windows.  The dark windows on the right are original 1500'ish, while the lighter ones are new since WWI.  They do not look as Stained Glass'ish, but rest assured they are the same.  I just had to adjust the light sensitivity way up to capture the huge contrast between the two windows.

Left, post WWI stained glass. Right, around 1500 stained glass.

Last photo of the cathedral.  This is the famous Rose Window.  It doubles to give some perspective on the size of the cathedral and the utter emptiness we experienced.  At 140 meters long, 30 meters wide and 38 meters tall; it is a very large structure.

Now we are a few pictures and way too many words in and I haven't mentioned our reason for coming to Reims...Champagne!

For those of you new to Tobinblog, Paty is a Champagne advocate.  Because, let's be honest, Life Is Flat Without Bubbles and we should Celebrate Everyday.

Reims is the heart of Champagne.  Épernay is about 28 kilometers away and holds more of the big Champagne house headquarters, but Reims is the biggest city in the Champagne region and has plenty of big houses as well.

Since we were there in December, the traditional Christmas markets were out in Reims.  This was a great one, it was a heated hut sponsored by a local artisan (grower's) champagne house:

Paty double fisting?

They had a map on the ceiling of all the visitors.  Of course because Paty is Paty, we had to have two dots when they asked us where we were from.  I was the first Seattle dot and I am relatively certain that Paty will be the first and only Merida, Yucatan, Mexico dot.

Day two we started our tour of the Champagne houses.  Reims is the home to quite a few large houses, headlined by two we toured on the first day: Pommery and Tattinger.  Each house is pretty much like a large estate.  This is the entrance to Pommery, that is some sort of modern art in the driveway.  Tattinger (not pictured) is less than a half mile from the entrance pictured here.  The Champagne houses tend to cluster together.

In the lobby, this is the famous barrell that they rolled from Reims to Paris for a World's Fair:

Yes, it really is that big.

The estates are above ground, but all the Champagne houses do their work below ground in man made limestone caves.  There is a ton of history about these caves.  Originally the evcavation was done by the Romans when they were building Reims and the first Cathedral.  It was told to us during the Pommery tour that Madame Pommery was the first to realize that this was an ideal place to make Champagne due to the constant cool temperature and humidity.  Take that with a grain of salt, but all the Champagne house have utilized caves for over 100 years.  There is also extensive WWI and WWII history involved with the caves.  There were a lot of carvings done on the limestone from people that were taking refuge in the caves, especially during WWII.  The limestone is still extremely soft, you can make a mark on it with your fingernail.

The entrance to the winery and cellar at the bottom of a 116 step staircase.

This is what the tour basically consisted of, plus some art.

These roms are everywhere with this much or more Champagne. And some of the last of the famous 1898 vintage.

After the tour, you finally get to taste. Paty tried to be the hostess.

After the tasting we needed lunch.  We had reservations at Le Jardin.  Basically 'The Garden' option, kind of like the bar but set in another entire building in a different part of the estate, off a three star Michelin restaurant.  It was fabulously good.  During our time in Reims we bascially settled into doing super awesome lunches then having a cheap doner kebab for dinner at the hotel while drinking a bottle of great Champagne that we just picked up.

So that's what three Michelin Stars looks like.

Random super cool church next to Tattinger.

Riddling racks, these were everywhere.