When anyone mentions planning a trip to Paris, there is one gotta-go destination that bubbles (literally) to the top of my list of favorite spots. Of all the days we spent exploring around Paris, the most memorable was an electric bike tour of the Champagne Valley.
We met our Bikeabouttours.com guide and group at the train station and rode through the rolling countryside to Epernay, where champagne production is an old-world way of life. The villages and champagne houses dot the rolling countryside, divided by fields of grape vines like an impressionist painting come to life. Covering the distances by bike would be intimidating if not for the pedal-assist boost from the e-bike motor — we only broke a sweat on the longest uphills.
First stop on our bike tour: Philip Martin in Cumiers, where the family combines old traditions with new technology to fill their barrels. We tasted both their Cuvee Reserve (like a fresh bubble pear!) and their Vintage (very apple-y). Fun fact: champagne is not meant to be aged, but to be enjoyed soon after bottling. So pop those corks, people!
From Cumiers, we rolled on to the tiny village of Hautvillers, and stopped in front of a unassuming stone abbey. Instead of a tasting experience, this stop on our tour offered a historical note: in front of the altar of the chapel, under a large tile of black slate, lies the tomb of Dom Perignon. Yes, that Dom Perignon. This blew my mind! Somehow I’d never connected the name with an actual person, but he was a Benedictine monk and the cellar master at the Hautvillers Abby in the late 1600s. How fun would it have been to lived there then, as he experimented with capturing the bubbles of a second fermentation.
Our final stop was at Mercier, the largest champagne house in the region, with a cellar so large they once hosted a race car event — with Mini Coopers! Visitors tour more slowly, via small train cars. The track loops past caverns of champagne in barrels and bottles, and art work tucked into nooks along the way, but it’s also an opportunity to understand the terroir of the region. The cellar tunnels through chalky limestone soil, rich in minerals and slow to lose humidity, is the real secret to growing champagne grapes, and to storing the bottles too.
Where did that chalky limestone come from? Some forty million years ago, a sea of warm water teeming with tiny shelled beings covered the valley, laying down layer after layer of calcite from the shells. Which totally makes sense, when you think about how delicious champagne is with oysters. Next time you pop open a cork, make a toast to the tiny creatures that built the land, to the monks that refined the bubbles, and to the makers of today who keep the traditions alive. Cheers!