Back to Bouzy

In October 2011, the family whose gîte we rented in Bouzy, on the Montagne de Reims, were themselves
champagne producers. We were invited to go to their house across the street for a tour of their wine cellar.

    
On the left is the winery sign on the Guillemette family's house; on the right is their tractor.
This part of Champagne was not prettied up and was surprisingly agricultural in feel.

    
The entrance to the cellar on the left, and a visible section of the local chalky bedrock on the right

    
The Guillemettes told us that they no longer made wine in their cellar. They took their grapes to a nearby wine cooperative
and had them crushed and turned into champagne there. They gave us a bottle to sample with our dinner. We enjoyed it.

Champagne : la côte des Blancs

South of the Montagne de Reims and the town of Épernay lies an area known as la côte des Blancs, where there are more than 8,000 acres of vineyards planted mainly in Chardonnay grapes. Chardonnay is a white-wine grape, as you know, and champagne wine made exclusively with its juice is called blanc de blancs ("white wine from white grapes"). Most champagne wines are made with an assemblage of the juice of three different grapes: two reds (Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier) plus a portion of Chardonnay juice. Champagnes that don't include any Chardonnay juice are called blanc de noirs — yes, some red (noir) grapes produce white juice when crushed. Some people, including me, think blanc de blancs is the finest style of champagne. Chardonnay is also the grape that Chablis wine is made from in northern Burgundy, about 85 miles to the south.

    
The French word côte has three different meanings, in fact. Une côte is a rib (human or animal), a chop, or a cutlet
(as in côte de porc or côte de bœuf). Côte can also mean "hillside" or "slope";
it also means "coast" as in La Côte d'Azur on the Mediterranean.
It's pronounced [koht] — one syllable.

There are four wine villages in the area called la côte des Blancs — Avize, Cramant, Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, and Oger.

    
La côte des Blancs is actually the eastern edge of the part of France called L'Île de France, which is the 5,000 mi² plateau that is basically the Paris area — la région parisienne. (Some of the photos here are of villages on the Montagne de Reims, and others are of villages on the côte des Blancs.)

Champagne : paysages

Between Reims to the north and the town of Épernay to the south is a part of the old province of Champagne called la montagne de Reims. It's not really a mountain except in contrast with the wide plains stretching out all around it. It tops out at 287 meters (940 feet) of elevation. The "mountain" and parts of the plain around it were designated as a Parc naturel régional in 1976. It covers 500 km² (about 200 mi²) and one third of it is hardwood forestland, with a lot of oaks. Much of the rest is vineyards. As you can see in my photos, it's "big sky country."

    

Above is the village of Bouzy, where we spent a week in October 2011. The village includes 930 acres of vineyards, planted mostly in Pinot Noir grapes but partly in Chardonnay as well.

    

Reims : Pommery (2)

About half the champagne produced in France is exported to other countries. Still, the two biggest markets for the champagne industry are France and the United Kingdom — though both have been shrinking for years. Other foreign markets, including the U.S., Japan, and Australia, are growing. The Covid pandemic, as you can imagine, caused champagne sales in France and other markets to decline over the past two or three years. [Link to source...]

     Reims is just 160 kilometers (100 miles) from Paris — it can be a day trip.

This is the entrance to the caves (cellars) at the Pommery champagne house.
Pommery merged with the Belgian-owned Vranken wine group a few years ago.

    
Ay is a mystery to me. I have been to the village called Mareuil-sur-Ay, about 15 miles south of Reims, several times.
There's also a village called Fontaine-sur-Ay pronounced [ah-ee] (the H is silent). Normally when a town or
village is sur (on) something, it's on a river or a stream. However, I can't find any trace
of a river or stream in the area bearing the name Ay.

Champagne !

Pommery. Ruinart. Veuve Clicquot. Mumm. Taittinger. These are just a few of the companies that produce Champagne wines in the city of Reims. Visiting them and especially their caves is one good reason to go spend a few days in Reims. Here are some photos I took at the Pommery winery (called Vranken-Pommery now) in the year 2000. Pommery was founded in the 19th century and produces between five and six million bottles of champagne annually.

    

    

Reims : sculptures de la basilique Saint-Remi

There are a lot of statues in the St. Remi basilica in Reims (Champagne). The bronze in the middle of this two-minute slideshow stands outside the church itself and depicts the baptism of the Franks' first Christian king, Clovis, by St. Remi. The baptism took place at the end of the 5th century. The statue was inaugurated in 1996 to mark the 15th centennial of Clovis's baptism.

Reims : la basilique Saint-Remi

           
Another historic site to see in the city of Reims (pop. approx. 200K)in Champagne is this Romanesque church complex that also has some Gothic features. It's dedicated to St. Remi, the city's patron saint. He was the bishop of Reims and at the end of the 5th century he baptised Clovis I, a Frankish king who was the first to convert to Christianity. Clovis became the king of all the Franks and greatly expanded the territories the Franks controlled. He died in Paris in the year 511. Charlemagne was born more than 250 years later.

The church dedicated to St. Remi was built starting in the year 1007 and was consecrated in 1049, making it two centuries older than the cathedral Notre-Dame in Reims.

            St-Remi is almost as big as Notre-Dame de Reims. Apparently it houses a collection of medieval church windows, but I didn't see those. Walt and I went there with our friend Jeanine in October 2000, and I went again in 2011 with CHM. I had been to Reims two or three times in the 1970s, including visits to wineries to taste different champagnes. Some of the photos here date back to the year 2000, and others to 2011.

Gratin d'asperges, jambon, et pommes de terre

For lunch yesterday I made an asparagus and ham tarte (or gratin) with a potato "crust". Walt, who usually makes a pastry crust (pâte brisée) for pies like this, was busy putting up new curtains in our living room, so I stepped into the breach. He had cooked a dozen or so big white asparagus spears a day or two earlier and put them in the refrigerator. We had ham, cream, cheese, and what was left of a bag of nice locally grown potatoes.

     After peeling the potatoes and cooking them in a steamer pot, I cut them into fairly thick slices. Then I lined
the bottom and sides of a buttered baking dish with them. Over them I poured a custard mixture of
cream, eggs, and grated cheese, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a pinch of grated nutmeg.

Then I rolled bundles of cooked white asparagus spears (a local specialty) in slices of cooked ham. You can use either "sandwich" ham (jambon de Paris) or proscuitto-style air-cured ham (jambon sec) for a dish like this. You could make it with green aspargus, of course, if that's what you prefer.

     Arrange the ham-wrapped bundles on top of the custard mixture in a the baking dish and sprinkle grated Parmesan
or Romano cheese over them. Cook the gratin in a hot oven for about half an hour until the custard is cooked
and the grated cheese on top starts to brown. Serve hot — one bundle per person.

Reims : la cathédrale vue de loin

Reims et sa cathédrale en octobre 2000

Reims : mes dernières photos de la cathédrale Notre-Dame

    

    

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P.S. We took delivery of our new motobineuse (rototiller) yesterday afternoon. It's a much lighter-weight machine than the one we had to get rid of last week. Well see if it can do the job. I'm sure it will be easier for us to haul around. So now it's really time to start working on the vegetable garden plot, which might be smaller than in past years.

Reims : vitraux de Chagall

Much of the stained glass in the cathedral at Reims dates back only to the years between 1930 and the present. That's because about half of the older windows in the cathedral were destroyed during World War I, when the building's wooden roof structure was destroyed by fire (as was the roof at Notre-Dame de Paris in 2019). The roof at Reims had already burned once before, in the 15th century. After WWI, a concrete roof structure replaced the wooden beams that had burned.

The Russian-born artist Marc Chagall created a series of windows for the cathédrale de Reims
in the 1960s and 1970s. Four of them are in my photos above. The second and third images
are closer views of sections of the triptych above.

Reims : des vitraux et un aigle...

... à l'intérieur de la cathédrale Notre-Dame... de Reims.

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